Skin Facts

Skin is your protective coat, shielding your body from the weather and from infection, and helping to keep it at just the right temperature.
Skin is your largest sense receptor, responding to touch, pressure, heat and cold.
Even though its thickness averages just 2 mm, your skin gets an eighth of all your blood supply.
The epidermis is made mainly of a tough protein called keratin — the remains of skin cells that die off.
Below the epidermis is a thick layer of living cells called the dermis, which contains the sweat glands.
Hair roots have tiny muscles that pull the hair upright when you are cold, giving you goose bumps.
Skin is 6 mm thick on the soles of your feet, and just 0.5 mm thick on your eyelids.
The epidermis contains cells that make the dark pigment melanin — this gives dark-skinned people their color and fair-skinned people a tan.
Skin makes vitamin D for your body from sunlight.
The epidermis, the thin outer layer, is just dead cells.

This entry is filed under Interesting Facts.