10 Fascinatingly Gross Secrets About Your Body

The human body is an amazing biological machine that’s capable of the most remarkable abilities, including abstract thought and creating profound art. It’s also capable of some pretty gross things, like excreting cholesterol through the skin or producing a literal pitcher of flatulence on a daily basis.

The following facts highlight some of our amazing machinery’s less savory features and abilities. Because sure, your body’s a temple, but it’s a gross one with various sorts of things growing on it and in it.

Related: 10 Animals Who Amputate Parts of Their Body

10 How Much It’s Okay to Fart

Flatus, the sophisticated person’s way of saying “fart,” is a perfectly natural thing that we all do. Some of us more than others, as many can attest. But how much is too much? When should frequent flatus be a cause for concern? Can somebody fart not enough?

Apparently, the average amount of flatus appears to be about 15 per day. Some people with stingy bowels may only flatulate a few times daily, while others expel gas up to 40 times per 24 hours.

It turns out that the human intestinal tract can produce up to 2,000 milliliters of gas per day, which is almost 68 U.S. fluid ounces, according to Google conversions, or about four pints. Now there’s a fun fact for your next family dinner or sports-bar lunch outing.^[1]

9 “Poo-Phoria” Is Real and Controlled by Your Body’s Most Important Nerve

The body is full of innervation, and the vagus nerve is one of the nervous system’s biggest stars, a “superhighway” of electricity. It carries electrical signals between the brain and some important organs, including the heart and throughout the digestive system.

Being involved in digestion, it’s also involved in the final act of digestion: pooping. In fact, this long-running nerve, which extends from the cranium to the colon, is responsible for “poo-phoria,” the exultant feeling of a bowel movement.

A big enough movement stimulates the vagus nerve to trigger a relaxation response that drops your heart rate and blood pressure, producing that euphoric feeling on the toilet bowl.

At the extreme end of the scale, an overstimulated vagus nerve can drop your vitals enough to cause defecation syncope, causing you to lose consciousness while pooping too hard.^[2]

8 Why Do Some People Produce More Belly Button Lint

An atomic chemist from the Vienna University of Technology, Georg Steinhauser, has illuminated the enigmatic physical mechanics behind a mundane mystery: why do some people produce more belly button lint than others? The results of a multi-year investigation, published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, are based on study of Steinhauser’s own lint. As well as questions asked of his colleagues, who possibly now avoid him at the university water cooler.

The culprit is body hair. The microscopic consistency of hair is great for grabbing clothing fibers—its scaly structure acts like a bunch of hooks. Hair also directs these fibers toward the navel, where they collect and mix with things like dust and biological secretions such as sweat and dead skin cells. Want less lint? Shave your belly. How fascinatingly gross.^[3]

7 All Our Organs Are Studded with Little Pieces of Plastic

You probably knew your body had some plastics in it, but newly released research paints a gross and gruesome quantitative picture.

Scientists studying post-mortem tissues from the period between 1997 and 2024 found a worrying uptick in microplastic and nanoplastic contamination. Even compared to 2016, microplastic levels have risen dramatically. Especially in the brain, which you may recall as a somewhat vital organ.

In terms of microgram (one millionth of a gram) of plastic per gram of tissue, microplastic levels in the brain have risen by almost 50% in just the past eight years. Your other body parts shouldn’t feel left out because plastic particles, just fractions of an inch, are also found in the kidneys, liver, blood, semen, bone marrow, breast milk, and placenta.

There’s no way to avoid contamination, as “shards and flakes” of these foreign particles enter your body when you eat, drink, and breathe. The most common type of microplastic was polyethylene, which makes sense given that it’s used in food industry packaging and plastic bags. The overall effect on your health isn’t clear, but it’s unlikely to imbue us with superpowers.^[4]

6 Cholesterol Can Ooze Through Your Skin

When articles begin with the phrase “Florida man,” they usually involve drugs, alligators, or both those things and a Chevy. But a real recent news story bucks the trend. It describes a man whose extreme carnivorous diet has left him oozing cholesterol from his skin.

Sounds fake, for sure, but it’s actually a legitimate medical thing called xanthelasma. According to the medical journal that covered it, the man said he eats 6 to 9 pounds of meat, butter, and cheese per day in an attempt to manage his weight. That sounds like a lot, but remember, it’s self-reported.

Now, he has cholesterol coming out of his skin. When he reported to the hospital he had “smooth yellowish nodules on his palms, elbows and the soles of his feet,” and his cholesterol was 5-times higher than average. If anything, this is a great reminder to eat a balanced diet.^[5]

5 We Share Common Germs with the World’s Stinkiest Cheese

Limburger cheese is one of the world’s smelliest foods that people (say they) enjoy. It originated in Belgium and was made by Trappist monks, the guys who also make those strong beers, possibly to get drunk enough to eat the cheese.

Limburger is famously gross, so much so that it’s been derided in movies and literature, including by famed steamboat operator Mark Twain. The cheese is not made in many places in the U.S., though they do love it in Monroe, Wisconsin. How stinky is Limburger? As stinky as human feet, according to a prized study: malaria mosquitos were equally attracted to the cheese as to actual feet. That study won an Ig Nobel, the funny version of the Nobel prize.

P.S. It’s because the cheese is cultured with Brevibacterium epidermidis, also found on human skin.^[6]

4 Your Pee Can Be a Valuable Fertilizer

There’s a hidden source for an environmentally friendly fertilizer: you. More specifically, human urine, also known as “yellow water.”

The world needs more and more nitrogen for fertilizer, to the tune of an extra 1.074 million tons each year. Yet producing fertilizer requires “significant energy consumption” and releases lots of carbon dioxide. However, fertilizer for urban agriculture can be sourced via nutrient recovery of human urine. We all produce this yellow water, and it’s full of nutrients that plants love, especially nitrogen.

Therefore, pee is stored and run through a reactor. The reactor neutralizes its acidity and uses microorganisms to turn urine’s eponymous urea into plant-friendly nitrate. This now-valuable resource is used to grow tomatoes. Pee-tomatoes may not sound appetizing, but that’s the future for you. Also, after treatment, it’s no longer pee, so that’s fine!^[7]

3 A Good Poo Can Tip the Bacterial Balance

“What is a human?” can be defined in numerous ways, but let’s talk cellular. You’ve heard that most of your body is made up of other cells (like bacteria) and that these cells outnumber “your own” cells by a certain amount—generally a big one, like 10:1 in favor of “not you” cells. This is apparently a myth. The real ratio, researchers calculate, much closer to 50-50.

For instance, a “reference man” may contain “on average about 30 trillion human cells and 38 trillion bacteria.” But this number is in constant flux, with some people boasting twice (or half as many) bacterial cells. Amusingly, the authors conclude that this ratio may be so close for some people that even a good bowel movement can tip the balance one way or another.^[8]

2 You’re Full of Nasty “Biofilms” That Also Grow on Rocks and Sewers

One of your body’s biggest enemies is itself. Or, rather, the bacterial communities within (and without) it. Among the grossest and most harmful things these bacteria do is create biofilms, a sticky microbial coating, like the plaque you hopefully brush off your teeth, or that green slick slime on rocks.

These biofilms are especially detrimental in medical settings, where they engulf catheters and other implants. Their takeover starts with their fimbriae, hair-like structures that bacteria use to stick to surfaces, kind of like velcro hooks—hence the stickiness of biofilms.

They then ooze a protective substance that “shields them from antibiotics and cleaning agents.” Uh oh. Fortunately, scientists are finding natural agents that can prevent fimbriae formation and prevent biofilms from forming—whether they’re the type of microbes that grow on your teeth, a rock, or a sewer pipe.^[9]

1 Wood-Chewers Get Brain Benefits

You know how gross it is when people chew on popsicle sticks or toothpicks, creating a pulpy mess studded with bits of partially chewed food and dripping with saliva that strings from their mouth? Science says that this is good for the brain.

Chewing on a wooden stick is beneficial for brain health, apparently, according to a new South Korean study, which found that wood-chewing caused the release of glutathione in the brain. This is good, because glutathione is an antioxidant that protects brain cells from that type of oxidative damage associated with neurodegenerative disorders.

To ascertain the benefits of wood-chewing, 52 university students were put in two experimental groups. One group chewed a wooden stick similar to a tongue depressor or a popsicle stick. The other group chewed basic paraffin wax gum. They underwent a non-invasive brain scan before and after their chewing sessions.

Interestingly, the gum group did not benefit from glutathione release. Researchers say that the hardness of the material is key, as the physical act of vigorous chewing is necessary for chewing-based brain benefits. With summer coming up, you now have an even better reason to visit the popsicle section of your grocery store.^[10]