Truly Fun Facts About Your Back!
By Sara Butler
Learning can be fun, right? After all, the more you know the more money you can potentially win on a game show if you’re lucky enough to be on someday. Being an informed patient is important to your chiropractor, so in an effort to educate you about your spine, here are some fun facts you may not know about your back!
Fun Fact No. 1: You Have the Same Number of Vertebrae in Your Neck as a Giraffe
Don’t let the long neck of the giraffe fool you, they have the exact same number of neck bones as you do. Camels, too. In fact, almost all mammals have the same number of neck vertebrae, which is seven. The only outliers are manatees and sloths.
Still, this is a cool fact because a giraffe’s neck can be up to six feet long, and a human’s neck is (on average) only five inches. How cool is that?
Fun Fact No. 2: You’re Taller in the Morning
It’s no lie that you are taller in the morning when you get out of bed than you were the night before when you got in it. The reasons why are pretty interesting too.
All day long your spine undergoes the effects of gravity. This means the discs between the bones in your spine get compressed under gravity and your bodyweight all day and that shortens the length of your spine by a very slight amount. After the age of 40, you will start to shrink permanently by about a quarter of an inch every decade, too.
Fun Fact No. 3: Babies have more Vertebrae than Adults
When you’re born, you start out with 33 vertebrae in your back. By the time you reach adulthood, you have 26. Where do these bones go? Well, they don’t disappear; they simply fuse together at the bottom of your spine to form the sacrum and coccyx (tailbone). That’s a pretty crazy piece of spine trivia and will probably make you look at babies a little differently.
If you ever have any questions about your spine, serious or fun, you can always ask your chiropractor, who's a great source for information about your spine as well as your overall health and wellness. Plus, chiropractors love to share information, so wow them at your next visit with the fun facts you’ve learned here!
To learn more about your health and wellness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic.