Your Health: Human body statistics

I recently had the pleasure of visiting my healthy 95-year-old aunt Grace, and then I thought about my 97-year-old neighbor Vic, and it made me realize just how amazing the human body is to keep functioning for so many years. I am awestruck by this body of ours that began with just two microscopic cells coming together and developing into a complex living organism made up of some 75 trillion cells, many of which have specialized to perform amazing functions, making us the incredible beings that we are.
I’d like to share with you some interesting statistics about the human body.
Let’s take an 84-year-old person, for example. This person:
– Has a heart that beats 100,000 times daily — 35 million beats a year and more than 3 billion beats in a lifetime.
– Has a heart that has pumped over 48 million gallons of blood in a lifetime, which is enough to fill more than 2,000 average-sized in-ground swimming pools.
– Has lungs that breathe 23,000 times daily, producing 2,600 gallons of air or almost 80 million gallons per year. That’s enough in a lifetime to fill about 160 full-sized hot-air balloons.
– Has two kidneys that produce 1½ quarts of urine a day, or more than 10,000 gallons per lifetime. Those same kidneys have processed a quart of blood per minute: 423 gallons per day, and 13 million gallons per lifetime.
– Has consumed and processed 3½ pounds of food a day, equating to more than 53 tons of food since birth.
– Has produced almost 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime.
Other interesting facts about our bodies
Our bodies are composed of 50 to 100 trillion cells, and 300 million cells die and are replaced every minute. Fifteen million blood cells die every second.
We have more than 650 muscles; the largest is the gluteus maximus (buttock), and the smallest, the stapedius in the middle ear.
We have 206 bones. The largest, at an average of 18 inches, is the femur (thigh bone), and the smallest, just one-tenth of an inch, is the stapes, again in the middle ear.
We have about 20 square feet of skin, with 35,000 dead skin cells coming off the body daily, which means our entire skin is replaced once a month. We shed 40 pounds of skin during an average lifetime.
We have 60,000 miles of blood vessels, which would wrap around the world more than twice.
Our noses can detect 50,000 scents.
We blink 6 million times a year.
There are roughly 20,000 diseases that affect the human body, and there are more than 600,000 physicians representing 150 medical specialties to deal with human health and disease.
Take good care of that amazing body of yours.
Terry Hollenbeck, M.D., is an urgent-care physician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Santa Cruz in Scotts Valley. A doctor with 36 years’ experience, he invites readers to view all of his previous articles at his website, valleydoctor.wordpress.com. Information in this column is not intended to replace advice from your own health care professional. For any medical concern, consult your own doctor.