Why Do I Fart So Much All The Time?
Your Health
It actually can tell you some interesting things about yourself. So today I’m gonna talk about booty toots. First of all, it may surprise you to learn that gut gas contains information about your health.
Lactose Intolerance
For example: if you have lactose intolerance it’s because your body no longer produces an enzyme that breaks down the sugars in milk. Your gut bacteria, on the other hand, and they love that stuff, and will munch it up, leaving you uncomfortable and passing the wind of Satan.
Or in rare cases those bacteria that are supposed to be in your large intestine gets in your small intestine and thrive, eating nutrients that are supposed to go to you and making you gassy in the process.
What Causes That Smell?
A bleeding ulcer will cause foul smelling stool and flatus. And an excess of hydrogen sulfide, the molecule responsible for that rotten egg smell, may be a sign of a damaged gut lining, inflammatory bowel disease, or even in severe cases, colon cancer.
So, if you have really rank stank, it can’t hurt to see your doctor. But even if you’re healthy, you probably don’t fart daisies and rainbows, and that’s because of that gut bacteria.
They munch on the undigested nutrients on the way to your colon, but the odorous molecules in their waste gas make up less than 1 percent of a fart. When you smell a fart, you're basically like a shark detecting tiny amounts of blood in the water.
Animal Products
Thanks, nature! Many of the stench offenders are sulfur-based and a prime source of sulfur in a diet is from meat products. There’s also skatole, which mammals produce from tryptophan and it smells like… skat. Though weirdly it’s also made by some flowers. So roses don’t really smell like poo, but some lilies do.
Vegetarians
Vegetarians, that doesn’t mean your farts don’t stink; sulfur is also found in broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, almonds, and dried fruit.
And while a vegetarian’s careless whispers may be less odorous, they will likely be more frequent due to a high-fiber diet that makes gut bacteria thrive.
What isn’t made by bacteria is surprisingly similar to air, which makes sense considering you swallow air when you eat. Typically farts are 59 percent nitrogen, 21 percent hydrogen, 9 percent carbon dioxide, 7 percent methane and 4 percent oxygen.
Methane
None of that actually smells; people tend to think methane is the culprit because natural gas leaks have a distinct smell. But methane is odorless, commercial natural gas has an artificial smell added so you know when not to light a match.
So if farts can actually tell you all this useful stuff about your health, how do we capture one and measure its composition? According to Peter Gibson at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, we can either measure what your farts are made of by fermenting poop or capture breath.
Testing Device
Because the gases in your gut get reabsorbed into your blood and can wind up in your mouth. That’s right, you all have fart breath. On a less serious note, in 2009 Cornell University seniors Robert Clain and Miguel Salas designed a machine that was an unholy combination of a thermometer, microphone, and hydrogen sulfide detector.
When someone tests the device, it combines information from the three sensors to rate the sample on a scale of 0 to 9, 9 is what I can only presume is a perfect fart. It’s totally normal to pass gas, yet many people are self-conscious and hold it in.
But can that KILL YOU? Nah, it can harm you in other ways though! So, do you fart? Keep in mind that if you say no, you are a dirty liar, pants on fire, and that is dangerous because the methane and hydrogen in your farts are flammable.
