EVEN MORE ABOUT OUR ASTONISHING BODY

• In 24 hours, the blood in the body travels a total of 12,000 miles - that's four times the width of North America.

• In the space of just one minute, over three BILLION cells in the body will die - and another three billion will be created to replace them.

• The spread of superbugs can partly be attributed to unhygenic doctors. It's thought that up to 20 per cent of stethoscopes harbour dangerous bacteria.

• The human gut contains about 1kg (2.2 lbs) of bacteria. In fact, there are more bacteria growing in and on the body than there are human cells

• Our bodies produce 200 billion new blood cells every day.

• New born babies have an amazing self-repair ability - if they were to lose the top on one of their fingertips, it would re-grow.

• Red blood cells survive for six months but white blood cells last just a couple of weeks

• At least 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and in the next five years, this number is expected to triple to over 100 million

• An adult kiss lasts an average of 45 seconds and involves 34 oris muscles ... And we need all those because during a lifetime, an average human being will spend two week kissing.

• Humans have more facial muscles than any other animal on earth - 22 on each side of the face.

• Before their first birthday, the average baby will have dribbled 255 pints of saliva. By the time they're two years old, they will have crawled 93 miles.

• Children who go to nurseries and mix with other children before the age of two are generally less allergic.

• One of the body's responses to trauma injury is to produce a surge of endorphins - painkilling hormones. These are so powerful that a limb could be blown off and the person will feel nothing - at first.

• If the brain is deprived of oxygen, permanent brain damage occurs within three minutes.

• The human hand contains three main nerves, two major arteries and 27 different bones - more of the body is devoted to controlling the hands than any other part of the body.

• There are over 50 billion white blood cells in the body's immune system and every second, the body makes 120,000 new white cells.

• Red blood cells make up just under half of the total volume of blood and their main function is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.

• Did you know, your ears keep growing! The average adult ear length is 675mm and they grow 0.22mm per year.

• Humans replace one tenth of their bone cells every year.

• Humans breathe in and out an amazing 25,000 times a day.

• In the average lifetime, we spend five YEARS eating and we consume around 7,000 times our own weight in food.

• Humans developed a taste for spices as a protection against microbes. These spices were originally evolved by plants to keep away insects. Onion and garlic are particularly good at killing bacteria.

• When we go to sleep and enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement), our bodies become completely paralysed as areas of the brain that control movement are de-activated. It is this that stops us falling out of bed.

• A girl is born with about 0ne million eggs in her ovaries. By puberty, only a quarter are left. And a woman's ovaries age twice as fast as the rest of her body.

• By the time a woman has reached her 60s, she will have released around 450 baby making eggs.

• Men produce sperm from puberty into old age, which means that a man can father a child until the day he dies.

• One single drop of blood contains about five million red blood cells.

• There are 2,500 nerve receptors in each square centimetre of your fingertips and a single motion like patting a dog involves co-ordinating up to 60 different muscles.

• The brain can distinguish between 10 million colours.

• When full, the human bladder can hold two pints of urine.

• In a lifetime, a human will grow six feet of nose hair and shed three stone (42 lbs) of dead skin.

• Six out of ten of all the children born in Britain today will live beyond the age of 75. A century ago, the figure would have been less than two out of ten.

• A human can look forward to having sex an average of 2,580 times with five different partners.

• In the average lifetime, the human heart beats two-and-a-half billion times.

• Skin can now be artificially grown. One amazing result of this is that the skin from one hand could be grown into enough to cover six football pitches.

• There are 137 million light sensitive cells in the eye's retina and the fluid that fills the eye is changed 15 times a day.

• This century will see a huge surplus of males. More male than female sperm are produced and the ratio of men to women born at any one time is 106 men to 100 women. For most of the 20^th century, wars and a higher male infant death rate have always meant more females in the population. But this will change in the next decade.