The human body is a big, meaty bag of wonders. All day long, things are happening inside you that you don’t even know are happening. Synapses are firing in your brain, nerves are sending signals through your muscles, your heart, lungs, stomach, and spleen are all doing their jobs automatically, without your input.
You take so many things for granted that you experience throughout the day, but it turns out that even the most mundane experiences have some pretty weird things going on behind them. You just never realize it. Like these ten weird things:
10. Your brain releases chemicals that make you hungry.
Have you ever felt a little hungry? It’s not just a made-up word, it’s a real thing! It’s that grumpy, angry feeling you get when you’re hungry. But why would hunger make anyone angry? It’s all those chemicals, man. A whopping 25% of your entire energy is used by your brain. So when you’re starved of nutrients, your brain reacts like a spoiled child. It will trigger a stress response to force you to feed it.
Your brain releases cortisol and adrenaline to balance your blood sugar, and for some of us, cortisol triggers aggression. So your brain just wants a sandwich, and now you want to punch someone to get it. That's science.
9. Your voice sounds strange on recordings due to physical and psychological reasons.
Hate the sound of your voice on tape but not in your head? You’re not alone. It’s called “vocal confrontation,” and it’s partly due to the way your skull vibrates and changes the sound of your own voice compared to everyone else you hear. It will sound deeper in your head, thanks to the way your bones transmit sound to your ear. But that’s not all!
Research from the 1960s concluded that there is a psychological aspect to hating your own voice. These “extralinguistic cues” are hard to pick up when you speak, but recording them makes them more obvious – like how tense you are, if you are indecisive, or angry. Essentially, these are things you weren’t aware of or didn’t try to project through speech that have come out anyway, and now you’re confronted with them, making you uncomfortable.
8. Floaters are caused by changes in the vitreous body and collagen threads
Any time you see tiny moving objects in your field of vision that aren't really there, you're experiencing floaters. They can happen when you rub your eyes, when you get hit on the head, or for no apparent reason at all.
The inside of your eye is filled with vitreous humor. Sometimes there are pockets of thinner fluid in the thicker gel, and the boundary between them can feel like a float. But you can also see collagen fibers. As you age, they become thicker and denser, making them more noticeable from time to time. These fibers can also clump together and become large enough to be visible. It’s actually the shadows they cast that you perceive as floaters. They’re usually harmless, but if they become a constant presence, you should see an eye doctor.
7. Long trips tire you out because your body is constantly reacting to vibrations.
Have you ever gone on one of those really long cross-country road trips, and after ten hours of driving, you're just completely exhausted? Sure, you've been driving for ten hours. You know... sitting still in one place, lightly pressing on the pedals, and occasionally gently turning the wheel in your hands. It's tiring. But why? What makes sitting and doing nothing so tiring?
The phenomenon sometimes called travel fatigue is very real. Sitting for long periods of time puts stress on your veins. Blood pools in your legs, so you may start to swell. This can cause muscle soreness and even lead to deep vein thrombosis.
In addition, the natural vibrations of a car in motion begin to tire you after only 15 minutes of driving. Your body must constantly adjust to the bumps and shifts so that your muscles never rest. Even if you don’t strain them much, they are always in use, and this tires you out.
6. Blockage of one nostril due to nasal cycle
Allergies and things like colds make you feel terrible, and one of the worst side effects is when you're congested. But you may have noticed an unusual problem where only one nostril is congested at a time. And it may even move from nostril to nostril. So what gives?
It turns out that your nose is not an equal-ability body part. Even when you breathe normally, one nostril does most of the work. It will switch throughout the day, but one always does more than the other, thanks to your autonomic nervous system.
This nasal cycle prevents the nose from drying out and becoming damaged. A cold or allergy will cause the blood vessels in the nose to dilate, followed by increased mucus production, causing one nostril to feel clogged while the other takes over.
5. Your brain wakes you up before your alarm goes off.
If you’ve ever woken up only to look at your alarm clock five minutes before it went off, you know how frustrating it can be. The worst part is that it seems to keep happening. It’s too late to go back to sleep, and you just don’t want to get up because you feel like you’ve been robbed of five minutes. And there’s a reason why this keeps happening.
You’ve no doubt heard of your body’s internal clock before. Sometimes it’s called by the more colorful name of circadian rhythm. It sort of regulates your sense of time in terms of how and when you do things. Part of this is when you feel tired and when you’re awake. There are a lot of external factors that can throw off that feeling of tiredness or wakefulness, from how much work you’ve done that day to what you’ve eaten or drunk that gave you an energy boost, and so on. But overall, your body is set to a routine.
Because your circadian rhythm likes to maintain a routine, it works best if you stick to that routine. Stick to the same routine long enough, and it may even start to predict when you should wake up, which is what happens when you keep waking up right before your alarm goes off. Your body’s own sense of timing knows how long you should be sleeping, and it’s just a little ahead of itself. It starts producing the proteins it needs to keep you feeling alert and active because it knows you’ll need them.
In fact, protein helps you wake up partly because it tries to avoid that annoying alarm clock that jolts you awake. So by raising your blood pressure, temperature, and cortisol levels, you can wake up gently, rather than with the blare of a morning DJ.
4. You feel like you look better in the mirror than in photographs
Chances are, you know someone who says they hate their own photos, or maybe you yourself feel that way. But you rarely hear the same people make similar comments about their reflections. If you were to compare your reflection to a photo taken at the same time, you'd probably prefer the reflection, and for good reason.
Existing in your head, you almost never see yourself the way everyone else does. The mirror you turn upside down. Your perception of yourself is largely built on this. So when you see a photo, it’s you, but it’s built upside down, the way you’re used to seeing yourself, and your mind doesn’t like that. It will also appear at angles that we can’t see in a mirror because of the way our eyes work in our heads when we see ourselves. Looking forward means that you’re always looking at yourself at the best angle, even when you turn your head. So a selfie will give you unflattering angles that you didn’t even realize were there.
In addition to angles, lighting also cannot change when your eyes get used to the mirror image in the photo. In short, your eyes always automatically determine the best angle and the best lighting, but photographs capture a strange moment that we are not used to.
3. Alcohol causes burns because it changes the heat receptors in the mouth.
Do you remember the first time you had a shot of vodka? That searing burn in your mouth and throat that made you wonder why the hell people do that to themselves? And then, depending on your personal feelings, you either never drank again or drank until you barely noticed the burn? We’re not here to discuss your relationship with alcohol, but we are focusing on what you feel when you drink: the burn. Have you ever wondered why alcohol burns?
Oddly enough, alcohol and hot peppers affect your brain in very similar ways. Neither is hot to the touch, but your brain senses heat in your mouth and throat, and even your stomach. This is due to something called the vanilloid receptor. When these receptors in your mouth come into contact with alcohol, it lowers their tolerance to heat. Normally, your mouth would burn because you ate something hot, and they perceive things that are around 105 degrees Fahrenheit as hot. But ethanol lowers that tolerance to around 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a problem because your body temperature is 98.5 Fahrenheit.
Since your heat receptors are now activated by your own body, wherever the alcohol touches you will feel fire because your brain is now convinced that you are drinking fire. Once the booze is gone, everything is back to normal.
2. Tattoos stay on your skin because macrophages eat the ink over and over again.
According to statistics, 36% of people on our planet between the ages of 18 and 25 have at least one tattoo on their body. From 26 to 40, the percentage increases to 40%. But what keeps the ink under your skin the entire time it’s there? For years, it was popularly believed that tattoos were applied to the dermis, i.e. under the skin, which constantly regenerates. Although this is not actually true. The truth lies in your immune response and so-called macrophages.
The tattoo lands on your skin, and your immune system immediately recognizes the wound. Cells called macrophages rush to the wound and engulf the ink. Essentially, they eat the tattoo to try to get it to come off your body. But the macrophages die and are replaced by new macrophages that eat the old ones, holding the ink in place even as they try to wash it all away.
1. We can see faces in objects because of evolutionary survival.
The human mind is designed to see faces everywhere. From bathtubs to Brussels sprouts. It's not because some people are weird, it's because of pareidolia. We do it all the time when we see patterns, arranging them into familiar shapes in our minds.
In one study, 34% participants who were shown static gray patterns were able to spot a face in them. Brain imaging showed that the frontal and occipital areas involved in planning and memory were activated. It has been suggested that this is followed by activation of the right fusiform face area, which is activated when we see real faces, working together because we expect to see something that looks like a face.
One theory about why this happens has an evolutionary component. We are hardwired to see faces. Society works because people help each other, but we also fear our enemies. Recognizing faces, good or bad, has helped us survive as a species. So our brains need to recognize them, even if we sometimes get them wrong.
Оставить Комментарий