Fun Facts - February 2009

The Astounding Cellular Makeup of the Human Body!!!

The human body is complex structure of cells, so many cells in fact that it would be impossible to count them all. Scientists estimate that there are around 75 trillion cells in the human body with an additional 750 trillion bacteria cells living in the human gut.

10% of your bodyweight consists of bacteria.

If you laid out all of your blood vessels from end to end, it would create a line that stretches out to 161,000 km (100,000 miles), or the distance around the equator 4 times.

The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.

7-8% of your bodyweight is made up of blood, in the average human it is estimated to be about 5 litres.

The blood of an adult contains approximately 25 trillion cells.

A single drop of blood contains more than a staggering 250 million cells!

Only 40-50% of blood is composed of red blood cells.

Red blood cells have a limited life of approximately 120 days in which they will travel 480 km (300 miles) around your body.

It takes just 60 seconds for a blood cell to complete a whole circuit of the human body.[/COLO[COLOR=Purple]R]

It also means that every second 3 million blood cells die while simultaneously 3 million more are created.