Hello friends. False Facts Friday is here to dispel all the myths you thought were true facts. This week it's the 5 senses of the human body.
If you thought the 5 senses we have are:
- Sight
- Touch
- Hearing
- taste
- Smell
You'd be wrong. But, don't let that bother you. It's still taught to children in school even though we know it's not true. The 5 senses you've always heard about are based on the primary 5 organs in our body that produce most of our senses. The problem is that our bodies have many other organs and mechanisms that feed our senses.
Scientists don't know how many senses we have, but they all agree it's at least 15.
For example proprioception is the sense that is tested during dui tests when people walk a line or touch the tip of their nose. Many other senses are just breakdowns of the ones we recognize like touch. Touch is technically several senses called somatic senses. These are how you detect heat, pressure, and pain. Now that I look into it I see that vision is also broken into several senses. Some animals can only distinguish between night and day. We have full color. We have stereovision. We can "see" in many different ways. So where do we stop, how far do we count these senses. The more I read about it, the more I'm thinking lets just leave it at 5, even if it is technically wrong.
I guess the point could be that it's much harder to put a number on it than we would think. Its just not going to matter. This doesn't even touch on the spiritual senses, and what about common sense or moral sense. I now see the pointlessness of numbering them. No one will ever agree completely.
So in the interest of getting along and showing are there definitely more than 5 senses.....
Here's a list of 9 senses that everyone can agrees upon. Some scientists just feel the need to break some of these down further.
Vision, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Touch, Balance, Temperature, Proprioception (body awareness), Pain
But you don't get much you can use from this info so let's dig a bit deeper.
Wikipedia defines a sense as:
a physiological capacity of organisms that provides data for perception.
There are a group of senses that help us to monitor our bodies internals that could be beneficial for everyone to understand. In fact, here are a whole group of senses used to monitor your health and well being. Hunger for example is a sense to let you know when you body needs nourishment. There are senses We also have a huge array of nerves in our colon which give us cues to how our digestion process is progressing. Often times we just have a feeling that something just isn't right. You don't know how to explain it, you can only say you don't feel so good today for example. Doctors agree that we should pay much more attention to our internal senses. We miss the warning signs that our bodies are not happy at our own peril.
Being in tune with your body means being more healthy in general. When I eat too many carbohydrates, my body lets me know. I get indigestion, heartburn and occasionally that feeling of being painfully too full. I could ignore that, as I have done many times in the past. But, I do so at my own risk as my body is telling me it doesn't like it. These feeling get born out in my blood work. In the last year I've slacked and started eating more bread and sugar than I had been. When I went to the doctor, I was told my cholesterol is high and that I should think about eating less carbs to lower it in lieu of medication. I know this works as I have lowered my cholesterol in the past considerably by just cutting the majority of carbohydrates. Since, my body has so many senses, I could have figured this out myself, but sometimes we still need a doctor to give us that kick in the pants.
All this is just to remind you to stay in tune with all you bodies senses for better health and a better life. This also includes the internal senses such as imagination and memory which can not only provide happiness but keep our minds sharp.
Sources
Wikipedia
BBC
American Museum of Natural History
Thanks for reading. As always, steem on!
