The human body is a big, fleshy bag of wonders. All day long, things happen inside you that you're not even aware of. Synapses fire in your brain, nerves send signals through your muscles, your heart, lungs, stomach, and spleen perform their functions automatically, without your input.
You take many things you experience throughout the day for granted, but it turns out that even the most mundane experiences are hiding something quite strange. You just never realize it. Like these ten strange 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 should 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. This triggers a stress response to force you to feed it.
Your brain releases cortisol and adrenaline to balance blood sugar levels, 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. This phenomenon is called "vocal confrontation," and it's partly due to the way your skull vibrates, changing the sound of your own voice compared to the voices of 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 self-loathing has a psychological component. These "extralinguistic cues" are difficult to detect when you speak, but recording them makes them more obvious—for example, how tense you are, if you're indecisive, or angry. Essentially, these are things you weren't aware of or didn't try to project through speech that have surfaced anyway, and now you're confronted with them, causing you discomfort.
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 actually there, you're experiencing floaters. They can occur 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, the thicker gel contains pockets of thinner fluid, and the boundary between them can appear as a floater. However, you may also see collagen fibers. With 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 become visible. In reality, it's the shadows they cast that you perceive as floaters. These shadows are usually harmless, but if they become persistent, 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 behind the wheel, 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 steering wheel. 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 strain on your veins. Blood pools in your legs, causing swelling. This can cause muscle soreness and even lead to deep vein thrombosis.
Furthermore, the natural vibrations of a car in motion begin to tire you after just 15 minutes behind the wheel. Your body must constantly adapt to the shocks and shifts, so your muscles never rest. Even if you don't strain them too much, they're always in use, and this tires you out.
6. Blockage of one nostril due to the nasal cycle
Allergies and things like colds can make you feel terrible, and one of the worst side effects is feeling congested. But you may have noticed an unusual problem: congestion in only one nostril at a time. It can even shift from one nostril to the next. So what's going on?
It turns out your nose isn't an equal-functioning body part. Even with normal breathing, one nostril does most of the work. It switches 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 nasal blood vessels to dilate, leading to 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, it seems to keep happening. It's too late to fall back asleep, 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 catchy name of circadian rhythm. It regulates your sense of time, in terms of how and when you do things. This happens partly when you feel tired and when you're awake. There are many external factors that can disrupt this feeling of tiredness or wakefulness, ranging from how much work you've done that day to what you ate or drank that gave you energy, and so on. But overall, your body is set to a routine.
Because your circadian rhythm likes to maintain a daily routine, it works best when you stick to it. Stick to the same routine long enough, and it may even begin to predict when you should wake up, which is what happens when you keep waking up right before your alarm. Your body's own sense of timing knows how long you should sleep, and it's just a little ahead of schedule. It begins producing the proteins needed to keep you feeling alert and active because it knows you'll need them.
In fact, protein helps you wake up partly because it avoids the annoying alarm clock that jolts you awake. So, by raising your blood pressure, temperature, and cortisol levels, you'll wake up gently, not to the blare of a morning DJ.
4. You think 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 the same way. But you rarely hear the same people make similar comments about their reflections. If you were to compare your reflection with 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 sees you. It's a mirror you flip upside down. Your self-perception is largely built on this. So when you see a photo, it's you, but structured in reverse, the way you're used to seeing yourself, and your mind doesn't like that. It will also appear at angles we can't see in a mirror because of how our eyes work in our heads when we see ourselves. Looking forward means you're always looking at yourself from the best angle, even when you turn your head. So, a selfie will give you unflattering angles you didn't even realize were there.
Besides angles, lighting also can't change as your eyes adjust to the mirror image in the photograph. In short, your eyes always automatically detect the best angle and lighting, but photographs capture a strange moment we're not used to.
3. Alcohol causes burns because it alters 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, making you wonder why the hell people do that to themselves? And then, depending on your personal experience, 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—specifically, 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 warmth in your mouth, throat, and even stomach. This is thanks 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've eaten something hot, and they perceive things around 42°C (107°F) as hot. But ethanol lowers this tolerance to around 34°C (93°F). This is problematic because your body temperature is 36.6°C (98.5°F).
Since your heat receptors are now activated by your own body, you'll feel a burning sensation wherever the alcohol touches you, because your brain is now convinced you're drinking fire. Once the alcohol wears off, everything balances out again.
2. Tattoos stay on your skin because macrophages eat the ink over and over again.
According to statistics, 36% of people on the planet between the ages of 18 and 25 have at least one tattoo. From 26 to 40, this percentage increases to 40%. But what keeps the ink under your skin the entire time it's there? For many years, it was popularly believed that tattoos are applied to the dermis, that is, under the skin, which constantly regenerates. However, 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 force it off your body. But the macrophages die and are replaced by new macrophages, which consume the old ones, holding the ink in place even as they try to wash it all away.
1. We can see faces in objects for evolutionary survival reasons.
The human mind is wired to see faces everywhere. From bathtubs to Brussels sprouts. It's not because some people are weird, it's because of pareidolia. We do this 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 identify faces within them. Brain imaging showed that the frontal and occipital regions, which are responsible for 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 resembling a face.
One theory about why this happens has an evolutionary component. We're 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 are designed to recognize them, even if we sometimes get them wrong.