Buzz
We’re all just human after all. We experience joy, love, and, as popularized by children’s literature, we all poop. Our bodies are amazing creations of nature, so intricate and interdependent that the miracle of life is undeniable.
However, let’s not forget that we’re essentially hairless primates. Any man over 40, like myself, will notice hair thinning in places it once grew thick, while growing it in places it really shouldn’t. Skin starts to sag, spines curve, teeth decay... all reminders of the human body’s bitter irony: its blend of brilliance and repulsion.
We’re all human, and let’s face it, that means we’re all pretty gross. Here are ten examples to prove it.
10. The Unpleasant Introduction
We enter this world as a chaotic, bloody, choking, slimy mess. The process of childbirth is so incredibly grotesque that it’s astonishing anyone decides to have more than one child.
It begins with a rush – the so-called water breaking, which is anything but just water. There's no time to grab the stain remover because, instead, you're heading to the hospital amidst gut-wrenching, often nausea-inducing contraction screams.
After hours of grueling labor, the moment to push arrives. But before the baby makes its grand exit, there’s a different push... pee. Sometimes an overwhelming amount, and at a surprising force. Don’t be embarrassed, it happens to everyone… oh, and you just soiled the birthing bed. No worries – the doctor will proceed to perform an incision between your vagina and rectum to spare you from the agony of tearing in two.
And then… Congratulations! It’s a... blood- and slime-covered creature, resembling an alien, with something like cottage cheese clinging to its skin. That’s called vernix, a greasy, foam-like substance that protects the fetus’s skin while in the womb.
Now, it’s time to sever the blood- and pus-filled umbilical cord! And if the placenta hasn’t made its exit yet, don’t fret – a nurse will lovingly insert her entire hand into your traumatized vagina to detach it from your cervix. Meanwhile, the doctor will clear the newborn’s airways to ensure it doesn’t suffocate in its own birth fluids.
The miracle of life – but let’s be real, it’s not exactly a pretty sight.
9. Wait a minute – What’s That on Your Face?
Oh, never mind. It’s just a whole army of tiny, invisible bugs.
The human face, compared to other parts of the body, has larger pores and more sebaceous (oil) glands. These extra little spaces are the perfect homes for microscopic mites, who spend their entire lives – eating, mating, defecating, and dying – right on our faces, all without us even realizing.
Two species of mites claim our faces as their territory: Demodex folliculorum (pictured) and Demodex brevis. Often called eyelash mites, the D. folliculorum variety usually take up residence in pores and hair follicles, and are a common cause of beard dandruff in men – another reason to reconsider the beard trend. They generally aren’t harmful, but they’ve been known to worsen conditions like rosacea.
D. brevis tend to favor the deeper, semi-subcutaneous sebaceous glands. Like their repulsive relatives, they are usually harmless, though an unusually large infestation may result in redness and rough patches. They’re not confined to the face either, as they also enjoy making themselves at home on the chest and neck.
Face mites are mostly transparent and, even if they weren’t, would be far too small to see with the naked eye: measuring only 0.3 millimeters long, five of them would barely stretch across the head of a pin. Although officially arthropods – a group that includes jointed-legged animals like insects and crabs – California Academy of Sciences entomologist Michelle Trautweinn points out that “they look kind of like stubby little worms.” How comforting.
8. From Dust We Shall Return
Humans leave behind their slow-decaying detritus everywhere we go. From hardwood floors to bookshelves and lampshades, we are essentially mobile sacks of waste. But house dust is more than just dirt – it’s a stomach-churning mix of clothing fibers, dust mites, bits of dead insects, soil particles, pollen, and… well, us. Our shed skin cells and hair are the final touches to this revolting recipe.
On average, humans shed about 30,000 dead skin cells every minute. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because our skin – the body’s largest organ – makes up around 15% of our body weight. An adult has roughly 21 square feet of skin, weighing around nine pounds and containing over 300 million skin cells. A single square inch has approximately 19 million cells, so 30,000 is just a tiny drop in this biological bucket.
That’s a whole lot of dander on the couch, enough that dead skin accounts for the majority of the dust in our homes – sometimes even more than half. What’s even worse, the roughly 1,000 types of bacteria that call our skin home flake off with our dead skin, hitching a ride through the house.
On a much grander – and equally gross – scale, dead skin contributes to an estimated one billion tons of dust in Earth’s atmosphere.
7. Toilet Time Animal
Throughout their lives, most people spend an entire year sitting on the toilet. In that time, adults will pass about 320 pounds of feces and flush enough urine to fill two bathtubs.
The yellow liquid is far less disgusting than the brown (or black or off-green) solid stuff. While not exactly sterile, as the late Rip Torn once thought, urine’s tendency to form ammonia as it ages gives it a mild cleaning effect. In fact, ancient Romans used it for laundry and even to whiten their teeth. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station use a urine filtration system that recycles pee into drinking water, which probably tastes a lot like Bud Light.
In sharp, stinky contrast, human feces is a real nightmare. After its largely harmless main component – water – our poop is made up of dead bacteria that helped break down our food (not exactly the reward they had in mind), proteins, undigested food particles, cellular linings, fats, salts, and substances like mucus from the intestines and liver.
And guess what? It’s… ALIVE! Our feces contain living bacteria that play a crucial role in our body’s microbiome, especially within the gastrointestinal system. The exact makeup of the bacteria in our poop is largely influenced by our diet, and these bacteria also contribute to that oh-so-pleasant smell.
6. Ladies, Brace Yourselves: Women’s Farts Smell Worse Than Men’s
This one’s for the ladies… or rather, from them. My firmly held belief that female farts are far smellier than male farts has been irrefutably confirmed by (presumably) the best scientists out there. This is no longer just a personal bias; it’s confirmation straight from the rear end.
No matter who’s causing the stink, farts typically have three main odor-makers. Hydrogen sulfide gives that infamous rotten egg smell, while methanethiol adds a note of decaying vegetables. Dimethyl sulfide finishes off the fragrance with a touch of sweetness.
When a fart escapes from the anus, it does so at a speed of about 10 feet per second – or roughly 9.5 km/hr. On average, a human passes gas 14 times a day, creating enough volume to fill a medium-sized balloon. This can even be measured using a delightful device known as a rectal catheter. Seriously.
5. The Unpoetic Truth About Waxing
Earwax, already carrying a disgusting name, is even worse than it sounds. Officially referred to as cerumen, it’s produced by the body to protect and preserve the auditory canal in several ways, such as keeping the skin moist and acidic, trapping dead skin, killing microbes, and preventing dust and bugs from reaching the eardrum. So, it’s a gross substance that actually prevents even grosser things from occurring.
Earwax consists of dead skin cells, various waxes, and sebum – the same oily substance that builds up on unwashed hair. Cerumen is produced by the ceruminous glands (also called apocrine glands), which are specialized sweat glands that secrete fats and proteins.
There are two types of earwax: wet and dry, and which one you produce is determined by genetics. Regardless, the journey of earwax out of our ears is one of the body’s most amazing processes: migrating cells. Professor Shakeel Saeed at London’s Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital explains, “You could put an ink dot on the eardrum and watch it move over a few weeks, and it would be ‘carried out’ by the movement of the cells.”
Just like urine, earwax had its uses in ancient civilizations. Some people applied it as an ointment for puncture wounds, while others used it as a lip balm, leading to the all-time favorite pickup line, “That’s a lovely shade of cerumen you’re wearing.”
4. Colostrum: Gross… and Then Some
“Colostr-WHAT?” I asked, one sleepless night after becoming a first-time father. The nurse mentioned my wife was waiting for her colostrum, and for a moment, I wondered if it was some distant relative I hadn’t heard of or perhaps a new fiber-based cereal.
It wasn’t either. Colostrum is the first breast milk produced by a woman’s mammary glands, starting during pregnancy and continuing for the first few days after birth. It’s a tough blow to the idea that bringing a life into the world is always beautiful—colostrum is a thick, often sticky liquid, its golden-yellow or orange hue coming from high levels of beta-carotene. For some unfortunate reason, blood from the milk ducts can also mix in, turning it red, pink, or rusty.
Colostrum is a necessary kind of gross. Known as “liquid gold,” it’s packed with concentrated nutrients crucial for a newborn’s survival. First-time mothers often struggle to produce enough colostrum or produce it in time; my own son needed to be readmitted to the hospital after nutrient depletion caused him to develop jaundice.
Colostrum is just as unappealing when exiting an infant as it is when it enters. As a natural laxative, it helps newborns move from the initial meconium stool – black, tarry, and almost odorless – to a looser, greenish-brown or yellowish-green mess that might remind you of something an overindulgent truck driver might leave behind. Time for you to handle the diaper change, darling.
3. Going Out With a “Blecch.”
Our bodies save their most revolting act for the grand finale. Not long after we take our last breath – and even before our bowels have emptied in a fitting end – we begin to literally devour ourselves. Decomposition starts moments after death with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. With our hearts no longer pumping oxygen, our cells experience an increase in acidity, and toxic byproducts of chemical reactions begin to build up inside them.
It gets even worse. Enzymes begin breaking down cell membranes, and as cells disintegrate, they slowly release their contents. This process usually begins in the liver, which is rich in enzymes, and the brain, which has a high water content. Our other tissues – including our once-soft lungs – quickly follow, as we transform into a rotting sack of toxic gases. Broken blood cells leak out of ruptured vessels and, with gravity’s help, settle in the smaller veins and capillaries, discoloring the skin.
Next, our gut bacteria – the most numerous residents of our microbiome – get their last morbid feast. They start devouring our intestines from the inside out, then feast on nearby capillaries. The lymph nodes, liver (no fava beans here), and spleen are their next targets.
As the body cools down, it begins adjusting to its environment. The protein filaments, actin and myosin, which allow our muscles to move, run out of energy and stiffen. Rigor mortis takes over, starting in the eyelids, jaw, and neck, before gradually spreading to the torso and limbs. In the end, we leave this world just as we arrived: unpleasant, stiff, and soiled.
2. Foul Mouthed
The title of the grossest spot on the human body likely belongs to the mouth. Damp, multi-organed, and constantly exposed to the outside world, our mouths are the ultimate breeding ground for germs – essentially, the cruise ships of our bodies.
To begin with, at any given moment, there could be a billion bacteria on each of our teeth (with good oral care reducing that number to a mere 1,000 – a pretty remarkable difference). These bacteria belong to around 700 species. Some are helpful, but when harmful bacteria join forces with saliva and food remnants, they form dental plaque, a sticky substance that builds up on teeth and under the gums. Over time, plaque hardens into tartar, which can cause lasting damage to our teeth.
The rest of the mouth isn't much better, with our tongues being another major source of concern. Again, the mouth's unique position as an open passage to both the external world and the inside of our body contributes to the problem.
It’s no surprise that harmful bacteria from the mouth can travel elsewhere, including our brains. For instance, gum disease has been associated with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and pneumonia, and other oral health issues may increase the chances of developing dementia-related diseases such as Alzheimer's.
1. Please Don’t Compare a Vital Organ to…
… a bowl of whipped cream. Ugh. I can't undo that thought, and now you can't forget it either.
Our lungs are gross on a whole different level compared to bodily fluids: they're essential organs that have an almost unsettling, fragile quality. The realization that two irreplaceable, life-sustaining organs have the delicate texture of whipped cream makes it go from ‘gross’ to ‘terrifying’ on a visceral level. It’s genuinely unnerving to the core.
Dr. Kathryn Dreger, a professor at Georgetown University’s medical school, recently explained the process of breathing in an article about COVID-19’s impact on the lungs. As she writes, when we breathe, air travels through a network of “smaller and smaller pipes, finally reaching tiny tubes less than a millimeter wide called bronchioles. At the very end of these tubes are microscopic sacs known as alveoli. The lining of each sac is so thin that air passes directly through them into the red blood cells.”
She compares an essential organ to, well, a state of non-being: “These millions of alveoli are so soft, so delicate, that a healthy lung has almost no substance.”
For all its horrors, at least COVID makes the lung a bit more resilient (and just as delectable!). Dreger elaborates that the virus triggers a yellow, gummy substance called exudate to fill the air sacs. When enough sacs are overwhelmed, the lung’s texture transforms into something more akin to – and I quote – “a marshmallow.”
