By David Tepera, July 17,2024

I became fascinated with the human body during college at the University of Houston. I had a great professor, Dr. Joel Bloom, who taught most of my anatomy and physiology classes.

Dr. Bloom took me, along with a few classmates, to the Texas Chiropractic College to dissect human cadavers. The goal was to have hands-on learning with all muscles and bones. It was this experience that eventually led me into orthopedics.

So, I’m going to share some basic and fun facts about our amazing body. Just think of the complexity of having all our senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.

A baby’s body has about 300 bones at birth, but some will eventually fuse to form 206.

Most bones are contained in the hands and feet of 27 per hand and 26 per foot.

The femur is your thigh bone and is the longest and strongest of all bones. Also, one of the most painful to break. The weakest and softest bone is your clavicle or collarbone. That’s why it’s the most common broken during contact sports.

Bones stop growing in length during puberty. However, bone density and strength change over the course of life. That’s why I stress the importance of weight training, especially among the elderly.

There are three bones in the middle ear to help us hear. The staple is the smallest and lightest bone of the human skeleton.

For some people, the most used bone is their mandible because they never stop talking.

Here’s a fun one to ask your friends. Humans have seven vertebrates in their cervical region or neck. Guess how many vertebrates are in a giraffe’s neck? The answer is seven. I’ve seen them and they are huge. Just know, that all mammals have seven neck vertebrate.

When you see someone in a wheelchair and they don’t have much use with their arms, then they broke their neck. If they have full use of arms but no use of their legs, then they broke their back. The body typically loses all feeling from the sight of the spinal break down the rest of the body.

Also, know that the tendons connect muscles to bones, and ligaments attach bones to bones, which are typically located in the joint regions.

Lastly, cartilage can’t repair itself because it has no blood supply. That’s why our joints wear out leading to more than 2.2 million hip and knee procedures each year in the United States.

Well, I hope you enjoyed a little information about our bodies. Of course, there’s so much more to know about our amazing skeletal system.