40 Deeply Uncomfortable Facts About The Human Body You Probably Wish You Didn’t Know

The human body is fascinating, complex, and, if you look a little too closely, deeply unsettling. While we tend to think of our bodies as well-oiled systems that quietly keep us alive, the reality is far stranger and sometimes downright disturbing. From bizarre biological quirks to unsettling processes happening beneath your skin right now, the human body has no shortage of facts that can make you squirm.

Inspired by a Reddit thread asking, “What’s a creepy fact about the human body you wish you never found out?”, this list gathers some deeply uncomfortable truths that might make you see yourself a little differently. Read on if you’re curious, but consider this your warning, once you learn these facts, you can’t un-know them.

#1

Image source: nagisu, Clay Banks

The reason bleach feels “slippery” if it gets on your hand is because of saponification, it’s breaking down the fat in your skin and making it into soap. Always wear gloves when handling bleach. .

#2

Image source: Preschool_girl, Min An

When you tilt your head to the side, your eyeballs rotate so that the “top” stays oriented.

Want to be freaked out? Go look in a mirror and watch some stationary part of your eye, like a blood vessel. Then tilt your head and see your eyeball turn like a steering wheel.

#3

Male and female genitals are made up of the same embryological components, just arranged differently, and with some bits growing bigger depending on hormone exposure.

Image source: Dr__Snow

#4

About 5% of our brain activity is conscious, and 95% unconscious.

That’s not the creepy part.

The creepy part is that studies have shown the unconscious part of our brain making a decision up to several seconds before the conscious part thinks it’s made a choice, and then retroactively justifying “why” with our conscious thoughts about it.

Image source: spicewoman

#5

Image source: theBaron01, Ketut Subiyanto

Some may find it creepy i guess; maybe more… disturbing. Tinnitus can often be neurological rather than from physical damage, meaning you can be completely deaf and still have the ringing/buzzing in your ears. As someone who has Tinnitus, I’ve learned to filter it in day to day life, but it’s hard to impossible below a certain level of ambient noise. Id quickly go mad if it was the only sound I could actually hear….

#6

It’s a classic but humans are born with their baby teeth and their adult teeth, the adult teeth just hang on behind the baby teeth until their time comes, which means that a toddler’s face is like 50% teeth and the skull images you can find on google are very unsettling.

Image source: retronax

#7

Image source: Shellona27, Leandro Verolli

Your spinal cord is the same consistency as a banana.

#8

Image source: Lumpy_Helicopter_758, Robina Weermeijer

When you sleep your brain gets power washed with spinal fluid!

#9

Image source: Any_Phrase_8121, Andrej Lišakov

Finding out old scars reopen with scurvy haunts me.

#10

Image source: yourremedy94, Daiga Ellaby

It takes up to a year for all the organs to go back in the right place after being pregnant. Also, during a c-section, they kind of just mush everything back inside and it all eventually goes back to where its suppose to on its own!

#11

Everything in your house is completely covered by dead skin and is being eaten by something as we speak.

You also sleep in it :)

Sweet dreams.

Image source: Weekly_Bed827

#12

When you’re in a plane at cruising altitude and lose cabin pressure, you have about 15 seconds of useful consciousness before hypoxia sets in. That’s why they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first – you’d pass out trying to help others.

I’m a pilot and this fact still gives me chills.

Image source: BNEKT

#13

Image source: alsotheabyss, Hans

Babies grow and shed hair in the amniotic sac, which by the end of pregnancy is filled with.. old hair.

#14

Image source: MaDrAv, Pavel Danilyuk

Pretty much all the different fluids your body can leak. My wife got a poorly placed epidural (2 natural births and finally caved on #3 and it got messed up and was awful) and was leaking spinal fluid. Read a story about a guy who had a runny nose, but it was brain fluid! So now I feel like I’m an old truck and I’m just going to start waking up with random leaks under me :D.

#15

When having an operation doctors move your organs around to get to where they need to go. Once they are finished they dont put them back. They return back all on there own. Same with being pregnant. If you have a baby in there it moves your organs out of the way to make room. Once you give birth they start to realign back into place on there own. Like they remembered where they were.

Image source: skith8431

#16

Image source: Aromatic-Side6120, Karola G

Not too happy with the fact that there’s a bunch of hollow tunnels filled with mucus exactly just right behind my face.

#17

Some women can actually feel pain when they ovulate. It’s called mittelschmerz, a German word that means “pain in the middle.

Image source: dixie_half-and-half

#18

Your brain can’t actually feel pain.That’s why surgeons can perform brain surgery on awake patients. You can feel pain in your skin, skull, and meninges but the organ that interprets pain itself feels none. It’s unsettling to realize the thing that screams “OUCH” can’t experience it at all.

Image source: DoldyDon

#19

Your internal organs itch; your brain chooses to ignore the sensation!

Image source: obelixx99

#20

When were in an unfamiliar environment, we sleep with half our brain at a time kinda like sharks and that’s why we wake up easier.

Image source: WielderoftheDarkness

#21

Image source: daemonhat, Robina Weermeijer

Some people are walking around with 3 or more kidneys because when you get a transplant, unless medically necessary, they leave the old ones in there.

#22

Image source: Moo-Mungus, Chris Slupski

The feeling in your stomach when you go down on a roller coaster is your organs lagging behind your body.

#23

There are tiny mites that live in your eyelashes all the time.

Image source: SignalBeamer

#24

You can be internally decapitated. The neck breaks and your head literally is only connected by soft tissue.

Image source: BubblesForBrains

#25

Image source: WowzerzzWow, Anna Shvets

If you’ve ever worked in an OR, the smell of cauterization is similar to cooking steak/pork. We’re all literally walking meat sacks made of electrical signals.

#26

Your body produces cancer cells all the time.

Image source: bigpapahugetim3

#27

There’s a fun little thing called Prions, which are a incorrectly folded protein. It has given us some fun diseases, like the Mad Cow Disease, Zombie Deer Disease, Kuru, and FFI (Fatal Familiar Insomnia). While these diseases are either genetic or spread by eating tainted meat, FFI has a fun little cousin called SFI, or Sudden Fatal Insomnia.

While extremely rare (only 3-5 known cases world wide, AFAIK), it can happen to anyone. Suddenly, in your late 30’s, you start to lose the ability to sleep. Sleeping pills and such work in the beginning, but over time they no longer do the trick. Once you can no longer sleep (which can take anything from a few months to a few years), you only have a few weeks to live before your body breaks down.

Image source: Kaalveythur

#28

The ovaries aren’t physically connected to the fallopian tubes. The eggs shoot out into the fallopian tubes. This also means that certain other things (👀) that may go into the fallopian tubes ultimately just swim out the ends and end up floating around in the abdominal cavity.

Image source: CalpurniaAddams

#29

Image source: MysteriousWon, Julia Taubitz

Young children can fully regenerate the the tip of a finger if it is severed or amputated.

Apparently the younger they are, the more active stem cells the have to promote this process which we adults lack.

#30

Look at anything around you. Your tongue knows what it would feel like to lick it.

Image source: Mysterious_Bag_9061

#31

I work in an emergency room. The sheer amount of patients that come in with literal maggot infestations is, well, disturbing.

Image source: LocalNHBoy

#32

Evolution hasnt fully ironed out the whole walking upright thing. Its literally bad for your hips and back.

Image source: SIZZLE-_

#33

Your intestines and other organs are always squirming and moving around but your brain ignores it.

Image source: puffofthezaza

#34

After the placenta is delivered you have a dinner-plate sized wound in your uterus.

Image source: flowerodell

#35

Unborn babies can cry inside your womb if you are pregnant.

Image source: KatTheDogFosterer

#36

Brain matter smell is hella gross. Source: I’m a paramedic.

Image source: Chaprito

#37

I have three:)

1.Ribs can regrow. It’s a problem they have to watch for if ribs are being removed for medical reasons. The tiny bud left behind on the rib cage starts a new bone.

2.Humans typically have one spleen, located in the upper left abdomen, but it’s relatively common (around 10-20% of people) to have extra, smaller spleens (accessory spleens or splenunculi) due to developmental variations or the body’s natural ability to regenerate spleen tissue after injury, a process called splenosis. I’ve read cases of people having six. Unless you have surgery near them, they rarely cause issues and you are unlikely to ever know they are there.

3.Children under a certain age do not have knee caps.

Image source: Admirable-Fox-8344