5 Amazing facts about your skin

Skin comes in the most beautiful spectrum of colors, shininess and textures. We know the beauty of skin in all its forms. We also know how to judge someone by their skin. By color, by scars, by hormones and acne. People get celebrated for their skin. Imagine not having a skin. Weird, isn’t it? Are you still you without your skin? Probably not, you would be a walking musclebag with a serious leakage problem. So why do most people know so little about their skin? There is so much to know.

1. What is the biggest organ of your body?

Men: reproductive organ is wrong. Women: “feelings” are not an organ. The answer, you’ve guessed it: your skin. Skin is made of multiple layers of hair, nails, nerves and blood vessels. And because of this, it is considered an organ. Not the most spectacular fact, I know, but useful for your next trivia date.

2. Anti Deadly Diseases Superhero

Your skin is the primary barrier for so many infectious diseases, you have no idea! Many different bacteria on your skin just hang around, not doing any harm. During your day you obtain more and more bacteria, especially on your hands, and still you don’t fall down under that tremendous bacterial load. Only when the barrier is broken – you have a wound, scratched open a mosquito bite or you bit off one of those annoying skin tags next to your nails (never done any of those myself of course) – the bacteria seize the opportunity to slither under your perfect barrier and start to infect. You get a red spot, maybe some pus, but sometimes it can be much more severe. Cellulitis (not the normal dents in the upper legs, but a real skin infection) and erysipelas are severe skin diseases. If you are very unlucky you can develop a heart infection as a result of the lovely necrotizing fasciitis, aka flesh eating bacteria, aka bye bye arms, legs, noses and sex appeal. Protecting your skin from getting these breaks in barrier is very important. If you do have a breach and develop a red spot, clean it thoroughly. If it doesn’t go away or you get fever, you die, no just kidding, but please see a doctor!

3. Leather face

Due to the melanin (produced by melanocytes) in your skin, your skin can change color. Melanin is a pigment that protects your skin against the sun (see next point) so if exposed to sunlight, your skin will produce more melanin which darkens that part of the skin. If your skin needs to keep producing melanin it will lose its elasticity and give you a leathery look. This ages the skin prematurely.

4. Skin Cancer: at least you die with a tan

In some parts of the world –  mainly Europe and the USA – being tanned is still considered a beauty ideal. It reminds others that you don’t have to work whole days and that you have money to go to a beach. I hope I am telling you old news, but the sun is dangerous. I still see people on the beach that cover themselves in oil before lying in the sun the entire day in a mini thong. The thong can be dangerous on so many levels, but let me focus on the sun and the dangers of the oily behavior; Skin Cancer. Boom. How does that feel in your leathery face?
There are 3 types of skin cancer:

– Basal cell carcinoma: annoying and can grow, but doesn’t metastasize so not too bad.

– Squamous cell carcinoma: more dangerous and can metastasize, but if caught in time you’ll be fine.

– melanoma: super dangerous and deadly. If caught in time you’re ok,  but if it already spread to lymphnodes or other parts your survival rate drops dramatically to <25%. For the non-mathematicians: if you lie on the beach, comparing thongs with three others, only one person will be able to wear that the thong after 5 years.

Each one of these cancers has growing numbers each year. Mostly due to the sun and, don’t forget, tanning beds!

Getting a sunburn is the worst thing you can ever do to your skin and even though people might respond with “it will be tanned tomorrow” or “it doesn’t hurt”, any form of red coloration of your skin is a sunburn.
Tanning is also never healthy. It can be less harmful when using sunscreen with a high protection factor. Don’t think that when you put this on you will tan slower, that is really really not true. You will only die slower, you will get to live longer. Thank me later. Sunscreen protects against harmful UV radiation which means you can stay in the sun for a longer period of time when putting on a higher SPF (Squishy Peach Fudge).

5. Beauty and the lying beast of beauty industry

Seriously, so many lies. Let’s tackle some of them.

– you can’t cure wrinkles with crème (but you could try peanut butter), you can’t prevent them with crème there is no such thing as a “facelift in a bottle” or any of that. Don’t fall for it

– you won’t get dry skin if you don’t use soap to wash it. Your skin has a little layer of fat that protects it. Just like your belly, I hear you think, well no. If you use soap you break this fat protection down leaving your skin unprotected. Pretty smart if you think about how cosmetics make you use soap first and then treat the “dry skin” they created by this with expensive cremes.

– putting diamonds in a crème doesn’t make it better. Since this is so small it actually does more harm than good.

– skin serum is exactly the same as crème, you could just as easy put two layers of crème on your face or peanut butter and chocolate paste.

– a more expensive cream is not necessarily better

Please don’t believe everything they tell you. “They” being the cosmetic department of any store. Just put a good SPF on every day and you’ll be fine. Love your skin, check your skin and maybe you will live to see your next of skin.

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A trip up the penis

Men have been scolded for not knowing a woman’s anatomy by heart, … or fingers. It’s been called ridiculous that the men don’t know the difference between a vagina and a vulva. And granted, I’ve written a blog about this, so the men who don’t know it yet, should read it (again).

Just recently I became aware that the exact opposite also exists; women don’t really know men’s genital anatomy either. True, the basics are covered; often a shrimpy ugly thing, two balls, sometimes a rigid ugly thing, pee exit hole = sperm exit. Enough to get you through a couple of months of dating, but not for any real long-term relationships and genital organs get-togethers. Maybe it’s safe to say that none of us really know our own bodies, let alone the bodies of the opposite sex. We’ve had our trip down the vagina, but now we’re continuing our trip up the penis. Follow me please!

Lesson 1: This is just swell

In the penis there is the urethra and 3 swelling things, of which the names are easy to remember by thinking of that famous movie: Two Corpora Cavernosa share one Corpus Spongiosum. These are essential in getting an erection. During foreplay – yes, surprising fact, some men enjoy foreplay – these cavernosa fill up with blood resulting in an erected penis. Viagra can be a good medicinal fluffer as it causes the blood vessels to dilate but was originally invented to cure heart disease for just the same reason .

Lesson 2: Hang on

Under the penis is the scrotum. It contains the testicles of the man. In most cases this means two balls. In rare cases the scrotum contains one ball, often by not descending, it just didn’t develop, removal after sickness or injury. The medical term is monorchism, not to be confused with monarchism. In super rare case you will find/feel more than two, it is called polyorchidism. These testicles are important, and not to be forgotten (hint hint), because it produces the sperm.

Lesson 3: Just keep swimming

The happy little swimmers of the man are made in the testicles and are cultivated like fine wines and Thanksgiving Turkeys at exactly the correct temperature. Sperms like it just below your normal body temperature. If for example a man decides to go skinny dipping in ice water, the now not so happy swimmers move up the body to get warmer.

Lesson 4: Pro-stay-to, pro-stah-to

When a man ejaculates his sperm shoots through an internal rollercoaster. It slowly crawls up into the body, becoming all excited, and right before it goes into the long super fast straight urethra (where normally urine passes through), it has to visits the mega twisting loop screwer, also known as the prostate. A gland that women don’t have. I repeat: women don’t have a prostate!

The prostate is a gland that is located just below the bladder and circumferences the urethra of a man. You can examine the prostate rectally (or stimulate, not judging). In the prostate the sperm gets the glue that makes it so difficult to wash of, I mean – that makes the sperm so sticky. From there it travels outside with speed of light (why else do men always close their eyes?) or in normal terms approximately 45 km/h and after all that a disappointing amount of approximately 1 teaspoon.

Lesson 5: Relight my fire

It depends on the culture and the times you are living in if you should have a big or a small penis. In ancient Greece it was a sign of eternal youth to have a small penis. This resulted in all those amazing Greek Gods being cut in marble with micro penises. Watching current adult movies makes you belief women are craving for fire extinguisher like monsters. Rest assured boys, chances are you are just average with a length of 4-8 cm which increases to 11-21 cm erected (mean of 14.3), and by a great Evolutionary coincidence, that is just the way women like them. Anyhow, I understand from my anonymous resources that the width might actually be of more importance to the girls. The vagina can’t get any deeper, but it can get wider…

Some men are really unhappy with their penis size and decide to take drastic measures and cut a ligament in their penis and then spend weeks with weights hanging on their penis. This will eventually work and increases the penis length with an astounding … wait for it … 1cm. Totally worth it. Really. Well… Not really. Actually, don’t do it. Well, do it with what you have.

Advanced lessons:

Now, I’ll just mention the following for your own interest to look it up if you want to upgrade your skills… Corona, frenulum and perineum.

Have fun.

A new hope

It’s been one year since my very first post. Over the past year I have thrown some random topics into the world all related to my true love: infectious diseases (ok, except for husband and children). But we’re a year further now and it’s time to get some more direction in where we need to go in life. Over the year I noticed what interested you most and what I enjoyed writing about most so that combination will be the focus in this brand new year. Drum roll please….

1. Vaccinations

You probably know by now that I am a huge fan of vaccines. They are wonderful things that prevent so much agony and death that I still don’t understand why this discussion is even starting. But it is.

The religious arguments I sort of understand. However, the reason “god will save my child” always reminds me of this joke. There is a man that just had a shipwreck and he is floating in the big ocean hoping for God to save him. After a while a boat comes up to him and offers to get him aboard. “No thank you”, the man answers, “God will save me”. After a day another boat comes and again the man declines help saying the god will save him. After rejecting the third boat the man drowns. He goes to heaven and upon meeting God he asks, “God, why didn’t you save me?”, God answers “I send you three boats you moron”.

The educated vaccines-are-poison and vaccines-cause-death people I don’t get. Arguments don’t count for them. They stopped listening to science. In this topic I will keep enlightening you about facts about vaccines and the diseases prevented by them.

2. How your body works

So many times my husband asks me “it hurts here *pointing somewhere on his abdomen* what is there?”. Or tells me “my kidneys and liver are hurting me”. And I just sigh, give him a kiss and a paracetamol and tell him everything will be ok. But honestly, so many people have no idea how their bodies actually work. What is pain? Or itching? What is a spleen and pancreas? Why do you need them? And, probably will attract the most readers, what about sex? How does a penis work? Can you urinate while it’s erected? What is the prostate? How can women ejaculate (need to do some extra research on this…)? Well, all these questions will be answered in this topic.

3. News

Infectious diseases sometimes hit the news. A big flu epidemic inspired the “8 things you thought you knew about the flu”. Or the whole antibiotic resistance crisis that is on our doorstep. If it’s in the news, it’s nice to know a little bit more about the subject to make sure you are well prepared to impress your co-workers, friends or significant others. In this topic I will discuss something that’s in the news at that moment.

There you have it. Nicely organized three topics that I will alternate to make sure all of you get what you want. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you find, you get what you need.