6 facts about fart science

The surprising science behind human flatulence

We have researched a variety of fields, but they have never ceased analyzing farts. And even once we figured out that we have tiny organisms inside of us that fart a lot, we continued to learn new things about farts.

6. Farts during WWII posed health risks

According to this article, Britain feared being completely cut off from international trade during World War II. Mass famine resulted from isolating a city during a siege, and although the British Isles as a whole were more self-sufficient than any one city, they were still dependent on imports for food, especially meat. Would the British people go hungry if trade ceased? Would they have to put the needs of essential workers first and let others perish?

Eight volunteers were given the only food that the nation could realistically provide for every citizen, and this was tested by Cambridge scientists over the course of three months. Every week, they consumed one pound of meat, one egg, and half a cup of milk. They had to eat potatoes and veggies to make up the rest of their stomachs. They consumed a lot of bread as well, but no butter to cover it with.

Interestingly, none of the eaters experienced deficits in protein or nutrients, and they had plenty of energy to go about their daily lives and even engage in vigorous exercise. Their main grievance was the excessive amount of time they had to spend eating because they had to consume a lot of calorie-dense meals to make up for their loss. All those bulky veggies have caused them to produce 250% more feces than usual. Vegetables also made them fart a lot more. The researchers were forced to report that the increased flatulence was “remarkable” because they had not anticipated this and had not planned a method of quantitatively documenting the gas surge.

Ultimately, even though food was rationed in Britain both during and after the war, they were never completely cut off, as they had feared. The Cambridge diet was never required, hence the gas masks that civilians carried turned out to be superfluous.

5. The Hunt to sample farts

Your farts tell the real story about your health. It’s most likely that you have seen a shift in the smell of your flatulence after an intestinal incident. More precisely, the different compositions of hydrogen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide indicate the health of your microbiome. The one issue is that farts only reveal what’s in the last foot or so of your colon. Although your farts don’t show it, the rest of your digestive system is also full of gasses.

Scientists have historically been able to sample this untapped gas by examining your breath. Indeed, part of the gas in your large intestine passes into your bloodstream and out of your lungs.

But we’re developing a new approach. When you swallow a pill with sensors, it will take samples of your gases at different times and communicate the results to a connected tablet computer. This pill approach isn’t an invasive technique to examine the colon, and it may be able to identify early cancer signs.

4. Testing an anti-fart device

There are numerous medical issues at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center that can be researched. For example, they addressed the topic of smelly farts in 1998. After giving study participants pinto beans to induce flatulence, they used rectal tubes to collect the gas. These diverse gas samples were then passed through a range of materials. A group of judges assessed the treated gases, rating each one from “no odor” to “very offensive” on a nine-point scale.

The best substances to neutralize fart odor were zinc acetate, which reacts with hydrogen sulfide, and activated charcoal, a traditional odor absorber. Even though anti-fart underwear is currently available for purchase, the scientists felt that it was unduly bulky and that the results of their investigation may eventually lead to better products.

The survey also revealed whether judges preferred the scents of women’s or men’s farts, although this was not the intended outcome. Women’s farts were consistently ranked worse by the judges in the blind smell test. Men create more gas than women do; therefore, in fact, fart offensiveness depends on both the quantity and content of the gas.

3. The sounds of farts are revealing

Thanks to video conferencing, you no longer have to travel as much for in-person professional meetings. Doctor’s appointments are an exception. You may get a prescription, answer questions over the phone, and even have your doctor take a remote look to see whether your genitalia are as weird as you believe they are. However, there are limitations.

But what if you could fart into an app one day soon and find out what’s wrong with you? Though we’re not there yet, scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology created a presentation titled “Urination, Defecation, Flatulence, and Diarrhea: The Four Seasons of Toilet Acoustics” last year to discuss potential developments in this area. They revealed the Synthetic Human Acoustic Reproduction Testing Machine, an artificial toilet sound generator, to illustrate how such noises can suggest diseases.

The scientists suggested employing this approach to track all bowel movements in public restrooms in order to spot any increases in diarrheal disorders, in addition to providing volunteer consultations.

2. High-Altitude Flatus Expulsion

Throughout this article, the term “fart” has been used in place of any medical alternative. As far as we know, there isn’t a clinical substitute term. “Flatulence” is the verb for farting, although there isn’t a straightforward substitute word. “Expel flatus” is the formal term.

Realizing that high-altitude flatus expulsion, or HAFE, is something you should be able to define for yourself. That is the phenomenon that causes you to fart more when you are at a high altitude, like the top of a mountain. It’s known by climbers as the Rocky Mountain barking spider.

Those who experience this problem may consider using digestive enzymes or the popular anti-gas medication simethicone. This is the reason you should always have extra oxygen on hand in case someone close to you suffers from HAFE while you are climbing.

1. Does underwear protect us from fart germs?

An Australian nurse asked Australian doctor Karl Kruszelnicki if she was spreading germs when she farted in the operating room. Is it correct that hospital staff members cover their faces with masks but not their asses? Alternatively, they do cover their asses with several layers of cloth, but as this obviously does not stop the smell associated with farts, does it also stop the germs?

In order to conduct an experiment, Kruszelnicki had a colleague fart into two petri dishes. They blasted the other with no anal shielding at all, while they farted on the first through trousers and underwear. No bacteria grew on the filtered flatus. But shortly after, the second dish revealed two visible to the unaided eye bacterial colonies.

Hence, it is true that bacteria from farts are captured by regular clothing before they have a chance to spread. Even the germs that did develop in the second dish, however, posed no threat. That means you don’t need to worry if you frequently have somebody fart in your face. Nobody is telling you to alter your behavior.