Ten creepy facts about your body

1. There are mites in your eyelashes. The demodex folliculorum is a parasite which lives on hair follicles (and skin). And may cause your eye to feel a “mite” twitchy.
2. You were a butthole (literally). Human embryos belong to a class called deuterostomes, meaning right after conception we develop by first forming a “mouth” called a blastospore. That blastospore eventually becomes the anus.
3. Wake up with a bang? It’s probably not a murderous ghoul. According to the American Sleep Association, people with a parasomnia called Exploding Head Syndrome really do hear a very loud bang when they fall asleep or wake up — a terrifying sensation associated with increased heart rate, anxiety and sleep deficit.
4. Bellybutton breeding ground. If Mom told you to keep it clean, she wasn’t obsessing. The average belly button carries more than 60 species of bacteria. Mouths are more diverse, with about 700 bacterial species (but some are beneficial).
5. Total bacteria outnumber your own cells. By an average factor of 10. That implies 90 percent of the cells in our bodies aren’t our own.
6. Drooling fool. The average adult produces about 66 ounces of saliva daily.
7. Mush for brains. It may look solid in photos, but the texture of the brain is more like melted butter — so those haunted house bowls of spaghetti jelly aren’t far off.
8. And mind-numb. Because brains don’t have pain receptors, some brain surgery patients are awake — and talking to surgeons — during the procedure.
9. You’re shrinking. Adults over 30 lose about half an inch per decade. As well as about half of taste buds by age 60.
10. With a ghostly aura. It seems we really do glow in the dark. A 2009 Japanese study published in the journal PLOS One found humans are bioluminescent, but those photons of visible light we give off (unrelated to body heat) are too faint for the human eye to see. The brightest area? The face.

Which does lend some credibility to ghostly believers. Happy Halloween!

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network whose cat Darby still makes posthumous appearances. Here, kitty kitty. Sholeh@cdapress.com