Strange but True

weird wellness and other fun facts

Photo by Dan Parlante on Unsplash

I recently stumbled across this peculiar fact,

Every person has a unique smell, except an identical twin.

They smell the same.

This led me down a strange-but-true rabbit hole of surprisingly weird science.

I did, perhaps, mention that Tumbleweed is about wellness, whimsy and wanderlust… today’s post is brought to you by our friend whimsy.

So, kick off your shoes, pour yourself a coffee, put up your feet, and enjoy.

Weird wellness and other fun facts

1. On average, people who dream more often and more vividly have higher I.Q.s

2. The sense of smell is connected in our brains to our oldest memories and most intense emotions.

3. Optimism can help you live longer. Studies have found that there is a correlation between increasing levels of optimism with decreasing levels of death from causes ranging from cancer, to heart attacks, to strokes. Those who had high levels of optimism had an almost 40% lower risk of heart disease.

4. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.

5. Procrastination and impulsivity may be inherited traits. A study published in Psychological Science found that the same genes that can lead to procrastination also cause impulsivity.

6. During one’s lifetime, a person will on average accidentally swallow eight small spiders. This is an excellent argument for sleeping with your mouth closed.

7. Humans are the only animals to produce tears from emotion.

8. I had to laugh at this quote from a prominent medical journal. We apparently know next to nothing on the topic of human consciousness. It might be better to check in with your local mystic:

“The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it.

Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens”.

Peter D. Kitchener, Colin G. Hales, National Library of Medicine

9. Dark chocolate, in addition to being an antioxidant, is good for your skin.

10. Your ears never stop growing. Your nose, meanwhile, begins to alter its shape after middle age.

11. If you walked for 12 hours a day, it would take the average person 690 days to walk around the world.

12. Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.

13. Expressing gratitude may be the key to happiness, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Scientists note that grateful thinking can increase happiness by as much as 25 percent.

14. The brain is more active during sleep than while watching TV. As a result, a person burns more calories when asleep than while in front of the tube.

15. The rate at which a person’s hair grows doubles during an airplane flight.

16. Studies show that people who drink 1-2 cups of coffee are less likely to develop depression or dementia.

17. Swearing can make you feel better when you’re in pain.

Do you have a fun or weird fact you’d like to share? We’re all ears… some of us with bigger ears than others!

I’m Heather.

I’m a licensed naturopath, an unlicensed free spirit, an author, a mother, a yogi, a dog lover, a mystic, a goofball, an average but enthusiastic dancer.

Most of all, I’m curious.

I’m on a mission to bring you on a magical mystery tour of wellness, whimsy, and wanderlust. Thanks for tuning in.