The human body is undoubtedly an incredible thing,
but the female body is extra amazing. Not only can the female body grow entire human beings from
scratch, ensuring the survival of our entire species in the process, but women’s bodies can do
plenty of other crazy, impressive and downright strange things. You won’t believe some of these
incredible and weird facts about the female body! It’s a well-documented fact that
women tend to live longer than men. While American men can expect to live until the
age of 76, the life expectancy for an American woman is a full 5 years longer at age 81. There
are many reasons for the difference in life expectancy between men and women, and it’s not
just that women tend to take less risks than men. One of the major factors is the fact that women
are better at fighting off infections than men. The female immune system is stronger than
the immune system of men, thanks to the fact that the hormone estrogen suppresses an enzyme
that can get in the way of our body’s defences against bacteria and viruses. Women can also
thank their higher levels of estrogen for being significantly better at surviving traumatic
injuries than men. Women recover faster from their injuries and are more resistant to infections.
No one is sure why exactly this is the case, but it might be the female body’s way of
providing extra protection for any children the woman might be carrying. Plus, regular sex
can help boost a woman’s immune system even more! There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to
suggest that men and women think differently, but the science shows that there actually are
differences between the male and female brain. For one thing, women regularly outdo men on
memory tests. It turns out that women aren’t just better at remembering to-do lists, but are also
better than men at remembering names and faces. And it’s not just remembering faces that women
excel at - they are better at reading them too. Women can read emotional cues from facial
expressions much more accurately than men, which might be why they tend to
be more empathetic on average. Science has also conclusively proven what
we all already know - that women are better listeners than men. Researchers at the
Indiana University School of Medicine used an fMRI machine to track brain
activity while participants listened to someone read aloud a passage from a novel. As
men listened, the left side of their brain - the area associated with listening and speech -
showed increased activity. Women, however, showed activity in both the left side and the
right side, the side associated with creativity and expression. In fact, women use both sides
of their brain much more often than men do, which could be why they tend to
be so much better at multitasking. Women don’t just listen better, they’re
also better with words than men. Women have larger frontal and temporal lobes, the
brain regions associated with language skills, which might account for why women speak an average
of 20,000 words per day - 13,000 more than the average man speaks in a day! This brings a whole
new meeting to the phrase “a man of few words”... And, in case you were wondering,
the science also points to women actually being the more rational sex -
so much for that stereotype! However, it’s not all good news in the brain department
- period cramps aren’t just a physical pain, they also mess with a woman’s mind. Cramps and
other PMS symptoms can be incredibly distracting, and can temporarily prevent a woman’s
brain from working at its full potential. Men and women also see the world differently -
literally. A mutation on the X chromosome allows about 40% of women to see a much broader
range of colors in the red-orange family, while many men are actually “Christmas
color-blind”, meaning that they have a hard time distinguishing between red and
green. Women also blink more often than men. Speaking of eyes - it’s absolutely true that
women cry more often than men. Adult women cry an average of 5.3 times per month, while men average
only 1.4 times. But it’s not just hormones, or the fact that it’s more socially acceptable for women
to cry - there’s a biological reason for this, too. Women have larger tear ducts than men, and
they have 50-60% more of the hormone prolactin, which is primarily responsible for
lactation but also controls our tears. Neither sex can claim a superior sense of
smell, but research shows that women are better at learning and distinguishing different
smells. One study even showed that women can tell when their partner is stressed by sniffing
one of their dirty t-shirts! Women might have the edge when it comes to taste, though, thanks
to an abundance of taste buds compared to men. Men may be stronger than women on average, but
women can claim more endurance than men - in studies, women can last up to 75% longer than
men in stamina-related exercises. Once again, women can thank their higher levels
of estrogen, which makes their muscles more resistant to fatigue - something that
definitely comes in handy during childbirth. Women are also more flexible than men, thanks to
increased levels of elastin in their muscles and tendons, a protein that allows muscles and even
organs to stretch - yet another useful feature during pregnancy and childbirth. Women’s bodies
are also structurally different than men - the lower part of a woman’s spine curves over the
last 3 vertebrae versus just the last 2 in men, and they have a greater range of motion in their
pelvic area. All of this makes women much more flexible, and also helps accommodate
the carrying and birthing of a baby. Women’s skin is also different
from men’s. Women’s skin is much more sensitive due to being 25% thinner than
men’s skin. Unfortunately, that also means that women’s skin is more prone to wrinkles
thanks to a loss of collagen as they age. Women also have more guts than men - really!
The lower part of the colon is longer in women than in men. Women also have more stuff
crammed into their lower abdomen - between their digestive tract and their reproductive
organs, there is less room for things to expand, which might be why women tend to experience
more digestive distress than men. Thankfully, women seem to be
pretty good at managing their pain, thanks again to the extra estrogen coursing
through their bodies, which acts as a natural pain reliever. However, during some parts of
their cycle when estrogen is at its lowest levels, women actually feel more pain than men do. Some
studies suggest that women’s threshold for pain is actually 9 times stronger than men’s.
Perception is a big part of it - while men tend to get stressed when thinking about their
past pain, women seem to forget about pain much faster. This might be a protective mechanism to
help women forget just how awful childbirth is. Women may be able to handle their pain, but
they aren’t as good at handling their alcohol as men - and it’s not just because women
tend to be smaller than men on average. Women have less of the stomach enzyme that
breaks down the ethanol in alcohol, and less water in their bodies to dilute the booze,
so even when adjusted for body size, a woman will have a higher blood alcohol content than a
man after consuming the same amount of alcohol. Keen observers might have noticed a trend in a
lot of these incredible facts about the female body - many of the things that make women’s
bodies different than men’s have to do with the fact that women’s bodies are designed
to carry and birth babies. Without a doubt, the ability to grow an entire human from scratch
is the most amazing thing about the female body. Some of the weirdest facts about the human
body have to do with the reproductive system. A woman is born with all of the eggs she
will ever have in her entire lifetime. Before she’s even born, a female fetus will have
6 to 7 million eggs, but by the time she’s born, that number has already dropped dramatically
to just 1 to 2 million eggs. By puberty, she’s down to 400,000 eggs, and by her late 30s,
a woman only has 20,000 eggs left. By the time she hits menopause in her 50s, a woman has just
1,000 eggs left in her reproductive system. Once released, an egg can survive for days
in a woman’s fallopian tubes, and since sperm can survive for up to 5 days in the reproductive
tract, we can see why birth control is so popular. The uterus is an incredibly elastic organ.
During pregnancy, a woman’s uterus grows from the size of an orange to the size
of a watermelon in just nine months, pushing her other organs out of the way and up
into her rib cage in the process. During labor, the uterus exerts pressure of nearly 400
pounds per square foot during contractions. During pregnancy, a woman’s cervix is tightly
closed to keep the baby inside and protected from the outside world. During labor, though, the
cervix stretches to become the baby’s gateway into the world. To even begin pushing, the cervix
must be dilated to 10 centimeter - about the size of a bagel - and it can get even larger to
accommodate the baby’s head as it’s delivered. The average woman will have around 450 periods
during her lifetime, and will use up to 15,000 menstrual products over her life span. Before the
invention of the disposable menstrual pad in the 1890s, women used some pretty weird methods to
deal with their periods. Women would use rags, cotton, sheep’s wool, rabbit’s fur and even
grass to stem the flow of menstrual blood. In ancient Rome and Greece, women would wrap lint
around a piece of wood to make homemade tampons. Despite how it might seem, women don’t actually
lose that much blood during their period - they typically only lose about 4 tablespoons of blood
in total over the course of their entire period. That’s the not-so-good news about the
female reproductive system - but never fear, there’s plenty of reproductive
advantages to the female body, especially when it comes to sex. Not only is
it true that women can have multiple orgasms, but the female clitoris alone has 8,000 nerve
endings - more than double the number of nerve endings in the entire penis. The clitoris also
serves no biological purpose other than to bring women pleasure. It also grows over time,
meaning that sex actually gets better for women the older they get. An orgasm can also
help relieve the pain of period cramps - that seems like the least nature could do to make
up for the annoyance of periods, the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth! Weirdly,
the part of the brain that gets aroused during sex is the very same part of the brain that lights
up when a woman is craving a specific food. Although it might be hardly noticeable, one breast is always larger than the other - no
woman has perfectly identically sized breasts. This last fact just might be the weirdest of them
all. What do sharks and vaginas have in common? This may sound like the set-up for
a dirty joke, but it’s 100% true. The natural lubricant in the vagina is made up of
many things, including sweat, mucus and something called squalene. Squalene is not unique to humans
- it’s also found in the liver of sharks, and is a common ingredient in moisturizers. Recent research
also suggests that squalene can help protect skin from the harsh effects of chemotherapy. Who knew
that sharks and vaginas had so much in common! Given all of the amazing and impressive
things that the female body can do, it should come as no surprise that women actually
need more sleep than men! Although they tend to follow a more Eastern circadian rhythm and
wake up earlier than men on average, women actually require an extra 20 minutes of sleep each
night just to keep their amazing bodies going. The human body is truly a marvel, but the female
body is a whole other level of impressive, as these weird facts about the
female body clearly illustrate. If you thought this video was interesting, you’ll
definitely want to check out our other videos, like this one called “What Would Happen
To Your Body If You Lived In The Ocean?”, or maybe this other video is for you.
