10 Crazy Facts About Health Science

As medical science continues to progress, new facts emerge daily about our health and our bodies in general. Some of these facts are entirely new concepts that lead to entirely new fields of medical research. But, some of the strangest and most interesting bits of information that emerge are not new at all. They are often things that we have either intuitively known for generations, or things that we’ve learned through trial and error and experience, but have not been able to prove. Here are 10 health science facts that may or may not come as a surprise, but will explain a lot about ourselves, our health and our behavior.

Sun Linked to Violence

It’s no surprise that hot weather can make people irritable and cranky and lead to heated arguments and a loss of patience, but it turns out it may be much more serious than that. Health science data suggests that violent acts, from the start of wars to rape and assault, are more prevalent during the hot months of July and August.

Scientists are still trying to isolate the exact cause of this, but the facts are suggesting that serotonin levels decrease in violent subjects during the summer. Perhaps higher levels of testosterone cause this. Until the cause is found and a cure can be developed, let’s just remember to try to take it easy in the heat.

Poor Eyesight and Intelligence; More Than a Myth

Stereotypes certainly aren’t always correct, but sometimes they are closer than we like them to be. The stereotype of the nerd as a nearsighted, four-eyes, may be the truest one to date. For years it was assumed that smart people had poor eyesight simply because they spent so much time reading, which strained the eyes. It turns out that the condition may be inherently linked to the brain, physically. The brain and eyes are thought to share a common genetic base responsible for their growth, and are actually physically connected via the large optic nerves. If someone were to open your skull and pull out your brain, your eyes would still be attached to it. Perhaps the same anomaly that causes a brain to grow larger causes the eyes to go the opposite direction and not grow large enough. Shortsighted people of the world, rejoice! link

Eye Enhancement Surgery

The human eye comes in many different colors, depending on genetics and ethnic affiliation. Regardless of how beautiful a person’s peepers are, there are always people who simply aren’t happy with their natural color. For some reason, blue seems to be the most desirable eye color, possibly because blue eyes are one of the rarest colors. If you spend your time wishing your baby brows were actually baby blues, you are in luck. A California medical company has developed a procedure using a laser that can break up the brown pigment in the eye, revealing the blue color underneath, that all people are said to possess. After the 20 second procedure, it takes about two weeks for the blue color to shine through. Like any vanity surgery, the procedure isn’t cheap at between $5,000 and $7,000, but can you really put a price on the dream of blue eyes? link

The Anti-love Pill

Anyone who has ever been madly in love, especially if that love isn’t returned, knows exactly what a painful condition this can be. At best it can leave you feeling frustrated and anxious, and in worst cases can cause severe depression and lead to numerous health problems. Health science researchers studying the brain to determine what exactly causes us to love have found it linked to several chemicals. Once the chemicals were identified, it was a relatively easy thing to figure out either how to increase the chemicals, or how to counteract them. They identified the two chemical culprits as dopamine, the same chemical that gives us pleasure, and arginine vasotocin. Scientists believe that supplementing with these chemicals could counteract the feelings associated with love. Who knows? Soon, instead of moping around depressed when a relationship fails, we’ll simply head to the medicine cabinet for a pill. link

Fat Makes You Happy

I’m not talking about the succulent fat dripping from that rack of delicious baby back ribs you’re about to dive into, I’m talking about the stuff we all try so hard to get rid of and keep in check. Research has finally concluded that heavy people truly are jollier. Research has shown that people with higher body mass indexes, or the ratio of fat to lean tissue, are several times less likely to suffer from depression. Research is still ongoing to determine the exact cause, but at least in women, it’s believed to be linked to higher estrogen production, which decreases in lean women. Now we have one more reason not to stress so much about a few extra pounds here and there. link

Insane Asylum Frequent Fliers

There are few non-life-threatening conditions that are as unpleasant as a bad case of jet lag, but it may be more serious than once believed. As research into the many functions of melatonin continues, new information suggests that jetlag’s effects on melatonin can trigger a recurrence of previous or underlying mental disorders. The melatonin drop caused by jetlag’s effect on sleep can trigger bouts of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and manic depression. Research is now focused on other possible negative effects of melatonin reduction. The next time your fellow airline passenger is acting a little, crazy, he just might be. link

Coffee Gives You Special Powers

For years we have known that the caffeine in a cup of coffee is an excellent brain stimulant. It can provide energy to tired bodies and brains and it can make rested brains function better. Coffee may be so effective in stimulating the brain that it can actually make you see things others can’t. Research has shown that large amounts of caffeine can cause hallucinations. The suggested cause is the rise in cortisol, the stress hormone, that consuming caffeine can cause. If this turns out to be true, the next time you’re on a caffeine buzz feeling superior to your myopic peers, consider for a moment that many of your fellow geniuses may only exist in your overcharged brain. link

Roller Coaster Therapy

If you had a choice between taking pills, complex medical procedures and visits to the doctor, and an afternoon at an amusement park, which one would you choose? If mental health science research into the benefits of roller coasters continues heading in its current direction, your insurance provider may soon pay for your Disneyland tickets. So far, roller coaster health research is targeted at two conditions, asthma and bipolar disorder. In the case of asthma, the positive effects seem to come from the change in breathing pattern you experience when you’re on a challenging coaster. You inhale deeply, hold it and then let it out forcefully as you plunge. This turns out to be just the exercise asthmatic lugs need. In the case of bipolar disorder, the jury is still out, but the evidence suggests that the rapid changes back and forth between feelings of adrenaline fueled terror and dopamine fueled euphoria can regulate the chemical process in bipolar brains. A monthly trip to Six Flags might be what the doctor orders one of these days, and make paying those insurance premiums less painful. link

That’s Best Friend, Not Breast Friend

In the ongoing battle against breast cancer, a new enemy has been identified and it’s not who or what you might think. When you think of any kind of cancer, things like chemicals, unhealthy food, radiation and other similar factors usually get the well-deserved blame. What doesn’t get the blame are our furry canine friends, until now. Cancer researchers have poured over decades of data and determined that having regular contact with a dog is one thing that the majority of breast cancer patients have in common. Dogs tend to suffer breast cancer at a high rate, and now the theory is the dog can transmit whatever is causing this to humans. To add evidence to the claim, researchers cite the increased rate of breast cancer in Asian women, who don’t generally maintain dogs as pets, when they move to western countries. This is certainly not good news for dogs or women who adore them, but it may bring us one step closer to preventing the disease once and for all.

A Gut Feeling in the Heart

Regardless of how you feel about intuition, gut feelings or whatever you want to call it when you can feel something but have no idea why, when it comes to your health you should pay attention. Humans may not be able to predict the outcome of sporting events or make predictions about love, but it turns out we’re pretty good at determining when we’re sick. Research in the health science field shows that people can very frequently accurately predict that something is amiss even before symptoms occur. This tends to be especially true with heart related conditions such as heart attacks and other conditions related to the heart such as some tumors. The current theory is that the heart is able to send signals to the brain via neurotransmitters. Our modern analytical brains have lost the ability to directly interpret them, but we still get a certain feeling we can’t account for. The next time you have a feeling that something is wrong but you don’t know why, perhaps a trip to the doctor for a checkup is not such a bad idea.link

Another 11 Crazy Facts About Everything

Did you know there are more possible moves in a game of chess, than grains of sand in the world or removing scotch tape emits X-rays. 11 Crazy Facts You Probably Don’t Know.

In Strasbourg, about 400 people danced so hard that they died from it.

The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, some of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.link

Gorgias of Epirus was born during his mother’s funeral

Gorgias of Epirus (3rd century BC), a Greek sophist, was born in his dead mother’s coffin! Pallbearers heard him crying out as they carried his mother’s coffin to the grave. link

A can of Diet Coke floats, while a can of regular Coke sinks.

Many science teachers perform a demonstration in which they immerse sealed cans of Coke and Diet Coke in a tank of water. The can of Coke immediately sinks, while the can of Diet Coke floats.
Both the Diet Coke and Coke cans contain 12 fluid oz of liquid. Both beverages consist primarily of water. The primary difference lies in the sweetener. In regular coke, more sugar is used as a sweetener also makes it more dense than water and the more dense the substance, it is the more likely to sink.link

NASA put a man on the moon with less computer memory than you use when taking a picture on your iPhone

The statement is true – however it needs qualification. The programs used for Apollo mission navigation were “machine code” a very efficient form of computer programming that requires a
lot less memory space to run. The presentation to the astronauts was also straight “text only”, no graphics. The graphical elements on modern systems are the biggest user of computer space.

Removing Scotch Tape emits X-rays

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

“We were very surprised,” said Juan Escobar. “The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous.” “If you’re going to peel tape in a vacuum, you should be extra careful,” he said. But “I will continue to use Scotch tape during my daily life, and I think it’s safe to do it in your office. No guarantees.” link

Saddam Hussein wrote romance novels

Saddam Hussein, the late President of Iraq, wrote four novels, and a number of poems. All of his works were published under the pen-name ‘the author’. link

Bruce Lee was so fast that they had to slow the film down so you could see his moves

Technology of cameras wasn’t as good as today with high definition and high speed cameras. When you watch his movies look at how perfect his form is and you can tell he is really pulling his punches by lowering his speed.

There are more possible moves in a game of chess, than grains of sand in the world

There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. It goes on, by 40 moves each we won’t be surprised if there were more than the atoms in 20 universes.

If a man with normal vision and a color-blind woman have children, the daughters will have normal vision and the sons will be color-blind.

Red-green color blindness appears to be the most common form of color blindness among people. This is a genetically passed mutation that is generally linked to sex, as it affects men more often than women. The reason why men are more prone to this type of color blindness is because it is transmitted via the X chromosome. link

A monk lived for 39 years on a small platform on top of a pillar

Saint Simeon Stylites or Symeon the Stylite was a Christian ascetic saint who achieved fame because he lived for 39 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in Syria.

In order to get away from the ever increasing number of people who frequently came to him for prayers and advice, leaving him little if any time for his private austerities, Simeon discovered a pillar which had survived amongst ruins, formed a small platform at the top, and upon this determined to live out his life. It has been stated that, as he seemed to be unable to avoid escaping the world horizontally, he may have thought it an attempt to try to escape it vertically. For sustenance small boys from the village would climb up the pillar and pass him small parcels of flat bread and goats’ milk.link

The world’s oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in Sweden.

The world’s oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden. The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.

In the Swedish mountains, from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, scientists have found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old. link

29 Crazy Facts About Everything

Here you will learn about 29 Crazy Facts about everything, that you probably didn’t know.

The first of these 29 crazy facts about everything, is that many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled “Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”…and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

A crazy fact that you probably didn’t know is that Fred and Wilma Flintstone were the first couple that was shown on prime time TV in bed together.

A crazy fact that you might not know, is that more money for Monopoly is printed every day, than it is printed for the US Treasury.

You probably didn’t know that women can hear better than men, but men can read smaller print than women.

Did you know that the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th was signed by two people only? John Hancock, and Charles Thomson. The others signed it on August 2^nd, but it wasn’t until 5 years later that the last signature was added!

Alaska is the state with the highest percentage of people who go to work by foot.

Africa’s wilderness percentage is 28%; whereas, –get this- the percentage of wilderness in North America is of 38%.

Raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven costs $ 16,400. This surely is a crazy fact!

Q. Half of all Americans live a 50-mile distance from where?
A. Their birthplace!

Q. Most boats are named by their owners. So, what is the most requested and popular boat’s name?
A. Obsession

 

 

Can you believe that the only mobile National Monuments are the San Francisco Cable Cars? Well, they are!

In the 1400′s a law stated that men were not allowed to beat their wives with a stick no thicker than their thumbs; hence, “the rule of thumb” was born.

 

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Originally, Coca-Cola was green.

Do you know what 61,000 is? The average number of people that airborne over the US at any given hour!

More zinc and copper are found in the hair of intelligent people.

Tom Sawyer was the first novel ever written on a typewriter.

Here’s a crazy fact that you may not know… yet! In a deck of playing cards, each king represents a great king in history:
The King of Clubs -Alexander, the Great
The King of Hearts – Charlemagne
The King of Spades – King David
The King of Diamonds – Julius Caesar

If you see a statue of a person on a horse and both of the horse’s front legs are in the air, it means that the person died in battle. If one of the horse’s front legs is in the air, that person died as a consequence of battle wounds. And if you see the horse’s four legs on the ground, it means the person died of natural causes.

Ropes on bed frames secured mattresses in Shakespeare’s time. When the ropes were pulled, the bed was firmer to sleep on because the mattress would tighten; thus, the “good night, sleep tight” phrase was born.

In Babylon, 4,000 years ago after a wedding, it was a common practice for the bride’s father to give his son-in-law all the mead that he could drink for a month. And since their calendar was lunar based, and mead is a honey beer, they used to call this period “the honey month”, which is now known as the “honeymoon”.

The phrase “mind your P’s and Q’s” was originated in old England, at the English pubs. Ale was usually ordered by pints and quarts… So when the customers got restless, the bartender would yell at them “Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.”

More Crazy Facts

Many years ago, pub frequenters in England had a whistle baked into their ceramic cups’ handle or rim, so whenever they wanted a refill, they would use their whistle to get some service. This common practice was the inspiration for the phrase “Wet your whistle”.

Q. How far would you have to go until you find the letter “A”, if you were to spell out numbers?
A. One thousand! (We bet this is one of the crazy facts that you might have never even wondered about, right? It’s good to know it now!)

Q. What do the fire escapes, windshield wipers, bullet-proof vests, and laser printers have in common?
A. They were all invented by women.

Q. Do you know what is the only food that doesn’t spoil?
A. Honey

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the human mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a word are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh?

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Elbows are impossible to lick

And the last of these crazy facts is that… At least 75% of people who read this, will try to lick their elbows!