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  • The average lifespan for Americans is 78.5 years.

  • That's a total of 2,477,300,000 seconds.

  • But let's break that down.

  • By the time I finish reading this sentence, 20 million new cells have just been replaced in your body, 20 million in just a few seconds.

  • Compound that over a lifetime.

  • And well, your body achieves some pretty incredible feats.

  • Let's start with our largest organ skin.

  • It reproduces about 30,000 to 40,000 cells every minute.

  • That means we shed a whole layer of outer skin every 2-4 weeks or 1000 bodies worth in a lifetime.

  • And underneath your skin lies a vast network of blood vessels spread out.

  • This network of veins, arteries and capillaries would extend over 100,000 miles.

  • That's long enough to wrap around the earth's equator four times and through those blood vessels, the heart pumps about 7500 liters of blood every day.

  • That's an estimated 215 million liters throughout your lifetime.

  • Or enough blood to fill a whopping 86 Olympic swimming pools.

  • The red color in your blood comes from hemoglobin proteins and iron.

  • And you get that iron mainly from your diet, which is then absorbed into your bloodstream from your gut.

  • The average adult will have 3 to 4 g of iron at any given time, but will lose and replace 1.5 mg every day.

  • So over a lifetime you'll absorb at least 43 g worth.

  • That's equivalent to 10 standard iron nails.

  • And speaking of 10 nails, your fingernails grow at a rate of 3.5 millimeters per month.

  • That means if you want your entire life without ever cutting them, they could get more than three m long.

  • Shred hard shalal, for example, stopped cutting his nails when he turned 14 and when he was 82 he finally cut his thumb nail.

  • It was almost two m long.

  • But your fingernails grow at a snail's pace compared to your hair.

  • On average, each hair grows 12.5 millimeters per month.

  • So over a lifetime, that's about 12 m of hair, almost the length of an American school bus.

  • And if you look at what else your head produces on the regular saliva is a big one.

  • You produce on average one leader every day.

  • That's about 28,600 liters over a lifetime or enough to fill 39 4 person hot tubs.

  • Yeah, but believe it or not, you actually produce more mucus and snot each day than saliva, about 1.4 liters.

  • That's about 54 hot tubs worth in your lifetime.

  • And even more disgusting is the fact that you swallow most of that and all that liquid goes somewhere.

  • So let's talk about the other end our urine.

  • The average healthy adult produces anywhere from 400 to 2000 mL a day or on average, 34,400 liters in a lifetime.

  • Now, if you have your hot tub conversion chart handy, you will see that that fills up 46 4 person hot tubs.

  • That might seem uh, impressive.

  • But it has nothing on one of your biggest, most important internal organs, your liver, Your liver can regenerate itself, sort of like how a starfish can regenerate lost limbs.

  • That's thanks to the enormous amount of regenerating cells in your liver.

  • In fact, a healthy human could lose 65% of their liver and ultimately would be no worse for wear since it would simply grow back in just a few months.

  • So when you think about it, your body is like a mini factory generating loads of cells and fluids daily.

  • But not all of your body parts are able to reproduce your inner ear hairs in charge of hearing.

  • Never regrow.

  • So if they get damaged, your hearing will suffer or worse disappear.

  • And even the most important organ in your body, your brain doesn't produce that many new cells you're born with roughly 90 billion nerve cells in your brain called neurons And you lose on average 60 of those neurons every minute.

  • But during a traumatic brain injury, like a stroke, your brain can lose millions per minute.

  • That said, the human brain can still recover from this loss.

  • Thanks to something called plasticity plasticity describes how our brains remaining neurons take on on different roles and form new connections to make up for any important connections that were lost.

  • So whether it's adaptation or regeneration, our bodies go on quite a remarkable journey.

  • So next time you get a paper cut, try to look on the bright side of things and give thanks to those hardworking cells, fixing you right back up.

The average lifespan for Americans is 78.5 years.

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