6 Myths Debunked About The Human Body | Tongue | Lose body heat through the head | latest information

6 Myths Debunked About The Human Body | Tongue | Lose body heat through the head |latest information

The human body is a marvel of natural evolution with an array of amazing and disgusting abilities like did you know that humans are the only animals to have chins or that on average you will pass enough wind in a day to inflate a party balloon however despite being around for nearly two hundred thousand years 

And being the most intelligent species on the planet there are plenty of misconceptions about our own bodies here we'll look at how unique your fingerprints aren't how useful your appendix really is and how your body isn't very human at all plus a few more mind-blowing misconceptions.

this is the bunked when we sort the truths from the myths and the facts from the misconception.

Tongue:

Tongue taste map many of us will be familiar with this tongue taste map and some of us might have even been taught it at school it dates all the way back to Germany in 1901 when a study was published showing different areas of the tongue to be more sensitive to taste than others since then this research has been misinterpreted mistranslated and has evolved into the Illustrated map you see right here.

Different sections of the tongue dedicated to sweet sour salty and bitter tastes aside from the fact that the original map missed out the fifth distinct taste umami the truth of the matter is that your tongue doesn't determine the taste at all it's actually your brain that ascertains it your tongue has up to 10,000 taste buds spread across it and each of these have 100 taste receptor cells and these respond to different substances in your food up until recently it was believed that these taste cells would detect one of the five basic flavors and then send a signal to our brain that tells us what we've tasted a study in 2015 led by Charles uka at Columbia University.

Turns this idea on its head tastes the way you and I think of it is ultimately in the brain in the last decade dr. Zuka has proved that the tongue has dedicated receptors for each taste and that each class of the receptor sends a specific signal to the rain. In fact studies have now shown that the brain can detect tastes like carbon dioxide, the distinct taste you get from carbonated water.

But Zuko's more recent experiment proved that each individual taste is sensed by a unique set of brain cells that are located in the brain's cortex which interestingly generates a map of taste qualities in the brain 

So we've gone full circle with the taste map. It's just now in the brain in the study looks team manipulated specific brain neurons in mice causing them to taste sweet when they were actually tasting something bitter and vice versa they could even activate the neurons to taste either sweet or bitter.

when they were simply drinking water dedicated taste receptors in the tongue detect sweet or bitter and so on but it's the brain that affords meaning to these chemicals in other words taste is awarded the brain 

Lose body heat through the head:

you'll get told it a hundred times as a kid and you'll still get told it as an adult and it was even stated as fact in u.s. military Field Manual claiming 40% to 45% of body heat is lost through the head so surely it must hold some weight right well I'm afraid not the idea that we lose more heat from our head than anywhere else is simply not true the human head is no more efficient at losing heat than any other part of the body a 2006 study by the University of Manitoba conducted tests by dunking test subjects into cold water with their heads submerged and with their head above water the study found that we only lose around seven to ten percent of our body heat through our heads to us it may feel like our head is colder as there are five times as many nerves in your head than any other part of your body making your face from more sensitive to the cold but the fact is if you exposed your arms to the cold.

Then you will lose more heat from them as they have a larger surface area from which to lose according to dr. Daniel Sisler the myth originated from a military experiment carried out in the 1950s where test subjects were dressed in Arctic survival suits and exposed to low temperatures the resulting heat loss was then measured but rather unfairly their heads were uncovered,

So naturally, this is where they lost most of their heat subsequently the military Field Manual at the time stated that we lose forty to forty-five percent of our body heat through our head despite this seven to ten percent is still a high enough amount of heat that you don't want to lose in cold weather so it's still worth popping your hat on in the winter.

No two people have the same fingerprint :

now before no two people have identical fingerprints we leave fingerprints behind on pretty much every surface we touch why because the patterns on the end of your fingers called friction ridges are connected to sweat glands which secrete wet to the skin surface then when you touch something a pattern of sweat matching your fingerprint is left behind simple the patterns themselves.

However, are far more complicated you see fingerprints shape into three main patterns whorls loops, and arches with it possible to have all three types across all ten of your digits feel free to take a look at your own to imagine that's what you're doing anyway the ridge paths brakes and forks that you might see there make up these patterns in countless combinations hence the concept that no two people have the same fingerprints, in fact, they've been used to identify individuals and solve crimes.

since the late 1800s and as you well know they now unlock your phone online accounts and personal details but are they completely unique or could you end up being the suspect for a crime you didn't commit Simon Cole a professor of criminology at law and society at UCI has identified 22 people who were wrongly convicted in u.s. 

because of their fingerprints since 1920, this wasn't however because there were 22 pairs of people with identical fingerprints rather than the print analysis was mistaken you see for a fingerprint to match they don't need to be identical but instead need to have a certain number of points of similarity and in the US the number of required reference points varies dramatically between states and examiner's with the average of being 12, in fact, one judge in California through fingerprint evidence out of court.

when they learned that there wasn't a standard number of points to prove a match I don't think I'm ever going to use fingerprint testimony again Coll points out that his findings are only the tip of the iceberg and that when evidence from qualified fingerprint examiners are brought into the mix it's estimated that the average rate of mismatch is naught point eight percent.

so in the sense of fingerprint impressions is quite possible for your fingerprint to match with someone else's but what about having a physically identical match with indistinguishable patterns how about identical twins surely the clue is in the name well despite inheriting similar size and shape patterns on their fingerprints the identifying characteristics are still different in fact everyone's fingerprints are completed a whole three months before they're even born and incredibly as your entire body grows changes and pages these patterns on your fingertips and thumbs remain the same they essentially just scale up with old age the ridges can become less prominent as your skin loses elasticity,

 but nonetheless the actual patterns remain the same there are of course things like scars or burns that can alter your fingerprints but even then it can be quite hard to make a permanent change notorious gangster John Dillinger attempted to destroy his fingerprints with fire and acid only to have them grow back mostly the same,

but for some people this wouldn't be the case because if you were born with a condition known as a dermatology er you wouldn't have fingerprints to lose in the first place this rare genetic disorder means that your fingerprints palms toes and soles are entirely smooth but for most as individual as these identifying ridges seem to be it has never been proven that they are entirely unique to each person and it's almost impossible to prove either way without having cataloged the fingerprints of every person that ever lived as forensic scientist Mike Silverman puts it essentially you can't prove that no two fingerprints are the same it's improbable,

but so is winning the lottery and people do that every week it was originally estimated the odds of a match where one in 64 billion those may sound like some pretty low odds but considering there are over 100 billion people who have ever lived on earth most of them with ten fingerprints each that's around a trillion combinations across human history meaning at least one pair of those is likely to match but to counter those odds again mathematicians now suggests that when you include details that aren't even visible to the human eye the number of individual fingerprint configurations would be pretty much countless.

The appendix is useless:

Your appendix is useless long believed to be an utterly useless ticking time bomb up waiting to kill you it has now been discovered that the appendix has a reason to exist after all it has long been established the appendix is full of immune system tissues but it has not been known what the tissues are for now a series of observations and experiments co-authored between several educational and research bodies has suggested that they are there to protect good bacteria and provide what is termed a safe house for these beneficial bugs a system,

professor William Parker explains how the appendix comes into its own after a nasty bout of illness once the bowel contents have left the body the good bacteria hidden away in the appendix can emerge and repopulate the lining of the intestine before more harmful bacteria can take up residence.

The color of your pee indicates your hydration:

The color of your pee indicates your hydration it's likely that you've been told that the darker your urine is the more dehydrated you are and the lighter and clearer it is the more hydrated you are athletes are even specifically advised to observe urine output over the course of a day and noticed changes in your floo and color output volume and frequency should be consistent and the color should be getting lighter towards the end of the day aiming for the last outputs of the day being close to clear so what's the science behind this theory,

well when you're dehydrated a hormone is released that increases the amount of water your kidneys absorb

6 Myths Debunked About The Human Body | Tongue | Lose body heat through the head

this then lowers the volume of urine when you pay and concentrates the substances left behind making your pee appear darker in color after this less water then needs to be absorbed so your urine increases in volume and appears to be paler and clearer,

however researchers at Oxford discovered that the science behind this guidance isn't quite so clear they looked at eight studies and found that the results were very divided with none of them advocating the use of urine color as an accurate measure of hydration there were three studies that suggested it could be used as a tool to roughly estimate hydration status but these also found the problem that some foods vitamins medication and dietary supplements can alter the color of your pee,

these results have raised concerns the attempts to achieve the pale clearer color could instead lead to overhydration and hyponatremia essentially the dilution of your body salts which in extreme cases can be life-threatening.

Your body is 100% human:

Your body is 100% human I would expect most reactions to this to be along the lines of get out of here what nonsense are you talking if I'm not human what am I now this might make you feel a bit weird eg maybe but the fact is every inch of your body is inhabited by little creatures as professor Rob Knight puts it you're more microbe than you are human because incredibly it's estimated that only 43% of the body cell count is human the rest is our microbiome made up of organisms like bacteria viruses fungi and archaea microbiologist Professor Sarkis mazmanian takes this figure even further and suggests that genetically were outnumbered up to one thousand to one we don't have just one genome the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augments the activity of our own your first thoughts may be to grab a scrubbing brush and make a dash for the shower,

but hold up because you really don't want to lose these little guys besides a shell wouldn't do a great deal because most of them exist inside you in your guts what makes us human is in my opinion the combination of our own DNA plus the DNA of our gut microbes although it was originally thought that the microbiome job was pretty simple protecting our gut from invaders synthesizing a few bitumen's and gobbling up the fiber that our bodies can't digest it's now understood what your microbiome regulates your entire immune system it could influence your mood and it can even affect your weight as dr. Michael Mosley puts it the microbes can decide.

how much energy your body extracts from the food you eat and much more can your

microbiome make you fat it certainly can understanding the incredible world of our microbiome is a relatively recent process but it is hoped that microbial medicine known as bugs as drugs will become common practice where you can essentially a microbiome transplant by taking good bacteria from a lean healthy person and inserting them into an obese person with either bad or missing bacteria and making them lose weight stay tuned for a bonus myth about the Wiggly things on the side of your head.