Health – Amazing Facts 4 u

Guinea Pig

Amazing Facts 4 U — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:30:36 +0000

35 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Guinea Pig | Amazing Facts 4U

The guinea pig was domesticated as early as 5000 B.C. in South America as a source of food. They were also used in religious ceremonies and in traditional medicine. They have been kept in households as companion animals since being introduced by European traders in the 16th century.
The scientific name of the guinea pig is Cavia porcellus, which means “little pig.” They belong to the family Caviidae, which is a family of South American rodents. They are also not from Guinea; they originated in the Andes.
Guinea pigs may have been called pigs for several reasons. For example, they have a similar squeal to a pig’s. They are also somewhat built like a small pig, with a large head, stout neck, and no real tail.
While guinea pigs are not from Guinea, it is possible “guinea” was included in their name because they may have been sold for a guinea (English coin). Another theory is that Europeans may have believed guinea pigs came from the African country Guinea since ships carrying the furry mammals from South America often stopped there before going on to Europe.
Male guinea pigs are called boars, females are referred to as sows, and young ones are called pups.
If a female guinea pig is uninterested in a male during courtship, she will sometimes squirt a jet of urine at the persistent male.
The gestation period of a guinea pig is about 70 days. A female guinea pig (called a sow) is able to produce a litter of up to 4 young guinea pig pups.
The amazing fact is that if a female guinea pig does not give birth before she is 6 months old, her pubic bones will fuse. If she tries to give birth later, the fused bones will prevent her from giving birth resulting in the death of the mother and the unborn pups.
Guinea pigs have a high maternal mortality rate of about 20%.
Baby guinea pigs are born with their eyes open and are covered in fur. Baby pups are able to drink from a water bottle and can eat hay within hours of being born. They can run only 3 hours after being born.
Guinea pigs in fact have 3 toes on their forefeet and 4 toes on their hind feet.
Guinea pigs have a long and detailed history of being used in medical research from the 17th century. While rats and mice have become more popular test animals in the modern era, guinea pigs are still used as subjects for juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis, scurvy, and pregnancy complications.
There are two general categories of guinea pigs: long-haired and short-haired. Short-haired guinea pigs are typically easier to care for than long-haired ones.
Guinea pigs typically live about 4 or 5 years, though they may live up to 8. The longest-living guinea pig on record was Snowball from Nottinghamshire, England. She died at the age of nearly 15 years in February 1979.
Guinea pigs don’t have to sleep for long periods. They prefer to take short naps throughout the day and night.
Guinea pig ears are very sensitive to noise and they do not like any loud bangs.
Guinea pigs can hear sounds of up to 40,000 to 50,000 Hz, and some guinea pig vocalizations are ultrasonic at above 20,000 Hz.
Guinea pigs are particularly vocal. They have a range of vocalizations to communicate with each other, including ‘purring’ when content and ‘chirping’ when stressed.
Guinea pigs can’t sweat like humans can and so can get heatstroke if they are left out in the sun or become too hot. They have to find shade whenever possible.
Guinea pigs have what is known as “open rooted” teeth like rats which constantly grow to require them to constantly grind down their teeth while eating food keeping them properly aligned.
Guinea pigs will eat all day and night.
They do not bite in self-defense and will only bite because they think your hand is food.
Guinea pigs have a very good field of vision and are able to see around them so as to detect predators. The amazing fact is that they can’t see anything straight in front of their noses which means they don’t see what they eat.
The American guinea pig is one of the oldest breeds of guinea pigs and is considered the “classic guinea pig.” One of the most commonly found, it is an ideal pet for children because of its short, smooth fur.
Guinea pigs typically run a higher temperature than humans, at about 101° F. Their high temperature places them at increased risk on hot days or when they’re exposed to direct sunlight.
After about 4 years old, guinea pigs are usually considered senior citizens, and genetic health issues usually appear at this time.
Guinea pigs are very social and are truly happy only when they are together with other guinea pigs. Even the most loving human cannot take the place of other guinea pigs.
Because guinea pigs are so social, it is illegal to own just one in Switzerland.
When you are holding a guinea pig, the way to settle it down if it’s wriggling too much is to bring your hand under its back-side and amazingly it will stop wriggling.
A recent study found that children ages 5 to 12 on the autism spectrum showed a marked decrease in stress while interacting with guinea pigs. The pet could act as a “social buffer” for students with autism who may have difficulty making friends.
Guinea pigs are fragile creatures and so need to be treated with gentle hands. If you are rough, you could break its bones. In fact, they have a total of 258 bones in the body.
Amazingly guinea pigs always march in single file, with the largest guinea pig at the front and the young protected in the middle.
Guinea pigs have been found to be allergic to penicillin.
Guinea Pigs have excellent spatial orientation and are able to learn complex maze tasks using symbols as signposts.
Like humans, guinea pigs are unable to make vitamin C and need to acquire it through food sources. Failing to do so can lead to scurvy and eventually death.

Visit and subscribe to our blog! Get enriching & uplifting quotes right in your inbox: www.friendsloveforever.com

~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Tears

Amazing Facts 4 U — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:30:00 +0000

20 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Tears | Amazing Facts 4U

Everyone starts life with that first cry. As you grow up, you still produce about 200 ml of tears a day, even if you never or rarely cry.
Although babies have the same instinct to cry to satisfy their needs, each culture’s socialization processes lead to different ways of crying as an older child or adult.
The film of tears on the eye is a complex system, in fact consisting of three layers of oil, water, and mucus. The water layer is the thickest and contains electrolytes like sodium and potassium, proteins (mostly enzymes), glucose, and other substances. Various facts in the outer oil layer slow evaporation.
The specific composition of tears may change day today.
The lacrimal glands that secrete tears are located on the outer portion of the upper eyes. They are peanut-sized. blinking spreads the tears across the eye surface. Tears drain into the tiny openings in the eyelids, called puncta (one on the inside corner of each lid), and then through ducts to the nasal cavity, where you either swallow them or they become part of nasal fluid.
Besides lubricating the eye and flushing away debris, tears also serve the function of delivering oxygen and nutrients and removing waste products. Tears also improve the image that forms on the retina by smoothing any irregularities on the surface of the eyeball.
Tears also serve as a defense mechanism. The antibodies, enzymes, and other immune components in tear help protect the eyes against microorganisms.
There are three types of tears. Continuous (or basal) tears are produced for basic eye function, such as lubrication. Reflex (or irritant) tears occur when the eye is exposed to excessive light, the cold, wind, a foreign body, or irritating food like cut onions. Psychogenic tears are shed for emotional reasons.
Crying is a way to communicate needs and elicit attention from others, at least in early life, and maybe a means of releasing emotional tension. As per research, psychogenic tears differ in composition from other tears, and crying may be a way to rid the body of stress-related chemicals.
Boys and girls cry in equal frequency. Women reportedly cry more than men.
When a person cries and the first drop of tears comes from the right eye, it’s happiness. But when the first tears come from the left, it’s pain.
Emotional tears actually contain leucine encephalin, a natural painkiller.
A baby who cries for more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week, for more than 3 weeks may have abdominal colic.
The ducts that drain tears from your eyes can become blocked due to aging, infection, inflammation, injury, tumor, or cyst causing symptoms of excessive tearing and watery eyes.
In certain neurological conditions, crying along with laughing can be uncontrolled. The condition is called pathological laughing and crying (PLC). Laughter or sobbing can occur at inappropriate times. PLC can appear as a symptom of stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS).
All vertebrates i.e. animals with backbones that spend time on land have continuous tears and perhaps reflex tears. Humans are the only animals that also have emotional tears. There are also reports of elephants shedding tears in grief.
Syn-propanediol-S-oxide is the chemical released by onions in the air which irritates the eyes making lacrimal glands release more tears. New Zealand researchers have been able to produce tearless onions by inhibiting the gene that makes this chemical.
If tear production declines or tears evaporate too quickly, the result is dry eye. Inflammation may play a role. Besides causing burning or grittiness, dry eye syndrome can cause blurry vision and can potentially damage the eye.
Tears have the same composition as saliva made up of proteins, salt, and hormones.
A woman’s tears amazingly send a particular chemical signal to men which causes a dip in male sexual arousal, which is an involuntary yet interesting means of nonverbal communication between the sexes.

If you desire further simple wisdom to help center your thoughts, go and subscribe to our blog: www.wisdomhealingcenter.com

~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Radiation

Amazing Facts 4 U — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:30:07 +0000

30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Radiation | Amazing Facts 4U

Radiation is the energy that comes from a source and travels through space. When this energy passes into the body, either by penetrating skin or being swallowed or inhaled, it may be harmful. Whether the radiation is ionizing or non-ionizing will influence the health risks.
Sources of ionizing radiation include nuclear weapons handling and detonation, nuclear plants, x-rays, etc.
Non-iodizing radiation is low-energy radiation that includes radiation from sources such as sunlight, microwaves, radio frequencies, radar, and sonar.
Radium, a radioactive element was discovered by Marie Curie who in fact died from radiation exposure.
Millirem is 1/1000 REM, a unit to measure radiation.
The loss in life expectancy from a 1 millirem dose is about 1.2 minutes, equivalent to crossing the street three times, taking three puffs on a cigarette, 10 extra Calories for an overweight person.
Nuclear power plants are very safe. In fact, the safety limit for exposure is just 5 millirem.
The average radiation exposure due to medical diagnostic procedures is about 80 millirem per year.
People in America living near coal-fired power stations are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants.
Chest X-ray gives off about 30 millirems of radiation.
The average person absorbs about 300 millirems of radiation per year in total from background sources.
1% of static on an untuned analog TV is from cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang.
The thorium-rich sands of Kerala, India give off 380 millirems per year, and similar sands in Guarapari, Brazil give locals an amazing 600 millirems per year.
Residents of Denver, Colorado get about four times as much cosmic radiation as those in who live at sea level, giving them an extra 115 millirems of radiation per year.
The Manhattan Project secretly tested the effects of radiation on its own citizens, including injecting pregnant women with radioactive mixtures and feeding children radioactive oatmeal. In the end, about 1,400 children died due to these experiments.
During the Manhattan Project, a man was injected with Plutonium without his knowledge or consent and he survived it for 20 years, eventually surviving the highest radiation dose known for any human.
Bananas are slightly radioactive and eating a banana exposes a person to radiation.
Because of the amount of granite used in its construction, the Grand Central Station of New York City produces more radiation than what is allowable at a nuclear power plant.
Astronauts on the Apollo missions reported seeing flashes and streaks of light when they closed their eyes. This was later confirmed to be caused by cosmic radiation bombarding their retinas while outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
All the American flags placed on the moon are now white due to radiation from the sun.
In the 1950s, there was a toy called the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory that came equipped with low-level radiation sources and four Uranium-bearing ore samples. It sold for $49.50. The product stayed on the market for only about a year between 1950 and 1951.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster was huge. It is still giving off radiation, and that there is a high chance of the containment structure collapsing, causing huge amounts of radiation to spread out.
A fireman’s eyes at the Chernobyl disaster are said to have turned from brown to blue because of the intensity of the radiation he received.
There is a type fungi inside the Chernobyl reactors that thrives on radiation.
Flight crews are classified as radiation workers and some are exposed to more radiation annually than nuclear plant workers. One flight from New York to London is equivalent to one chest X-ray.
Smokers receive a radiation dose equivalent to about 300 chest x-rays annually due to the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 contained in tobacco smoke that comes from the ingredients of the fertilizers that are used in farming tobacco.
The USA originally denied that atomic bombs caused lingering radioactivity, calling such claims Japanese propaganda
A handful of raw uranium ore actually only has about as much radiation as 10 bananas. Banana has radiation due to potassium content.
The use of nuclear weapons and testing has resulted in steel contaminated with background radiation in many areas after 1945 making it unusable for many scientific and medical applications and steel made before 1945, often taken from sunken battleships, must be used instead.
On December 27, 2004, Earth was hit by the largest blast of radiation in recorded history. It came from a “giant flare” on a magnetar 50,000 light-years away.

Visit and subscribe to our blog! Get enriching & uplifting quotes right in your inbox: www.friendsloveforever.com

~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Alcohol

Amazing Facts 4 U — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:30:49 +0000

40 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Alcohol | Amazing Facts 4U

The production of alcohol has been traced back at least 12,000 years.
There are 13 minerals that are essential for human life, and all of them can be found in alcohol.
Most vegetables and almost all fruits contain a small amount of alcohol in them.
The world’s oldest known recipe is for beer.
The amazing fact is that the human body produces its own supply of alcohol naturally, 24 hours a day.
The fact is all spirits (unlike beer and wine) are originally clear and colorless. The golden brown and other colors are achieved due to the aging process.
Alcohol kills one person every 10 seconds worldwide.
At any given time, 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk. It means 50 million people are drunk right now.
It only takes 6 minutes for brain cells to react to alcohol. Alcohol is not digested; it gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream.
Alcohol doesn’t make you forget anything. In fact, when you get blackout drunk, the brain temporarily loses the ability to create memories.
Amazingly about half the world’s population older than 15 have never consumed alcohol.
Per capita, alcohol consumption is high in Russia where there are over 500,000 alcohol-related deaths each year. In fact, beer was not considered an alcoholic beverage in Russia until 2013.
Vodka is the world’s most popular liquor by a huge margin, with about 5 billion liters consumed every year.
The word brandy is derived from the Dutch word brandewijn; it means burnt wine.
Distilled spirits such as brandy, gin, rum, etc. contain no carbohydrates, no fats, and no cholesterol of any kind.
In order to make a bottle of wine, you will need to have approximately 600 grapes on hand.
White wine gets darker as it ages while red wine gets lighter.
The most beer-drinking country in the world is the Czech Republic with an amazing per capita beer consumption of almost 40 gallons a year. Next in ranks are Germany and Ireland.
Heavy drinking will lead to hepatitis and the resulting irreversible liver damage will result in liver cirrhosis which could be fatal.
Amazingly the soil of one of the vineyards in France is considered so precious that it is mandatory for workers to scrape the soil off their shoes before they leave.
The pressure in a champagne bottle is amazing 90 pounds per square inch, which is 3 times the automobile tire pressure. In fact, a bottle of Champagne contains about 49 million bubbles. The popped cork from a champagne bottle can travel as fast as 60 miles per hour.
Japanese doctors have observed patients with “auto-brewery syndrome,” in which high levels of candida yeast in the intestines churn out so much alcohol that they can cause drunkenness.
People with blue eyes have been found to have higher alcohol tolerance.
Amsterdam pays alcoholics in beer to clean streets: 5 cans of beer for a day’s work, plus 10 Euro.
Alcohol is prohibited in the UK Parliament with one exception: the chancellor can drink while delivering the annual budget statement.
Sir Winston Churchill was one of the world’s heaviest drinkers while Adolf Hitler was one of the world’s best-known abstainers from alcohol.
Abraham Lincoln held a liquor license and operated several taverns.
The amazing fact is that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous demanded alcohol during the last few days of his life.
Alexander the Great once held a drinking contest among his soldiers. When it was over, amazingly 42 people had died from alcohol poisoning.
In the 1600’s thermometer used to be filled with brandy instead of mercury.
In 1985 there were fewer than 50 beer brewers in the US. Today there are nearly 30000.
The word “toast,” which means wishing good health originated in ancient Rome. A piece of toasted bread was literally dropped into wine back then.
Drinking a banana milkshake is a perfect cure for hangovers.
The phrase mind your p’s and q’s can also trace its roots back to alcohol. In England, pubs serve liquor in pint and quart sizes. If a customer became unruly, it used to be common for a bartender to tell that customer to mind their own pints and quarts. Over time, the saying was shortened and usage expanded.
In outer space, there exists a gigantic cloud of alcohol that can be used to produce 400 trillion pints of beer. Amazingly it extends nearly 300 billion miles across.
The world record for alcohol consumption is by Andre the Giant, who drank 156 beers in one sitting (over 73 liters/16 gallons).
As part of an advertising campaign, Molson, a Canadian beer company, strategically placed ‘beer fridges’ around Europe that only Canadian passports could unlock.
The amazing fact is that if an ant is drunk, a fellow comrade will carry him back to the nest to sleep off the alcohol.
Scientist Niels Bohr was “given a house next door to the Carlsberg brewing company, and had a pipeline running from the brewery into the house so that he could have a never-ending supply of fresh beer on tap”.
Amazingly even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death.

A lovely insight. Find more at www.wisdomlovequotes.com

~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Breast Cancer

Amazing Facts 4 U — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:30:53 +0000

30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Breast Cancer | Amazing Facts 4U

The first recorded mastectomy for breast occurred in A.D. 548 on Theodora, Empress of Byzantine.
Breast cancer was one of the first cancers to be described by ancient physicians. For example, physicians in ancient Egypt described breast cancer more than 3,500 years ago. One surgeon describes “bulging” tumours in the breast of which “there is no cure.”
In 400 B.C., Hippocrates describe breast cancer as a humoral disease caused by black bile or melancholia. He labelled cancer karkinos, meaning “crab,” because the tumours seemed to have tentacles which looked like the legs of crab.
The first operation to use anaesthesia was a breast cancer surgery.
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among American women after skin cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women after lung cancer.
The incidence of breast cancer is highest in more developed countries and lowest in less developed countries.
The left breast is statistically more prone to developing cancer than the right breast. Reason is not known.
In the U.S., on average one woman die of breast cancer every 15 minutes. The United States has the most cases of breast cancer in the world.
Only 5-10% of breast cancers occur in women who have a genetic predisposition for it.
Nearly 10.4 % of all cancers in women is breast cancer.
Approximately 1.2 million cases of breast cancer are diagnosed around the world each year. About 75% are found in women over age 50.
When breast cancer spreads beyond the breast, it is said to be “metastatic.” The most common places breast cancer spreads to are the bones, liver, and lungs.
There are currently 2.5 million breast cancer survivors living in the United States.
Usually 95% of new cases and 97% of breast cancer deaths occurred in women 40 years and older. The biggest single risk factor for breast cancer is age.
White women have a higher incidence of breast cancer than African American women. However, African American women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women.
About 1 in 3,000 pregnant or lactating women will develop breast cancer. Research has shown that once a woman has been diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy, her chances of survival are less than a non-pregnant woman.
Mammography was initially used in 1969 when the first specialized X-ray units for breast imagining were developed.
Women age 40 and older should have screening mammograms every 1 to 2 years. It is estimated that if every woman over the age of 50 had her yearly mammogram, breast cancer deaths in this age group would drop by 25% or more.
Tumors are more likely to be malignant when they are firm and have irregular shapes, while benign tumors are more likely to feel round or soft. On average, it takes 100 days or more for a cancer cell to double in size. It takes about 10 years for cells to divide to a size that can be actually felt.
Breast cancer in men is rare, accounting for approximately 1% of breast cancer rates. African American men are more likely to die from breast cancer than white men.
One in 40 women of Ashkenazi (French, German, and East European) Jewish descent carry the BRCA1 and BRCA2 (breast cancer) gene, which is significantly higher than in the general population where only 1 in 500 to 800 people carry the gene.
In 1882, the father of American surgery, William Steward Halstead (1852-1922), introduced the first radical mastectomy (the breast tissue underlying chest muscle and the lymph nodes are removed). Until the mid 1970s, 90% of women with breast cancer were treated with this procedure.
The youngest known survivor of breast cancer is Aleisha Hunter from Ontario, Canada. At only three years old, Aleisha underwent a complete mastectomy in 2010 to treat her juvenile strain of breast cancer.
Breastfeeding has consistently been shown to reduce breast cancer, the greater the duration, the greater the benefit.
No association has been found between breast implants and an increased risk of breast cancer.
The most common type of breast cancer (70%) originates in the breast ducts and is known as ductal carcinoma. A less common type of breast cancer (15%) is known as lobular carcinoma or cancer that originates in the lobules. More rare types of cancers include medullary carcinoma, Paget’s disease and tubular carcinoma.
Research has found that pomegranates may help prevent breast cancer. Chemicals called ellagitannins block the production of estrogen, which can fuel some types of breast cancer.
Studies report that breast cancer patients with diabetes were nearly 50% more likely to die than those who didn’t have diabetes.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM). The first NBCAM took place in October 1985.
Not all lumps that are found in the breast are cancerous but may be a fibrocystic breast condition, which is benign.

If you desire further simple wisdom to help center your thoughts, go and subscribe to our blog: www.wisdomhealingcenter.com

~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Drowning

Amazing Facts 4 U — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 09:30:46 +0000

30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Drowning | Amazing Facts 4U

About 1 million people around the world die by drowning every year, that is more than two persons per minute. Among them 50 % are children.
There are about 8 to 10 times that many who experience a drowning process but who reach safety alone or are rescued by others.
Every day about 10 people die due to drowning in the US. Nearly 80% of people who die from drowning are male.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) performed by bystanders has been shown to save lives and improve outcomes in drowning victims. The more quickly CPR is started, the better the chance of improved outcomes. CPR should be learned by everybody.
If you are caught in a rip current, swim parallel to shore. Once free of the current, swim diagonally toward shore.
One does not need an enormous depth of water to drown. Drowning can actually happen in as little as 12 inches (30 mm) of water.
Children can drown in toilets, buckets, baths, etc. An adult will usually not drown in a bucket or a toilet unless they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Besides water people can drown in other liquids also especially in industrial establishments.
“Wet drowning” is a type of drowning in which the water manages to enter the lungs. In fact, the air tube is sealed the moment water enters airways preventing water from entering lungs. This is due to vocal cord and larynx constrictions. As air tube is blocked, even air cannot enter lungs making person unconscious. Once unconscious, the air tube opens and water rushes into the lungs causing death.
In “dry drowning” the air tube will stay shut and cause cardiac arrest and hence, death. In this case the person will die before water enters lungs. Amazingly once the person is dead, water fails to enter lungs.
In “secondary drowning”, a person actually inhales a small amount of liquid or water into lungs which irritate lungs, impairs gas exchange leading to pulmonary edema and eventually causes death by respiratory failure. This can happen even due to poison gases or chemical and even vomit getting inhaled!
Deepwater blackout is yet another type of drowning. When someone dives into water, the oxygen present in lungs is capable of producing enough pressure to keep the person conscious. But this pressure starts falling as the person ascends from the depths of water and causes latent hypoxia causing deep water blackout when the person reaches surface. The moment the person loses consciousness, he or she sinks! This is usually not a common occurrence and happens rarely usually to strong and fit swimmers.
We also have shallow water blackout. Just before diving or swimming, a person feels a strong urge to breathe, especially exhale. As a person exhales, CO2 level falls. Once in water, a person will not feel the strong urge to breathe in or inhale because the CO2 level is low but he or she will not realize that the brain is deprived of oxygen. He or she continues to swim only to faint all of a sudden and then sink. Most cases of shallow water blackout occur in swimming pools or shallow water bodies.
Drowning in saltwater usually takes longer. When a drowning person inhales salt water, the salt concentration in the lungs increases. Water from blood rushes into the lungs to dilute the saltwater. As a result, the blood thickens. When the blood thickens, the heart comes under pressure and causes cardiac arrest. This takes about 8-10 minutes.
Since the cardiac arrest in seawater drowning happens after 8-10 minutes, it is easier to rescue people drowning in saltwater.
In contrast to saltwater, drowning in freshwater gives you little time to rescue. If freshwater is inhaled, the water becomes hypotonic compared to tissues in the lungs. So, the water rushes into the cells to dilute the cells’ salt concentration. The red blood cells then burst, releasing hemoglobin which gets accumulated in kidneys, leading to acute renal failure. Freshwater is also absorbed into blood thereby diluting it and cooling the heart sufficient enough to cause hypothermia-induced cardiac arrest. This happens in just 2-3 minutes. Thus, rescuers do not get enough time to save the victims.
In fact, 90% of the drowning cases occur in freshwater.
It is a myth that a drowning person shouts and yells and calls for help. In fact, our respiratory system is designed to first breathe and then generate speech. When a person drowns, his or her mouth usually sinks below the water surface and then resurfaces in very short successions. This gives the respiratory system just enough time to concentrate on its primary function, i.e. breathing. A person tries to quickly inhale and exhale. Yelling becomes literally impossible.
It is also a myth that a drowning person throws out arms and legs in all possible directions. In fact, out of instinct, a drowning person will extend his or her arms laterally trying to press down on water surface and keep their mouth out of water to continue breathing. This arm movement is completely involuntary and happens on its own. So waving or throwing arms at get the attention of rescuers is literally impossible.
In case of true drowning, people really cannot help themselves even by reaching out for a rope or a ring thrown at them. Drowning is a very silent process contrary to what we see in movies.
A drowning person will usually show a few signs which most of us fail to recognize. Usually the head of the person will be low in water with mouth at the level of water and occasionally sinking in and coming out of water. Eyes will become empty and glassy and will usually lose focus. Eyes will mostly be open and the face will reflect fear. He or she will usually be gasping with hands stretched laterally. It will appear as if he or she is trying to climb up a ladder that is invisible. Legs and arms will be mostly under water.
Children are more susceptible to drowning. They can drown even in presence of adults right next to them! So, it is important to keep an eye on them always and look for any signs of drowning.
You have to be vigilant. A person next to you in water may be drowning and drown silently. Take special care when children are in water.
At home it is a good precaution to empty all tubs, buckets, containers and wading pools immediately after use. Store them upside down and out of children’s reach.
Keep toilet lids closed and use toilet seat locks to prevent drowning. It’s also a good idea to keep doors to bathrooms and laundry rooms closed.
We’re relatively poor swimmers when compared to other animals but we have the mammalian diving reflex. When a human’s face touches water, the airway closes, the heart rate slows, and the capillaries in the skin and extremities constrict, sending blood toward the vital organs. This serves a dual purpose of keeping the organs oxygenated and insulated from increasing water pressure. It also saps strength from the limbs for swimming. This reflex is most frequently seen in drowning children giving them a better chance of recovery than adults.
Due to above reflex action, the bodies of children who have been submerged for many minutes have been resuscitated with no neurological damage.
At a 1985 bash in New Orleans, Louisiana, party was being held to celebrate a summer where no one had drowned at any of the city’s pools. There were some 200 people in attendance, over half of which were certified, lifeguards. A further four lifeguards were also on active duty. Yet a 31-year-old Jerome Moody died in pool and nobody noticed.
The Dead Sea located between Israel and Jordan has so much salty water that it is too dense for a person to drown.
In fact, most sharks actually need to continue swimming to be able to survive. If they don’t swim all the time, then they will end up drowning.

Find more nuggets of wisdom on our website: www.aspiringquotes.com