Wonder Why?

Topics covered in this Story:

1. Why is smoking injurious to health?
2. Why drinking seawater doesn’t quench your thirst?
3. How does laughing gas work?
4. Why do mosquito bites itch?
5. Why do we have exactly two eyes?

Let’s begin!

Why is smoking injurious to health?

Well, its an universal fact that smoking is harmful and will kill you eventually. But, have you ever thought — why is smoking so dangerous?

Let’s see…

For starters, the hot smoke damages the respiratory airways and the air sacs of the lungs, thereby affecting breathing. The air sacs once damaged, can never be repaired or replaced.

Besides, cigarettes contain tobacco leaves and tobacco comprises of around 7000 chemicals out of which 250 are harmful to the body. These chemicals directly or indirectly affect the brain, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, face, stomach, heart, blood and even the DNA!

Among those 250 chemicals, at least 69 can damage the DNA by mutations, which can cause 16 types of cancer in the long run.

Wait. Wait. Hang on. If smoking is so harmful then why do people actually do it?

Well, Nicotine which is one of the chemicals present in cigarettes, is the main reason for this addiction. Nicotine causes adrenaline rush in the body and triggers the brain to produce more Dopamine.

Adrenaline makes us more active and Dopamine is a hormone which induces a feeling of pleasure and happiness.

But, this temporary stimulation comes at the cost of health and life!

However, we have better ways of producing adrenaline and dopamine in the body. Regular exercising, playing sports, or any such activity that requires dynamic movements, agility and brain activity, stimulates the release of adrenaline, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. All these hormones play an important part in regulating your mood. So it’s better to exercise and stimulate yourself, rather than smoking a cigarette and permanently harming your body for a temporary stimulation.

Why drinking seawater doesn’t quench your thirst?

Over 97% of the water on Earth is seawater. But, unfortunately, we can’t drink it to quench our thirst! But, why is it so? Let’s find out.

The reason is that, seawater is composed of Sodium Chloride salt. When we drink seawater, the concentration of salt in our body increases. The excess salts that are accumulated in the body are diluted by our kidneys using the excess water from our body and are finally expelled from our body in the form of urine.

But, here comes the catch! Our kidneys normally function at a salt concentration of less than 2% but the concentration of seawater is more than 3%! This means our kidneys would be overloaded with salt. To counter this, they will have to absorb even more water than we actually drank from the sea water. But, if you have no source of freshwater to drink, the kidneys will start to absorb water from your body tissues. This is will make you even more thirstier.

This is the reason why drinking seawater is harmful to our bodies. It damages our kidneys and causes dehydration.

But, there is a safe method to drink sea water. Using the process of distillation, we can eliminate the salts from the seawater and we will be left with water safe enough to drink and quench our thirst. Also, it is very important to note that seawater consists of other organic and inorganic compounds as well, that can be harmful to our bodies. Hence, drinking distilled seawater is to be carried out only in case of emergencies.

How does laughing gas work?

Normally, our lungs are filled with the air(oxygen) we inhale from the atmosphere. The oxygen is then transferred to our blood which in turn transports it throughout the body for normal functioning.

Now, laughing gas is nothing but Nitrogen Oxide (N2O). As we inhale Nitrogen Oxide, it displaces the air present in our lungs. This deprives the blood of oxygen.

When enough oxygen is unable to reach the brain, it makes us feel nauseous and light headed. This reduces our thinking capacity and causes mental confusion! Moreover, N2O, triggers the release of Dopamine, which induces feeling of pleasure. As a result, due to the combination of these factors, we start laughing uncontrollably!

Why do mosquito bites itch?

When mosquitoes pierce through our skin to suck blood, they their saliva into our blood. The saliva contains proteins that can stop the coagulation of blood in humans. This allows them to feed endlessly without the blood clotting around the bite! Ough!

However, the proteins are foreign bodies which trigger the immune system of our body. Thus, our body releases a special compound around the bite, known as Histamine. Histamine increases the blood flow around the bite, thereby increasing the white blood cells (WBCs) around the bite, which fight the foreign bodies. While doing so, histamines act on the itch receptors of our skin. These receptors send a signal to our brain and make the area of the mosquito bite itch! And when we scratch the bite area, it forces the mosquito to fly off.

Why do we have exactly two eyes?

Why do we have two eyes? Perhaps, one eye would have made us look weird or is it because symmetrical things generally look better? Well, aesthetics could be an aspect but let us explore the technical side of this.

With two eyes, our field of vision (how wide we see) is greater in comparison to a single eye. Hang on! Although field of vision gets reduced but we still can see! Then why two eyes?

The main reason is Depth of Perception! Although our eyes are very close together in front of our head, they see nearly the same thing but not the same thing. Yes, there is a minor difference in what the two eyes perceive. Thus, they send very similar but not identical pictures to the brain for processing. The brain is able to use the slight difference between the two images to calculate the distance between two or more things. This is called ‘Depth Perception’, that is the ability to perceive the relative distance of objects in the visual field.

The two eyes help the brain interpret depth and distance of the objects around us more accurately, thus helping us perceive things better! This is all possible due to the positioning of our eyes and hence, the presence of two eyes is of utmost importance.

That’s all folks!

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