Gross everyday facts you don't want to know
Published on: Oct 02 2011 06:08:06 AM EDT Updated on: Jun 22 2012 02:00:00 AM EDT
Anyone who has ever watched the TV show “Hoarders” is probably drawn by the sheer shock of how those “filthy” people live. But the truth of the matter is, none of us is clean as a whistle.
While we may not live like the folks on “Hoarders,” we aren’t clean freaks, either. there are horribly disgusting things we live with every day, we just don’t notice them.
In fact, if you thought about it too hard, you’d stay in a hot shower, scrubbing yourself until you were raw, and you’d never eat a hot dog again. But that is the goal of this article — to gross you out.
Sure, there’s some educational merit to knowing the kinds of germs and filth in which we exist, but, really, we just want to make you uncomfortable in your own skin.
And there’s plenty of reason to be grossed out by your skin …
No. 5: Your body is crawling with bacteria
What kind of filthy animal allows himself or herself to be covered in bugs? even if your dog brings them home, it reflects badly on the pet owner who is covered in the parasites. But that’s only lazy, dirty people, right?
Not so fast. You may not be crawling with bugs but you yourself are — at this very minute, in fact — covered in bacteria.
We’re coated, from head to toe as a matter of fact, in the stuff. That’s the bad news. the good news is that those bacteria serve a purpose. They’re there to improve health and defend against disease.
So the argument is that if we didn’t have those critters living on your skin — and again, to be clear: every… single… solitary inch of it — we’d have far more health problems, because the bacteria acts as a defense against disease.
Does that make you feel any better? Us neither, but we’re just getting warmed up …
No. 4: Dust is dead skin
One of the cliches of the Army drill sergeant is wiping the tops of lockers and other furniture with white gloves looking for dust. If Sgt. Pain finds even the slightest hint of dust, it’s non-stop push-ups for the whole platoon.
But even after you dust something, it doesn’t take long for a fine layer of the stuff to accumulate. And if you wait too long between dustings, the stuff really builds up.
The bad news is it’s not just dirt that’s coating your stuff — it’s you, too.
Household dust is make up of such delightful things as dead skin, hair, waxes, pollen, mold, fungi, particles of fabric, insect parts, and even tiny bits of metal debris from anywhere metal touches other metal (think hinges, for instance).
No. 3: Trillions of bacteria call your intestines home
We learned how it works in biology 101: You use your teeth to chew food, breaking it down into small bits. Then muscles in your throat push it to your stomach where it is digested as it works its way through the digestive system. But there’s more.
Once food gets into the large intestine, bacteria goes to work on it, breaking it down so your body can use it. the stuff is actually good for you, because they help fend off “bad” bacteria that are trying to create infections.
And the bacteria are part of a team — one little critter can’t do it alone. In fact, there are about 100 trillion cells from up to 1,000 different species alive and thriving in your intestines.
So how big are 100 trillion bacteria cells? If you were to weigh them all, they’d weigh about 2.2 pounds.
