Recently, I posted a series of tweets featuring interesting facts about skin, which I am sharing here. It’s good to remember that our skin plays an incredibly important role in keeping us healthy. It protects our bones, muscles and internal organs; protects us from external diseases; and helps us to regulate our body temperature. The best way to thank it is to look after it!
(Yes, I am following up on my previous post about the proliferation of lists on the internet with, well, a list… but as I said, they are the perfect way to present certain material!)
1. The skin is our largest organ – the average adult’s skin, if stretched out, would measure about 1.8 sq m – 2 sq m.
2. It is also our heaviest organ, weighing in at around 8-10lb (depending on the person, obviously).
3. Your body produces a totally new epidermis about every 30 days.
4. The thinnest skin is on your eyelids (c. 0.5mm).
5. The thickest skin is on the soles of your feet (approx 4mm).
6. Your skin sheds 30,000 – 50,000 dead cells a MINUTE. Well over half of the dust in your home is actually dead skin.
7. The skin can release as much as 10-14 ltr of sweat over the course of a hot day.
8. Human skin is incredibly well supplied with blood vessels (capillaries, arteries and veins) – the average adult body contains more than 60,000 miles of them!
9. It is thought that the average person sheds around 47kg of skin in his/her lifetime.
10. Our skin is crawling with hundreds of different types of bacteria. Luckily, the vast majority of them are harmless.
Do you have an amazing skin fact that we haven’t included? Let us know in the comments below.
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