10835. Body Facts

For a work entitled Self, created in 1991, English sculptor Marc Quinn made a copy of his head, moulded from his own deep-frozen blood. Quinn collected almost 4 litres (8 pints) of his blood over five months, poured it into a mould of his head and froze it.

10836. Body Facts

When a wound gets infected, it oozes yellow pus. Pus is a mixture of dead blood cells, bacteria and other dead cells from your body.

10837. Body Facts

In some parts of Africa and on some Pacific islands, people make patterns of raised scars on their skin as a decoration or to show their bravery. The wounds are made with sharp spikes or thorns from plants and often rubbed with special kinds of earth or leaves to created coloured tattoos.

10838. Body Facts

Pilgrims to the Tirupati temple in India give some of their hair as a sacrifice.The temple employs 600 barbers who work day and night to shave pilgrims, taking 6.5 million gifts of hair a year.The hair is sold to wig-makers and for use as fertilizer.

10839. Body Facts

About 70 millilitres (around 2.5 fluid ounces) of blood are spurted out of your heart with each beat.

10840. Body Facts

The wucheria worm can live in the lymph system and grow up to 12 centimetres (5 inches) long.

10841. Body Facts

In some countries, the umbilical cord – the cord that attaches the unborn baby to its mother – is dried and kept after birth, to use in spells or medicines.

10842. Body Facts

About a third of your faeces is not old food, but bacteria that help you to digest food, and bits of the lining of the inside of your gut.

10843. Body Facts

People who lose an arm or leg in an accident or operation can often still feel it hurting, aching or itching but can do nothing to make it feel better.

10844. Body Facts

Dust mites are found in all houses. They eat the dead skin we shed all the time, and live in beds, carpets, rugs and anywhere else snug which collects flakes of skin.

10845. Body Facts

An amoeba common in warm water can travel up your nose while you are swimming and live in your brain, where it multiplies rapidly and kills you in three to seven days.

10846. Body Facts

If you unravelled all the tiny tubes in your kidneys and laid them end to end, they would stretch 80 kilometres (50 miles).Yet they scrunch up to fit into kidneys only 10 centimetres (4 inches) long.

10847. Body Facts

You will produce 45,000 litres (around 95,000 pints) of urine in your life enough to fill a small swimming pool!

10848. Body Facts

The old Chinese medical technique of acupuncture involves sticking lots of very thin needles into a person's body.The theory is that putting the needles on ‘energy pathways' around the body relieves pain and cures illness.

10849. Body Facts

Head lice can change colour to merge in with the hair they are hiding in.

10850. Body Facts

Athlete's foot is a fungus that grows in the warm, sweaty spaces between your toes. It causes itching and split skin.

10851. Body Facts

Liposuction is a popular operation in Europe and the USA amongst people who feel they are too fat. A surgeon sticks a long, hollow needle into the fat part – such as the tummy or thighs – uses ultrasound to turn the fat to yellow mush, and then sucks it out through the needle.

10852. Body Facts

Urine is a good remedy for jellyfish stings, so if you're standing in the sea and get stung, just urinate down your legs.

10853. Body Facts

The medical name for ear wax is cerumen; it is produced by more than 4,000 glands in your ears.

10854. Body Facts

It's possible to get dandruff in your eyebrows as well as in the hair on top of your head.

Fact
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