Have you ever felt like you’re living in a body you literally know nothing about?Every once in a while your eye starts twitching by itself, your stomach starts singing like a whale, or you get covered in goosebumps for no reason at all! It’s time for you and your body to get to know each other better, and these 11 facts will help you with that. 

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1) Why do your muscles twitch for no reason? It’s kinda embarrassing when you have to explain to someone why you’re constantly winking at them. If your eye starts to twitch occasionally, it’s a signal that you’re dealing with stress or having a hard time trying to get good sleep. If not, then you probably drank too much coffee or ate something extremely sweet recently. The twitch itself is harmless. It’s caused by muscle fatigue and over stimulation from your brain. 

2) Why do we shake when it’s cold? We’re all familiar with uncontrollable chattering teeth and shivering legs when we’re cold. This happens because all your muscles are slightly, yet rapidly, moving to generate some heat from friction. Rub your hands together on a cold day, and they’ll become warmer. This is the same thing, but on a small scale. Your brain works like a conductor. No not Leonard Bernstein! It detects the temperature of your skin. If it’s warmer than 98.6°F – it’llsend a signal for it to start sweating. If it’s colder than that – it’ll send a signal for your muscles to start shivering. 

3) Why does your leg fall asleep? It’s scary to stand up from your desk and have the sensation that one of your legs is useless now for some reason! Don’t panic, we all know that it’ll wakeup in a while, even though the process will include a complete lack of control and a few moments of unnerving discomfort. This happened because you were sitting in an odd position. The way you sat restricted the amount of blood that could get to your leg. Only ten minutes without proper blood circulation will cause this numbness, and the uncomfortable feeling afterwards is the sensation of bloodrushing back in to every bit of your leg. Yep, pins and needles. 

4) Why are your eyes wet when you wake up? Sometimes it’s not only that, but you also might wake up with a crusty mess in the corners of your eyes. It all happens for the same reason. You see, when we sleep, we don’t always keep our eyes tightly shut. To compensate for the lack of protection, and wash away all the dust that might settle on your eye during the night, special glands in the corners of our eyes produce tears. And, when you feel tired and are getting ready to go to sleep, your eyes water from all the yawning. Yawning applies pressure to the lacrimal glands, and at the same time blocks tears from their regular path to our eyes. That’s why they overflow as soon as you stop yawning. 

5) What about yawning when you don’t want to sleep at all? Basically, yawning isn’t only supposed to happen when you’re sleepy or bored; that’s just the most common circumstance for it. Fun fact: parachutists often yawn right before they get ready to jump from the plane! I wouldn’t call that a good moment to take a nap, nor would I say that skydiving is the most boring thing ever. Try it sometime! Yawning is basically stretching your jaw, and inhaling as deep as you can. Both actions make the blood in your vessels rush to your head, and spinal fluid go down your spine. Surprisingly, it’s a way for your body to shake you up! Whenever you feel stressed or anxious, you might yawn as your body prepares itself to deal with it. Yawning also has psychological reasons. You’ve probably noticed that it can be contagious– that’s because we’re a highly social species, and as such, we need to synchronize our cycles of sleep with each other. In short, when one person starts to yawn from fatigue, he or she sends a signal of fatigue to others around and makes everyone sleepy. Well, it turns out, yawning is magic! 

6) What are eye floaters? Have you ever seen these strange ghostly looking flies that seem to float aimlessly right in front of your eyes? Or maybe even inside your eyes? Don’t be afraid, these aren’t flies at all. They’re eye floaters. They’re especially easy to see if you look at the blue sky or other light and clear scenes. Floaters aren’t exactly objects; they’rejust tiny imperfections in one special part of the main body of an eye, called the vitreous. We can see them because these structural imperfections stand in the way of the light that passes from pupil to retina, which forms your vision. So you don’t have to rush to an optometrist the next time you see them; they’re usually perfectly harmless! 

7) Why does falling asleep sometimes feel like literally falling? The worst kind of waking up is when you jerkor jump, startled, with the terrible sensation that you fell off your bed, or a cliff. It turns out this happens right after you’ve fallen asleep, at the exact moment all your muscles simultaneously relax. Your brain may mistake it as a distress call, because normally if all your muscles relaxed, you’d fall. To prepare you for the fall, your brain will naturally send a lot of quick signals to your muscles to make them work again. This phenomenon even has a special name – hypnicjerks. The same thing also happens on a smaller scale, making your legs or arms twitch when you’re falling asleep. 

8) Why do your legs feel lead-heavy when you’re afraid? When startled, or just scared, your legs might become as heavy as tree trunks; your heart will be pumping and your skin will get covered in goosebumps. These are all result of the same process – areaction to adrenalin coming into your blood flow. When adrenalin kicks in, it triggers what’s called the ‘fight or flight’ reaction. This reaction causes increased muscle tension and blood flow, making your legs feel heavy. All your body systems become highly alert, getting ready to act hard, and act fast. But at the same time, the reaction could go two different ways: you might run like an Olympic athlete, or you may not be able to move a single muscle. The reason is that there are two kinds of reactions to a dangerous situation. You can deal with it by overcoming it, or you can avoid it completely. 

9) Why do your fingers get all wrinkly from water? Because it’s easier to pick fruits fromtrees in rainy weather with hands like that. No, seriously, let me explain! The wrinkling itself happens when small blood vessels constrict under the skin; but that’s not the most interesting part. Scientists discovered that if the nerves in your fingers are damaged, the wrinkles won’t appear at all, no matter how long they’ve been under water. That means that wrinkling happens because of a specific reaction of our body to water; it’s not just a quality of the skin itself. So, it must be important for some biological reason! Further tests have involved trying to collect wet glass marbles with dry hands, and with wrinkly wet hands, and they proved that it’s much easier to collect those marbles with wet hands. The same goes for feet too – it’s much easier and safer to stand on a wet surface with your feet covered in wrinkles. I guess it’s nature’s way of improving our grip in a slippery situation! 

10) Why do joints pop? Even if you don’t always notice that horrifying sound because of your own bad habit to crack joints, you’d recognize it anywhere. To be fair, it’s even worse when you just stand up from your desk and hear a click, as if you’ve somehow hurt yourself or broken something. That’s not the case at all. It’s been proven that cracking joints doesn’t even affect our wellness that much. The clicking and cracking sounds happen when a serious force pushes on a joint, bending it in a way that causes a small bubble of gas to escape, and deflate. Um, sort of like a joint fart. This bubble appears naturally in every joint of your body, and doesn’t pose any threat, just like joint cracking itself. Do you have a bad habit of cracking your joints? Or are you one of those that can’t stand the sound?  

11) What makes your stomach growl? Belly bubbles, gut rumble, a rumbly in your tumbly – call it whatever; we all know this embarrassing sound too well. What’s not as well-known is what causes it. In basic terms – your brain is mocking you for not eating. I know it sounds strange, but how else would you explain this: When your stomach is empty, your brain sends a signal to start the process of digesting something and transporting it further down the digestive system. But there’s nothing to move except gas, which is what makes all the noise.