Friday Facts: Week #5

Greetings everybody, Happy Friday!

Happiness like the flu can spread through social networks, person to person. 5000 participants were followed for 20 years and participants were asked to provide a list of their relatives, close friends, neighbors and co-workers and subjects. Then they were asked to fill out a questionnaire which established how often they experienced certain feelings, such as happiness or hope for the future which help create an emotional baseline for the participants. From this procedure the researchers were able to measure emotional fluctuations of the participants and within each participant's social network, finding that how our emotional state can be affected by the people around us. Still sadness is fairly spreadable, the transportation of happiness if far more dominant. Additionally proximity plays a part: a next door neighbor can increase your probability of happiness by 34%, a nearby friend by 25%, a sibling half a mile away up to 14%.

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Heartburn results from digestive fluids' traveling from stomach to esophagus in a process known as gastroesophageal reflux. Scientists found that the saliva stimulated by chewing seemed to neutralize acid and hep force fluids back to the stomach. 31 participants were told to eat heartburn-inducing meals and then a few were picked randomly to chew sugar-free gum for 30 minutes. Acid levels after the meals were significantly lower when the participants chewed gum. Chewing gum at appropriate times can actually help give your digestive system a boost and help you digest your meals, but gum between meals can create stomach acid that won't get used and cause stomach pains. So it's more efficient before or after your meal.

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As everybody was taught in primary or elementary schools an average adult human skeleton consists of 206 bones. Each foot and ankle has 26 bones, which means altogether our two feet consist of 52 bones. Now! Using basic maths you guys should be able to calculate the percentage of bones that are located in your feet. The result - more than 25%.

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It's hard to imagine someone getting to adulthood without experiencing the pain of a broken heart. These might include death of a loved one, domestic abuse, losing a lot of money, physical stress and rejection/neglect from a loved one. As painful as these experiences are, with a little bit of time, most people get over them. However people can literally die from a broken heart, it is called the Broken Heart Syndrome and also known as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy or Stress-Induced Cardiomyopathy . It characterizes sudden weakening of the myocardium (muscle of the heart) which can be triggered by emotional overstress described above. Nonetheless broken heart syndrome is barely fatal and most people make a full recovery.

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A study from researchers in University of Copenhagen found that Vitamin D increases speed of sperm cells. 300 average men showed a positive correlation between the percentage of mobile sperm and serum vitamin D levels.

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Thank you for stopping by. Hope you have enjoyed this weeks Friday facts segment! Would you like us to mention a fact in next week Friday facts? Make sure to leave a comment and come back for more articles!!

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