For starters, skin is responsible for protecting our inner organs and it also carries out a number of bodily functions that help us to maintain a healthy life. But that’s not all! There is much more to know about skin and this article on 50 interesting skin facts intends to provide you with some really fascinating information about this unique organ in our body.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 1-5
1. Skin is actually an organ. In fact, it is the largest organ in our body.
2. Just like every other organ in our body, the skin also has a set of very specialized functions that no other organ can perform.
3. The skin helps to regulate body temperature by detecting cold and hot.
4. It is reponsible for keeping our internal organs, muscles and bones protected from outside diseases and infections.
5. Our skin is blessed with the ability to renew itself. The entire skin is renewed in 28 days.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 6-10
6. In order to renew itself, the skin needs to shed dead cells. It does so at the rate of 30,000 to 40,000 dead cells per minute.
7. An average human sheds 9 pounds of dead skin cells in one year!
8. The skin of any average human has nearly 300 million cells. There are nearly 19 million cells per square inch of skin.
9. Every square inch of skin also holds up to 300 sweat glands.
10. An average adult human has about 21 square feet of skin. The entire skin weighs 9 lbs (pounds).
Interesting Skin Facts: 11-15
11. 11 miles of blood vessels run throughout the skin to provide oxygen and blood to the skin cells.
12. Dead skin cells from humans makes up 1 billion tons of total dust found in Earth’s atmosphere.
13. 15% of the total body weight comes from the skin.
14. There are 5 different types of receptors found in skin. These receptors are responsible for responding to touch and pain.
15. Of the total dust found in home, half is actually made of dead skin cells.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 16-20
16. Human skin is home to more than a 1000 species of bacteria.
17. When exposed to pressure or friction repeatedly, additional toughness and thickness can be formed by the skin. It is known as callus.
18. Changes in skin conditions can sometimes mean changes in health conditions as a whole and hence, any skin condition should be taken seriously.
19. Some nerves in human skin don’t connect directly with the brain. Instead, they connect with the muscles and send signals directly through the spinal cord. This allows quicker transmission of signals allowing us to respond more quickly to stimuli like pain, heat etc.
20. The thickest skin on human body is 1.4 mm in depth and is found in human feet. The thinnest is found on eyelids. Sink on eyelids is only 0.02mm deep.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 21-25
21. Severely damaged skin often attempts to heal all by itself by the formation of scar tissue. The scar tissue is way different from the normal skin in the sense that it will not have sweat glands and hair.
22. Babies take up to 6 months to develop permanent skin tone.
23. In hot weather conditions, sweat glands in skin can produce up to 3 gallons of sweat in a day.
24. Penis tip, eardrums, lips‘ margins and nail bed do not sweat.
25. A special type of sweat gland known as apocrine sweat gland can be found in anus, genitals and armpits. These glands produce a fatty secretion that causes body odor.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 26-30
26. It is not that the fatty secretion has a smell of its own. It is the bacteria present of skin that feeds on the fatty secretion and digests them. They byproduct left after digestion is what causes the odor.
27. Fingerprints (fine ridges seen on the skin of our fingers) may never develop in some people. This is actually a result of two rare types of genetic defects known as dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis and Naegeli Syndrome.
28. Fingerprints are responsible for helping with a better grip on objects. These fine ridges help to increase friction and thereby helping with better grip.
29. Touch receptors of skin (known as Meissner corpuscels) are very sensitive but they are most sensitive on tongue, lips, palms, fingertips, clitoris, penis and nipples. The touch receptors in these areas respond more quickly to slight pressure put by just 20 milligrams (a common housefly weighs 20 mg).
30. The visual cortex of brain in blind people is rewired in a way that it responds to sound and touch stimuli. Thus, blind people literally ‘see’ the world using hearing and touch.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 31-35
31. Per square inch of human skin contains 50 million bacteria. On oily surfaces like face, the number can ramp up to 500 million.
32. The scientific name of skin is Cutaneous Membrane.
33. Human skin has a pigment known as melanin. The more the melanin content, the darker is the skin. Lighter skin means melanin content is low.
34. Skin is made up of three different layers. The outermost layer is known as epidermis, the middle layer is known as dermis and the innermost layer is known as subcutis.
35. 4 acres of skin tissue can be grown in laboratory from 1 sq. inch of foreskin from a circumcised young boy.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 36-40
36. Melanin is produced and distributed by tentacle-shaped cells known as melanocytes.
37. The number of melanocytes is same for all humans but the amount of melanin produced by these cells differ.
38. Again, there are two different types of melanin – Eumelanin and Pheomelanin.
39. The Eumelanin is either black or dark brown in color and the Pheomelanin is either red or yellow in color.
40. Some people may not have melanocytes. This is a medical condition known as albinsim. Only 1 out of 110,000 people suffer from albinism.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 41-45
41. If there is over production of cells lining the sweat glands, it leads to acne formation.
42. One out of every hundred adult men suffer with acne compared to one out of every 20 in case of adult women.
43. Four out of every five teenagers suffer from some form of acne.
44. There are special glands in our ears that produce wax. These glands are actually specialize sweat glands.
45. Between our toes, there are around 14 different fungi species living on the skin.
Interesting Human Skin Facts: 46-50
46. The skin’s outer layer remains healthy and moist because of a special kind of natural fat known as lipid. Alcohols and detergent are known to destroy lipids.
47. Every hair we see on our skin has a small muscle attached to it. This muscle is known as pili. In case of stimuli such as heightened emotional state or cold, the pili helps the hair to rise and stand. Commonly we call it goose bump.
48. Every inch of skin has its own stretchiness and strength designed especially for its position. So, the skin that you see on your belly is very different in strength and elasticity compared to skin that you see on your knuckles.
49. Staphylococcal bacteria is responsible for producing skin boils. This bacteria enters skin through very tiny cuts and travels all the way down to hail follicles (the second layer of the skin) and results in boils.
50. Artificial skin has been produced by INTEGRA using silicon and bovine collagen. This artificial skin can be used for complete skin replacement
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