10 Amazing Things You Didn’t Know About Your Own Body

Even though we spend all day with ourselves, there's still so much we don't know about our own bodies... Time to check them out!

It's true... You're taller by about 1cm in the morning! But why?!
While people lay down in a resting position, the spine is said to 'spread out,' so when we wake up in the morning we are taller after lying in bed for hours all night. Although the increase in our morning height is minimal, it's just enough to make a difference when comparing your height first thing in the day with others.

No, this doesn't mean your bones magically disappear and you don't actually have them. They're still there - just much thinner and more fragile than they were when you were younger. See, as we age our body tends to reabsorb calcium and phosphate from our bones instead of keeping these minerals. When our bones become this weak, we reach a stage called osteoporosis. Findings show that 16% of women and 4% of men age 50 and older have osteoporosis.

While you may think you look bald compared to a chimpanzee, it turns out you're likely just as hairy as them. With the exception of the palms of your hands and soles of your feet, your entire body is covered with hair. In fact, chimpanzees have about 5 million hair follicles, the same as humans! Of course, the reason we don't look alike is because human hair is not as thick and does not grow as long as our primate pals.

Do you feel more stressed when Monday rolls around? Researchers have found that most heart attacks occured on Mondays and the least on Saturdays due to the difference in stress levels... A large contributor to heart related issues. The difference is big too - with Monday being 11% higher of a heart attack risk than on any other day from Tuesday to Friday.

As weird or gross as it may seem, earwax actually has several important jobs! Not only does it protect and moisturize the skin of your ear canal (preventing any itchiness in the ear), but also it contains certain chemicals to fight off infections. So before you go ahead and clean out your earwax, think of all its doing to protect your eardrum from the outside world.

Yes, your hair knows when you're getting a good night's rest or not. And if you get great sleep, you'll often notice your hair growing faster and healthier! On the other hand, sleep deprivation can eventually lead to stress on the body which eventually leads to hair loss. More specifically, this is when stress pushes the hair follicle into a 'resting state,' which then leads to shedding of the hair.

While we know the five major senses, there are many many more than that! For example, thermoception. This is the ability to sense whether something is hot or cold as well as regulating internal body temperature. Similarly, there's nociception. This refers to our sense of pain, and the overloading of certain receptors. Another interesting sense we have is equilibrioception, the sense that is responsible for keeping us balanced and sensing body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes.

Due to pigment melanin, everyone is actually born with blue eyes! For most people their eye color will change, either quite quickly or within a few years, however it's true that at one point you had blue eyes. Interesting, huh?

The biggest reason we can't really tickle ourselves is because we're already expecting it to happen. Studies have shown that the cerebullum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them, but of course they cannot predict sensations when someone else causes them. According to these results, knowing you're aiming for a sensation cancels out the response of other brain areas to cause the tickle.

Whether that seems like a lot or little of time is up to you, though this is the average amount of time! After the average person eats, it takes about 6-8 hours for food to pass through your stomach. Then, the complete digestion process takes place. Fun fact: Men typically fully digest their food about 10 hours faster than women.