#FaceFacts - About Your Face

It reveals a lot about who you are, what you are thinking and feeling and your intentions.

While we don’t often give our face much thought, it is one of the most complex of the human anatomy. Your face contains a total of 14 bones, 40 muscles and 32 teeth.

Without which you could not eat, speak, communicate, express feelings or kiss.

Here are some more fun facts about the face:

It takes 11 muscles to frown
It takes 12 facial muscles for a genuine smile.
We are capable of making 10,000 unique facial expressions.
There are 6 universal facial expressions; Happy, sad, angry, disgusted, surprised afraid
True happiness is revealed in our eyes, true sadness is revealed in the muscles of our chin
Sincere expressions are more symmetrical than insincere ones.
There are 21 mimetic facial muscles, the only muscles in your body directly attached to your skin, that creates your expressions.
We regularly flash micro-expressions that last less than 1/25th of a second. This is why our facial emotions flash by so quickly.
It is almost impossible to fake the muscle movements of the top half area around our eyes, proving a genuine smile really does light up our eyes.
We can consciously manipulate muscles of the mouth to smile, pretending we are happy.
The masseter the muscle we use to chew, is the strongest muscle in the human body. It is capable of pulling up to 80 times its own weight!
Just like the rest of your body, if you exercise your facial muscles it will tone and firm them. Giving them a lift, adding volume to reduce sagging.
Those cheeky dimples are inherited as a family trait and are caused by a shortened muscle. When a person smiles the muscles pull across the skin, revealing a dimple.
We have 19 types of smiles which fall into two categories: polite “social” smiles which engage fewer muscles, and sincere “felt” smiles use more muscles on both sides of the face
Our face is made up of 14 bones
The only bone section that can move is the mandible, the jaw bone.
Our ears and nose are made from a bendy flexible tissue called cartilage.
As we age our nose lengthens and drops downwards and our ears never stop growing
Ageing causes us to lose bone mass, including the bones in our face, meaning our face really does shrink as we age
Lips are red due to the number of tiny capillaries that are just below our skins surface; blood in the capillaries contains oxygen, which creates the color red