9 Snazzy Things Your Body Does

Our bodies do some pretty cool and mysterious things!

You think you’re learning everything about your body as you grow older, but have you ever thought about the littlest things that happen inside you that you’ve taken for granted since you were a child? Well, we want to explain them!

We’ve compiled some of these and by the end of this list, you’ll definitely say, your body is a wonderland!

1. Your eyes like to close when you sneeze.

Well, most of ours do anyway. Your eyes and nose are closely linked by nerves in your brain and when you are about to sneeze, the impulse sends the message to your think station and it returns the favour to your eyes, and they obligingly close. And yes, there are people in the world who can, in fact, sneeze with their eyes open, and no, they don’t suddenly pop out of their head. Gotta love school-yard myths!

2. Those bones know when it’s going to rain.

Did your Nanna ever tell you that she knew rain was coming because she could ‘feel it in her bones’? Well, she probably was the best weather predictor around because stories of creaky joints before rainfall aren’t just old wives’ (or nanna) tales apparently. When storm fronts are moving in and the atmospheric pressure drops, the fluid pressure in your joints increases, and your nerve endings send meteorology reports of pain to your brain. My elbow says rain is imminent.

3. Scents trigger your memory.

Yes, yes, yes! Certain cosmetics take me back to when I was 12, away on a school excursion for a week, and when we were shopping, I bought a (absolutely unheard of previously to me) bright pink Yeardley lippie that smelled absolutely amazing. Everything changed the moment I inhaled that scent and now, occasionally, when I come across it in other products 26 years later, I’m hurled back in time immediately! I love it.

I never knew why, though, until now. It seems that the place in your brain responsible for your sense of smell is located in the system (limbic) that is the birthplace of emotions and a storage unit for memories. Holy crap, no wonder I am near tears when I smell Oil of Olay, reminds me of my Nan”¦sigh.

4. Your skin gets covered in goosies.

Goosebumps raise up when you’re scared or cold, or even while you’re hearing something that really grabs your senses such as music (or even worse, when someone runs their fingernails across a chalkboard”¦bastards), but funnily enough, we don’t have much use for them anymore.

Back when we were sporting animal skin togas, shacking up in caves and growing heaps more body hair, goosebumps assisted in our appearance of toughness, like when animals feel threatened, their hair often stands straight up and they appear larger, and therefore more dangerous. Well, that was our bag too!  But now that we have much less hair than our ancestors (yay for waxing!), goosebumps are much more visible, and pretty much just give away the fact that we wore the wrong outfit on a winter’s day or got a bit excited about something!

5. Shivers down your spine.

Ever hear a spooky, weird, inspiring or exciting story that gives you a shiver down your spine or goosies down one or both sides of your body? Contrary to that awesome school yard version of wikipedia, it is not actually someone walking over your grave rather it’s your brain releasing large amounts of adrenaline into your system in response to an exciting or stressful situation. It can make your hair stick up on end (totes related to those goosies) and can even be a reaction from hearing music you really dig, or recognising feels of intense emotions, like lurve.

6. We grow earlobes.

I honestly thought earlobes were an extra bit of soft flesh just put there for fashion accessory or nibbling purposes! Turns out, the earlobe, or lobule, is actually there to collect sound waves from the air and guide them into the eardrum. Huh, there you go”¦but still also good for hanging sweet glittery earrings on and getting nuzzled during snuggle time.

7. Ear wax is not made for grossness.

Our ears are self-cleaning via their clever production of earwax. When we eat or speak, the motion of our jaw helps the wax to move from the eardrum to the outside and carry away any bacteria or foreign objects with it, where it falls out or flakes off. It also works as a lubricant to stop the dry and itchy feeling, the way tears work for our eyes.

So when we stick things in our ears (think cotton buds, bobby-pins, earbud headphones, little fingers), we are risking pushing the wax back up and compacting it, which can cause blockages, though it’s really hard not to, because who doesn’t love the score of a giant pumpkin from your ear?

Morale of the story…embrace your ear wax?

8. Fanny Farts

Fanny farts are pretty hilarious, or an embarrassment, depending on who you are hanging around. Personally, I can’t do them, but I I have a friend that win a gold medal at the Fanny fart Olympics. What’s the go with them you ask? Basically, it is air that is introduced to the vagina that gets trapped when you move, say during a yoga pose, or your partner thrusts during sex, that literally pumps air into the vagina – the resulting sound is an embarrassing fart sound when the air is released. Doing your pelvic floor exercises (those clench things that you would do if you wanted to stop peeing quickly) can help tone the vaginal muscles and elimate vag trumpeting. If you wanted to eliminate them that is hehe…

PS. It is not smelly. It is not like regular bum farts; it is not ‘gas’ or ‘wind’ which comes from the bowel. If by chance you are doing stinky ones, you need to get to your GP asap!

9. Brain freeze!

Ah the mysterious brain freeze, the bane of ice-cream scoffing children everywhere, finally has a remedy. Apart from avoiding super cold food and drinks that it is, because really, who the heck wants to miss out on delicious icy treats?

Your brain likes to stay fairly warm, at an even temperature in fact, so when you slug down a 7-11 slurpee, devour a Mr Whippy soft serve or slam down a mango daiquiri at happy hour, it has a hissy-fit and thinks it’s been exposed to a blizzard in the ski fields of Tassie. It’s very clever of course and knows how to fix the situation by opening up arteries to pump in more nice warm blood to your noggin. More blood means more oxygen and clearer thinking”¦and a big, fat brain freeze.

As a kid I may have tried more than once to unsuccessfully shake the crap out of my head to try to warm that baby back up, but to no avail. Nor did wrapping a towel around the offensive chilly area help”¦and no wonder”¦the only way known to scientific types is to warm up the top palate in your mouth (soup or maybe press your tongue up there?) and help those arteries shrink back down to normal size again.  Or ride it out, no one is going to ruin the thrill of ice cream or daiquiri with a freaking cup of soup!

Aren’t these things your body does pretty cool huh?