Fun Facts About Your Skin

Sometimes, we get so focused on diseases, defects or what to do when your body starts doing things wrong that it’s easy to forget just how interesting – and downright amazing – our bodies can be when they’re working correctly. Today we’re going to take some time and explore some facts that make you, and your skin, incredible.

1. Your skin is your largest organ: We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again. When people think of organs, you tend to immediately think of internal things like lungs and intestines. The definition of an organ, however, is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function. Your skin may not be internal, but it’s certainly an organ.
2. There is over 20 sq ft of you: An average sized adult will have a little over 20 sq ft of skin. If you are overweight or had been overweight at some point in your life, it’s possible that your skin will have stretched, leaving you with a little bit of extra.
3. Fingerprints serve a purpose: They are there to help increase friction and provide you with a better grip. Some monkeys even have “tail prints” on the underside of their prehensile tails to help them grip as they’re swinging.
4. Your skin changes to help you grip better: While we’re talking about fingerprints, think back to the last time your hands were in water for an extended time. Your fingertips (and sometimes toes as well) probably got “pruney” with deeper wrinkles than usual. The rest of your skin doesn’t wrinkle like this. Scientists believe this is an adaptation our skin developed over time to help increase our grip on wet objects. The idea is that the wrinkles work like the tread on rain tires and channel the water away, helping us grab on more effectively.
5. Not everyone gets fingerprints: In humans, fingerprints begin to develop at about 3 months gestation. Some people never develop them at all, though. Some genetic defects can leave a person with smooth skin over their entire finger instead of the distinctive ridges of fingerprints.
6. Your skin has specializations: Not every area of your skin has the same kinds of receptors. In fact, you have at least five different types that respond to touch, pain, temperature, etc. Some areas are more sensitive than others, and the more sensitive parts (like fingertips, palms, lips, tongue, nipples, and genitalia) have been shown to respond to pressure as light as the weight of a fly.
7. You don’t sweat everywhere: Humans are generally covered top to bottom with sweat glands, but you don’t sweat at the nail bed, the borders of your lips, your ear drums, or (if you’re a male) the tip of the penis. Even without those areas sweating, your body has enough sweat glands to produce up to three gallons of sweat per day.
8. Your sweat doesn’t smell: Body odor doesn’t actually come from your sweat. It comes from the bacteria that live on all of our skin. When you sweat, that bacteria eats and digests the fatty compounds in your sweat. So what you’re smelling is the scent of bacterial digestion.
9. You’re constantly falling apart: Every minute of every day, your skin is shedding about 50,000 cells. Those shed skin cells are how tracking animals find people. In fact, most of the dust in your house is your own skin cells. Globally, dead skin creates about a billion tons of dust floating through the atmosphere.
10. Pale skin is relatively new: In evolutionary terms, white skin is a new development. It’s estimated to be between 20-50 thousand years old. It didn’t appear until humans reached colder climates and evolved away from melanin-rich darker skin. The native people of countries in warmer climates that are closer to the equator tend to have deeper skin, whereas the native people of colder places tend to be more pale.

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