The human body’s a fascinating thing

The longest recorded tapeworm found in the human body was 33 meters (108.27 feet) in length (that’s 36 yards long for all of you mindless idiots who need a football reference to understand length).  The longest recorded life span of a tapeworm was 35 years.

The typical gut has 1.36 kilograms (3 pounds) of over 400 different strains of bacteria which aid in the digestion of food.  This bacteria is very harmful to the inside of the body.  If your body’s natural defenses fail, these germs would consume you from the inside out within about 48 hours.

What is one of the most difficult items for sewage works to handle?  It’s insoluble and is so fine it passes right through most filtration systems.  Every month water treatment companies all over the world remove more than a ton of it from their water treatment plants and take it to landfills to be buried.  You guessed it: pubic hair.

The best recorded distance for projectile vomiting is 8.23 meters (about 27 feet).

The germs present in human feces can pass through up to ten layers of toilet paper.

It is physically possible to cough your guts up.

A woman who safaried on her visit to South America began to experience severe pains in her left ear, accompanied by headaches, dizziness and constant rustling sounds.  She assumed it was tinnitus.  It became so serious that exploratory surgery was required.  Doctors found a spider which had become trapped in her ear and had eventually eaten through her eardrum and was living within the aural cavity.  The rustling sounds were from the spider crawling around inside her skull.  An egg sac was also removed.

Parasites count for 0.01% of your body weight.

Despite what your mother told you, if you swallow chewing gum it doesn’t stay in the intestines for seven years.  It normally passes through the system and is excreted without incident.  Several cases have been reported, however, where the gum has stuck in the rectum, causing the unfortunate sufferer to excrete long sticky trails of gum.

A man in Australia was concerned about a growing lump on his nose, was examining it in the mirror and saw a redback spider crawl out.  Doctors found an entire redback nest inside his nose.

A woman in Queensland who had lost a lot of weight went to the doctor with a big, hard, horn-like object protruding from her abdomen.  Closer examination determined that it was years of compacted belly-button fluff.

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