Here are some remarkable, educational, and attention-grabbing bits of medical and general factoid that could enrich your cerebral armamentarium:
• Arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) starts when a child is five or six years of age, and not after fifty.
• Cholesterol and saturated fats (from pork, beef, eggs and other dairy products) have killed more people around the world than all the battles and wars combined.
• Rice, almost like sugars and sweets, has a high glycemic index, which makes it unhealthy. Eating rice frequently increases the risk for the development of metabolic and cardiovascular illnesses down the line. Healthy lifestyle now includes super low carbohydrate and high protein (plus generous vegetables and nuts, virgin olive oil) diet.
• The female ovum (egg) is the largest cell in her body, about 175,000 times heavier than the male sperm cell.
• Our kidneys filter and clean blood about 300 times daily, producing urine that contains waste.
• Urine of healthy persons, who are not on medications, is an effective fertilizer for vegetable and fruit trees.
• Equal amounts of 3 percent peroxide and water are used to treat tree root rots.
• Mosquito repellents don’t repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.
• Contrary to popular belief, fish do drown.
• Dentists recommend that toothbrushes be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
• The juice inside young coconuts, and other natural fluids, are undergoing laboratory investigation as possible substitute for blood plasma.
• Donkeys are said to kill more people annually than plane crashes.
• Eating brown rice, instead of the white variety, can help prevent and control arthritis pains.
• A person has an average of 100,000 hair on the scalp.
• You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
• The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
• The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
• The plaques that causes blockage inside the arteries are as hard as teeth or bones.
• A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight.
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first class.
• Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
• Without the mucous membrane of the stomach, it would digest itself.
• Apples, which are healthier than caffeine, are most efficient at waking you up in the morning. Coffee is a healthy drink.
• Soft drinks, all variety of them, are toxic to the body. They all increase the risk for the development of Metabolic Syndrome.
• The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• Secondhand cigarette smokes contains 4,000 chemicals, 200 of them are known poisons like benzene, formaldehyde and carbon monoxide.
• All U.S. presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn’t like being seen wearing them in public.
• Walt Disney was said to be afraid of mice.
• Pearls melt in vinegar (acetic acid).
• The three most valuable brand names on earth are Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order — very sad, indeed.
• Pinot Noir red wine has the highest level of resveratrol, the cardio-protective antioxidant.
• Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first U.S. president whose name contains all the letters from the word “criminal.” The second was William Jefferson Clinton.
• Cardiac surgeons use surgical loop magnifying lenses to do coronary bypass surgery (joining two arteries with super fine sutures) on arteries as small as the size of round toothpicks.
• Turtles can breathe through their butts.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world’s nuclear weapons combined.
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
• In general, people seem to fear spiders more than they do death.
• Heart attack can cause sudden death in people without any obvious symptoms.
• Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
• A snail can sleep for three years.
• We have about 59,652 miles of blood vessels (arteries and veins) in the body.
• The heart beats an average rate of 103,860 per day for most people.
• It might seem the heart does not rest, but it does, during the split second between beats.
• The electric chair was said to be invented by a dentist. And the dental chair by an electrician? No way.
• In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes as part of their ritual.
• An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
• “Typewriter” is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
• “Go,” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
• Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
• One person in the United States dies of a heart attack every 60 seconds.
• In every 1000 babies born, one comes out with a tooth.
• In our lifetime, we each shed about 22 kilos (48.5 pounds) of skin.
• Hand shaking transfers germs to a greater extent than kissing does. Perhaps we should change the way we greet each other with the opposite sex.
Take good care of your body. It’s the only one you’ve got! Life is impossible without one.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus in Northwest Indiana and chairman of cardiac surgery from 1997 to 2010 at Cebu Doctors University Hospital, where he holds the title of Physician Emeritus in Surgery, is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Philippine College of Surgeons, and the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. He is the chairman of the Filipino United Network – USA, a 501(c)(3) humanitarian foundation in the United States. Email: [email protected]
