Fun Human Body Facts
Urinating in a pool is dangerous for your heart. Though definitely unsanitary, peeing in a pool might seem harmless for your health. After all, urine is sterile, as is chlorine. As it turns out though, urine and chlorine create dangerous chemicals when combined. In fact, that so-called “pool smell” is actually the scent of those chemicals. One of those chemicals—cyanogen chloride—is classified as a chemical warfare agent and can damage your heart and lungs. Other byproducts, called nitrosamines, can even cause cancer.
You typically only breathe through one nostril at a time. You might think that your nostrils share the workload when it comes to inhaling and exhaling. And while they do, it’s not quite in the way that you might expect. You actually inhale and exhale through one nostril at a time. Every few hours, the active nostril will take a break and the other one will take over until they ultimately switch back again. Put your finger under your nose and try it. Prepare to be amazed!
Anxiety can make bad smells even worse. Speaking of your nose, a 2013 study published in The Journal of Neuroscience examined the way certain emotions affect your sense of smell. After exposing subjects to anxiety-inducing images like car accidents and war, researchers found that neutral scents became unpleasant and bad smells became even worse.
Men are more forgetful than women. Numerous studies dedicated to comparing the memory abilities of men and women consistently prove that men are more forgetful than women. One 2015 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology hypothesizes that this could be due to the varying brain structures of men and women—specifically, that the hippocampus (the part of the brain associated with memory) begins to decrease in volume faster in men than in women.
Your pupils can hint at your Alzheimer’s risk. Of course, the telltale sign of Alzheimer’s disease is memory loss, but dementia also manifests itself in your eyes. In a 2019 study published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, researchers noted that the disease affects the locus coeruleus, a cluster of neurons in the brainstem responsible for pupillary responses, among other things. As a result, individuals with cognitive impairment who are at risk of developing Alzheimer’s have greater pupil dilation while performing cognitive tasks.