Sometimes “Ignorance is a Bliss.” But there is always a fondness inside us that wants to know the facts that we will probably regret knowing later. Even if it makes our stomach churn and our mind turn upside down, we still want to know the facts which we should not be knowing. Let’s go through these disturbing facts that you will regret knowing.

1 Your body makes collagen with the help of vitamin C, which holds your skin together and makes scar tissue. If your body suffers from a vitamin C deficiency, you get scurvy, your old wounds open, and the rate of healing injuries becomes reduced.

Vitamin C works as a barrier for your wounds. It helps in collagen formation, antioxidant function, iron absorption, and infection-fighting. You can suffer from scurvy when there is a vitamin C deficiency in your body. Symptoms of scurvy include tooth loss, bleeding sores, anemia, pain in joints and muscles, and nausea.

Vitamin C mainly helps in making collagen which is the main component in connective tissues. Connective tissues hold together the structure of blood vessels. So, this is the reason when you get scurvy, you will suffer problems as your old wounds will open, wounds will heal slowly, bleeding into and under the skin that results in small red spots.

Scurvy can be fatal if it’s not treated properly or left untreated. To avoid scurvy, make sure to consume those oranges, lemons, mangoes, strawberries, and other sources of vitamin C. (source)

2 From 2007 to 2008, the University of Colorado analyzed that 15% of the air you breathe in the subway stations is dead skin from passengers. The skin from areas such as ear canals, armpits, and belly buttons.

Millions of people visit subway stations daily. Most of them are not as clean as expected. It’s very disgusting to know the contents of the air that we breathe in subway stations. From 2007 to 2008, biologists from the University of Colorado took air samples from several New York City subway stations for analysis. They found 15% of the air consisted of dead skin from passengers.

Primarily, the skin came from the heads and heels of riders. However, 12% of the skin came from other areas of the human body such as armpits, ear canals, belly-buttons, and rear-ends. It’s the result of the cloud of skin particles that are generated from our body when we release heat known as “convective plume.”

The proportion of skin microbiota is higher in your office building as compared to subway stations. The air of the New York City subway stations consists of traces of diseases like staph infection, bubonic plague, and meningitis. Next time you visit subway stations, you are probably breathing in someone’s armpit residue. (1, 2)

3 Surveys of medical professionals indicated that till the 80s, doctors performed surgeries on infants as old as 15 months without anesthesia. They thought the babies could not feel pain during the procedure.

Until 1986, physicians performed surgeries without giving anesthesia to babies. The babies are only given a muscle relaxant to keep them from floundering during the operation. It was considered the best practice at that time because doctors thought that babies could not feel during the operation.

In the 1940s, studies confirmed that babies can’t feel pain because they haven’t developed the neurological capability for pain, as they did not tend to react on pin prick tests. But they were horrifically wrong.

Newborn babies feel pain more intensely as compared to adults or children. Exposure to such pain and psychological stress can affect babies physically as well as psychologically. This can also alter the central nervous system development and tenderness through adolescence.

This is the primary reason why these dangerous practices could not be continued. For a long time, doctors have been imposing these treatments without the consent of parents. They should discuss with parents before inflicting such practices, so parents can decide what’s best for their child. (source)

4 Fatal familial insomnia is a rare genetic disease where you can not sleep for months. No matter whatever medication you take, nothing works. After a while, its symptoms will get worse, your brain will deteriorate, and you will die from exhaustion.

Fatal familial insomnia is a rare sleeping disorder that is passed down through families. It affects a part of the brain known as the thalamus which controls the sleep and wake cycle.

The symptoms start at the age of 32 to 62. It causes trouble in sleeping, loss of appetite, muscle stiffness, sweating, weight loss, high blood pressure, and an increased heart rate.

This disease can be fatal after starting in just six to 36 months. It occurs when the PRNP gene which instructs the body how to make protein is working incorrectly. FFI primarily occurs due to a specific variant in PRNP.

A diagnosis will happen after the doctor will analyze your sleep schedule, perform a clinical exam, and perform imaging studies. Sadly, there is no cure for FFI. (source)

5 It may be shocking that cockroaches can live for three weeks without their head. They can run at five km per hour. They will eventually die of starvation and thirst. Cockroaches have survived the thermonuclear war, and they have been here for so long and they will probably outlive humans.

A human body can not survive without its head but cockroaches can. Cockroaches have an open circulatory system that does not require much pressure for blood flow. If cockroaches’ heads get cut off, then their neck will seal off just by clotting.

They do not bleed to death. They have little holes in each body segment that helps in breathing. They do not require much food because they are poikilotherms, or cold-blooded.

Their brain does not control breathing and their blood does not carry oxygen. The air flows directly to their tissues with the help of a set of tubes called “tracheae.” They can survive by staying quiet and staying around as long as a predator doesn’t hunt them. They will also die of starvation after surviving several weeks.

The cockroaches are pretty fast, they can run up to five kph. They have even survived thermonuclear war such as blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cockroaches are resistant to radiation as compared to humans and other non-insect animals.

They are simple organisms consisting of only a few genes. They have roach cells that divide more slowly as compared to human cells that give them more time to mend problems caused by radiation. In 1962, a Johns Hopkins geneticist, H. Bentley Glass, said that “cockroaches can even outlive the habitations of the foolish humans.” (source)