Skin is the largest organ plays a vital role in detecting hot and cold regulating body temperature.
Here are some of the most interesting facts about your skin:
- The average person’s skin covers an area of 2 square meters.
- Skin accounts for about 15% of your body weight.
- The average adult has approximately 21 square feet of skin, which weighs 9 lbs and contains more than 11 miles of blood vessels.
- The average person has about 300 million skin cells. A single square inch of skin has about 19 million cells and up to 300 sweat glands.
- Your skin is its thickest on your feet (1.4mm) and thinnest on your eyelids (0.2mm).
- The skin renews itself every 28 days.
- Your skin constantly sheds dead cells, about 30,000 to 40,000 cells every minute! That’s nearly 9 lbs. per year!
- Some sources estimate that more than half of the dust in your home is actually dead skin.
- Dead skin comprises about a billion tons of dust in the earth’s atmosphere.
- Your skin is home to more than 1,000 species of bacteria.
- Skin that is severely damaged may try to heal itself by forming scar tissue, which is different from normal skin tissue because it lacks hair and sweat glands.
- Skin can form additional thickness and toughness — a callus — if exposed to repeated friction or pressure.
- Some of the nerves in your skin are connected to muscles instead of the brain, sending signals (through the spinal cord) to react more quickly to heat, pain, etc.
- Your skin has at least five different types of receptors that respond to pain and touch.
- Changes in your skin can sometimes signal changes in your overall health.