Thursday 26 October 2023

27 October: The Spine

October is Spinal health month, so here are ten facts about your spine:

  1. A newborn baby has 33 vertebrae, but as a person grows up, some of these fuse together so that adults essentially have 26.

  2. Men have longer spines than women on average, with the average male spine being 70cm long and the female 60cm.

  3. The spine has five sections: cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrum, and coccyx. Within those sections, each vertebra is unique.

  4. You are taller in the morning than in the evening. This is because of the discs between your vertebrae. They absorb fluid at night when your body is horizontal, and shed it as you move about during the day.

  5. What’s the difference between the spinal chord and the spinal column? The spinal column is the bones, and the spinal chord is the bundle of nerves travelling through the tunnel in the middle of those bones. Some of those nerves are called the cauda equina, Latin for horse’s tail, because that’s what they look like.

  6. Your spine carries more than a million electrical nerve messages between your brain and your body every single day.

  7. The top bone of your spine is called the atlas. It’s the one that supports your head, and is named after the god charged with holding up the Sky.

  8. Humans have the same number of bones in their necks as a Giraffe: seven.

  9. The spinal cord weighs around 35 grams.

  10. 48% of all spinal chord injuries are caused by road traffic accidents.


Character birthday


Patti Bridges, American rock star. She once dated Harlequin and more recently, his long lost brother, George Moran.


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