7 insane things happening inside your body right now
All things considered, our bodies do a pretty great job of keeping us healthy — but they have some crazy ways of doing so.
In fact, the human body is a hub of super gross stuff, from digestion to gas to tonsil stones. Fortunately, these seemingly disgusting processes are actually totally normal, so instead of saying “ew” to the mites on your eyelashes, you might want to say “no worries, guys.”
Here are a few of the insane things happening inside your body right now.
Insane things happening inside your body
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1. Thick, sticky goop is collecting inside your face.
Even though we associate mucus with sneezing, sniffling and feeling gross, mucus production is a completely normal function. In fact, the body creates mucus — around 1 liter per day — to trap infectious agents trying to enter the body. So go ahead and look inside your used tissue. You should probably say thank you in person.
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2. Your food is cruising down a 25-foot poop highway.
After you eat your morning cereal, it travels to your stomach, where it is broken down by gastric juice. But food’s digestive road trip hardly stops there. It then travels through around 25 (sometimes 30) feet of intestine before it reaches the fabled Porcelain Throne.
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3. Mites are probably having sex on your eyelashes.
According to National Geographic, there are two species of mite that often build their homesteads on your facial prairie. There, they live rich lives full of eating, crawling and having sex. FYI, Makeout Point is most likely near your hair follicles.
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4. Little corpses are mixing with dirt in the back of your throat.
Your tonsils (if you still have them) are filled with little nooks. Despite the tonsils’ best efforts, these nooks often fill up with bacteria, mucus and dead cells. Most people have a perfectly manageable amount of debris in their tonsils. Far fewer develop tonsil stones, which are larger, harder gunk deposits.
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5. Flammable gasses are building up inside of you.
Everyone farts. But have you ever wondered what your farts are made of? No? We’ll tell you anyway. Most intestinal gas is composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen (flammable) and, in some cases, methane (also flammable). Put away those matches.
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6. Hundreds of glands are secreting warm liquid into your mouth.
There are three pairs of major salivary glands in your mouth: the parotid glands, the submandibular glands and the sublingual glands. In addition, there are hundreds of minor salivary glands. They all work together to produce between 1 and 2 liters of delicious saliva per day, which your body uses to break down food particles and begin the process of digestion.
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7. Your mouth is preparing to involuntarily pop open.
It could happen at any second! Also, we’re just talking about yawning. Sorry to freak you out.
Image: Martin Gallagher/Corbis