18 Weird-Yet-Wonderful Things You Never Knew About Your Body

You may not realize it, but in a mere 24 hours, you...

Pound out a Rhythmic Symphony
Your heart thumps around 100,000 times, pumping approximately 2,000 gallons of blood.

Travel Astonishing Lengths
Your blood flows about 12,000 miles (roughly the distance from Paris to Auckland, New Zealand) through more than 60,000 miles of blood vessels.

Compose an Epic Tale
You speak an average of 16,000 words, about one-sixth the number in a typical novel.

Inspire and Respire
You can take between 17,280 and 23,040 breaths.

It is command central, sphere of your business—your personal control panel.

1. Experts believe that your brain holds as much data as sixteen 64-gigabyte iPhones (and possibly a lot more). That's more than 250,000 songs.

2. When you're faced with a life-threatening situation, your brain actually takes in more information. Research suggests that you retain so much detail about the event (and little else), you'll later recall it as having taken longer than it actually did, or in slow motion.

3. You can see with your ears. German scientists discovered that with practice, humans can learn echolocation, the process of finding objects in space by emitting sound waves and listening to the way they're reflected back.

4. According to a new study, your millions of olfactory cells perceive ten basic odors, including woody (e.g., fresh-cut grass), chemical (e.g., ammonia) and sickening (e.g., decay). Oh, what the nose knows....

It is the home base of instinct, the source of our courage and the storehouse of our deepest emotions.

1. Surprise! Your appendix likely does have a function: harboring good bacteria. Research suggests that the much-maligned organ serves as a sanctuary for immune-boosting intestinal flora.

2. Your stomach acid can dissolve metal. When researchers placed razor blades in simulated gastric juices and checked back 24 hours later, the blades were 37 percent lighter.

3. Yes, your stomach is growling—even when you're not hungry. The contractions of your intestinal and stomach muscles often make the sound, but anytime there's food in your gut, the noise is muffled.

4. Your small intestine has about the same surface area as a tennis court. Its lining has many folds and millions of tiny projections called villi, which together create around 2,700 square feet of space.

Biological workhorse, butt of many jokes—and self-sufficient wonder.

1. Menstrual blood may have medical applications. Research published in the Journal of Translational Medicine reports that stem cells taken from it could be used to improve cardiac function in heart failure patients.

2. Climax may help improve brain function. During orgasm, women can have increased activity in more than 30 areas of the brain.

3. Vaginal secretions and shark liver oil have something in common: squalene. The organic compound is used in cosmetics (it's a natural moisturizer), vaccines (it boosts immunity), and health supplements (it might ward off cancer).

4. Scientists are exploring whether drugs taken through the vagina (which are absorbed into the bloodstream) could work more efficiently than oral medications.

27 bones each, together accounting for more than a quarter of the bones in your entire body.

Number of miles you'll have traveled on your feet by the time you turn 50.