10 'Facts' About The Human Body That Are Completely False

We Only Use 10 Percent Of Our Brains:

Weighing in at just over 1.4 kilograms (3 lb), the human brain is home to nearly 100 billion neurons. They transmit There are so many truisms about staying healthy that we sometimes don't use due diligence in determining if the advice given to us is even true. Then there are the old wives' tales, passed down from one generation to the next, that often disregard the difference between fact and fiction. Below, you'll find a list of 10 of the most common health clichés out there. None of them are true.

information to each other across gaps called synapses, of which the brain has almost one quadrillion.

The brain is sectioned into three primary parts-the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brain stem. The cerebrum composes roughly 85 percent of the organ and is responsible for much of the higher-level functioning we associate with being human. Seated below it, you'll find the cerebellum, which controls basic coordination and balance. And finally, you have the brain stem. Connected to your spinal cord, the brain stem controls most of your automatic functions, such as breathing and digestion.

Wouldn't it be incredible if all this processing is only making use of 10 percent of the brain's bandwidth?

Alas, this "fact" is utterly wrong. We're not sure where the claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains came from, but it seemed to percolate out of the late Victorian era. In the late 1890s, Harvard psychologists William James and Boris Sidis used the latter's wunderkind (his IQ was nearly 300) as proof that all humans must have the capacity to be that smart. We just have to try harder.

Pretty ridiculous, right?

Further research at the start of the 20th century found that rats with cerebral damage could be retaught certain tasks. This was used to bolster the already weak case that our human brain is full of untapped potential. Alas, this factoid is completely ridiculous with no basis in modern science. Just reading this paragraph uses more than 10 percent of your brain. Oh well.

It Takes Seven Years To Digest A Piece Of Gum:

After swallowing a particularly large piece of bubblegum, many of you may remember being horrified to hear that your digestive tract would spend the next seven years trying to digest it. If your seven years isn't up yet, you may be relieved to learn that this "fact" is complete nonsense.

Although the origins of this myth are elusive, it has borne out a relative truth about chewing gum. It's indigestible. The Food and Drug Administration defines gum as a "nonnutritive masticatory substance." (Translation: It's not food.)

While it's not advisable to swallow your chewing gum, what happens to it isn't all that exciting. Excess ingredients like sweeteners may be digested, but the bulk of the gum is an elastomer that gets moved through your digestive tract without being broken down. Then the gum comes out the other end via the excretory system and is usually unscathed.

Foreign, inedible objects have to be roughly larger than a United States quarter to get stuck in your digestive system. Otherwise, they flow like junk down a stream, right out the other end.

Chocolate Will Make Your Skin Break Out:

As if puberty, high school, and those teenage years aren't hard enough, many of us grew up learning that our chocolate intake had a causal relationship with breakouts. Pretty awful that chocolate, the one thing that makes adolescence bearable, lights up your face with ugly zits.

Well, we're here to let you know that this old wives' tale is false. Eating chocolate will not cause you to break out. However, eating foods high in fat and sugar can increase your body's natural sebum production, which makes your skin oilier. Furthermore, those unhealthy foods lead to higher levels of skin inflammation.

But will chocolate-or any food for that matter-make your skin break out? The answer to that is a resounding no. Eating high levels of fatty foods will definitely trip up your blood sugar, which can indirectly affect breakout levels. But no single food item is your golden ticket to avoiding teenage pimples.

Carrots Improve Eyesight:

The myth that carrots will improve your vision is wrapped up in a twisted history of wartime propaganda. To be fair, carrots are great sources of beta-carotene, an inactive retinol that is transformed into vitamin A during digestion. Vitamin A provides all sorts of benefits to the body, including the protection of eyesight.

But does it really improve one's nighttime vision?

No. The British Ministry of Information ran a campaign during World War II that suggested pilots in the Royal Air Force were eating large quantities of carrots, explaining their uncanny ability to shoot down German fighter pilots under the veil of darkness. Truth is, all the carrots in the world couldn't give you the gift of nocturnal sight.

British troops were warding off German bombers with novel technology at the time-airborne interception radar. It's unlikely that German intelligence bought into the idea that British pilots were fueled by high-octane carrots.

Yet, in the almost century since, the Western world's general public has remained firm believers that if they eat enough of the orange stuff, their eyes will thank them. We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but you're not going to have night vision anytime soon.

We Have Five Senses:

This one should be easy, right? Not so fast. The belief that we have five senses dates back to the time of Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was the first to discern the five discrete senses of the human body. You probably learned them in elementary school: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.

Yes, these are five of your senses. But they aren't the only ones.

Let's start with the basics. What is a "sense"? Well, it's something with a sensor that can perceive a given stimulus. Every sense is activated by a unique phenomenon.

In fact, the sense of touch is actually much more complex than just a single sensation. Many neurologists break down "touch" into divergent sensations, including perceptions of pressure, temperature, and pain.

Depending on whom you ask, humans have as many as 33 senses. These include some senses, like blood pressure and balance that you knew you had but didn't count as a "sense." So, next time someone says they have a sixth sense, you might respond by saying you have 33. They may not know what you mean by that, but you'll know!