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Health

17th Sep 2021

‘Gleeking’ is the ‘disgusting’ bodily function that most people don’t know they can do

Kieran Galpin

Gleeking

Can you ‘gleek’?

As usual, TikTok users are finding new ways to blow our minds and gross us out simultaneously.

The latest bizarre announcement has given a name to something that probably didn’t need a name. It has been revealed that the act of shooting saliva out from under your tongue is called ‘gleeking’, which, as it turns out, has nothing to do with the TV show Glee.

There are essentially three pairs of major salivary glands and thousands of minor ones inside your mouth. Now, two of those major glands – named the submandibular and sublingual glands – are situated at the bottom of your mouth.

When you are eating, these glands naturally push out saliva and then aid in draining excess away but pressure often builds, and then added stress from your tongue squirts the saliva out.

@skysaferian##stitch with @knowledgesaurus♬ original sound – Sky!

This is not usually something you can control but there are ways to train your body into doing it on demand if, for some reason, you want a new disgusting party trick. While an enormous 35 per cent of of people can ‘gleek’, only one per cent can do it on command, reports the Daily Star.

But there are countless other statistical peculiarities when it comes to our bodies. For instance, only two per cent of people have green eyes, which is probably why their entire personalities are built around it.

ACHOO syndrome, which stands for autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst, is a condition also known as photic sneeze reflex. 25 per cent of people suffer from it and it results in sneezing as a reaction to staring into sunlight.

99 per cent of the world have their hearts on the left side of their chest, but a condition known as dextrocardia means that one per cent of people have their heart on the right side.

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