In your capillaries, red blood cells squeeze through single file

Anecdota
In your capillaries, red blood cells squeeze through single file
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🫀Human body

In your capillaries, red blood cells squeeze through single file

Capillaries, your tiniest blood vessels, are about 5 to 10 micrometers wide, roughly the size of a red blood cell and sometimes narrower. So red cells must travel one at a time and bend to fit. That squeeze isn't a flaw: it presses them against the vessel wall, making oxygen exchange with the tissues easier.

Encyclopaedia Britannica
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🫀Human body

Your kidneys filter about 180 liters every day

Every day, your kidneys filter around 180 liters of blood plasma, about a bathtub's worth. Yet you only have about 3 liters of plasma, so it passes through your kidneys some sixty times a day. Over 99% of the filtered water is reabsorbed, leaving just one to two liters of urine.

NIDDK (NIH)
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🫀Human body

Your body has more atoms than the observable universe has stars

A 70 kg adult is made of about 7 × 10²⁷ atoms, or seven billion billion billion. The observable universe is thought to hold on the order of 10²² to 10²⁴ stars. Even with the high estimate, you contain thousands of times more atoms than there are stars in the entire visible cosmos.

European Space Agency (ESA)