Body Facts

Here’s some surprising intelligence about your body. We got these facts from Maggie Koerth, MSN’s Health & Fitness expert.

If you’re over 30, you’re losing bone. According to the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, we build bone up to the age of 30. After that, the density of our bones starts to decrease. Men may be able to coast for a while, but the process happens faster in women. The fix is simple: Get plenty of calcium, vitamin D, and exercise.

Our tongues pick up five different types of taste. Back in grade school, you probably learned that there are four taste receptors on the tongue - sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. However, a Japanese chemist found a 5th region that’s stimulated by savory foods like meat, cheese and mushrooms. He named itumami, which is the Japanese word for “yummy.”

The volume of an adult's empty stomach is one-fifth of a cup. That means just a few sips of water and a handful of grapes actuallystretch your stomach. Keep eating, and it’ll balloon to hold more than a gallon. To put that in perspective, if you took the average muffin and stretched it to those proportions, you’d have trouble fitting it in the trunk of your car! According to Koerth, the more you stretch your stomach, the harder it is to feel full. So, skip those belt-loosening feasts and limit meals to about two cups of food. Look at a measuring cup – you’ll be surprised how small it actually is.