echemi logo
Product
  • Product
  • Supplier
  • Inquiry
    Home > Biochemistry News > Biotechnology News > 9 questions about farts: You might fart 1 litre a day.

    9 questions about farts: You might fart 1 litre a day.

    • Last Update: 2020-09-13
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
    Search more information of high quality chemicals, good prices and reliable suppliers, visit www.echemi.com
    (Original title: 9 Questions About Farts Research: You Might Fart 1 Litre a Day) We eat a lot of hard-to-digest polysaccharides like cellulose every day, which can produce 13 liters of flammable hydrogen as they pass through the small intestine, which is dangerous.
    're lucky, we're actually just farting, which, while less pleasant than flammable gases exposed to the air, seems to cause a lot less trouble.
    why did all this hydrogen end up being farts? And it is said that farts can also be used by scientists and doctors to diagnose diseases, how is this achieved? We're certainly not going to produce that much hydrogen, or we're not going to float away long ago? So how did hydrogen turn into a fart?Fortunately, each of us has bacteria in our guts that can consume hydrogen.
    about two thousand grams of microbes living in our colons, which consume about 40 grams of sugar a day.
    bacteria in the colon can convert a third of a liter of hydrogen per g of carbohydrate, which translates to about 13 liters a day.
    but the microbes in the gut are very good at converting the substances produced during digestion into other substances, and the hydrogen produced by the thick-walled bacteria Firmicutes can also be used as a raw material for other bacteria.
    , for example, some bacteria cause sulfur ions and hydrogen to react to produce hydrogen sulfide, a gas that not only has a certain toxicity and smelly egg flavor, but is also highly flammable in itself.
    archaea allows a four-molecule hydrogen and a molecule of carbon dioxide to react to produce a molecule of methane and two molecules of water, thereby reducing flammability.
    so what chemicals are in the farts after this series of chemical changes? What's the amount of each? Most of the gas emitted from the gut is actually tasteless, with about a quarter being pure oxygen and nitrogen, and three-quarters producing carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane from the gut bacterium.
    Of course, you've also smelled that the difference between the taste of human and human farts is still quite large, and certainly the composition is different, and Michael Levitt In, a gastroenterologist at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, found that only a third of people have methane-producing bacteria in their guts.
    the 1970s, Levitt has been conducting research on the composition of intestinal gases, sometimes inserting catheters into patients' rectums to collect their farts.
    he has tried the device himself, admitting that "it does make people feel tight - not just for patients, but for researchers who use it on patients."
    1998, Levitt's team conducted a detailed study of the composition of farts produced by six healthy women and 10 healthy men within four hours through rectal intives.
    the total gas production ranged from 106ml to 1657ml, with the largest number producing about 500ml of hydrogen, but only four had methane in their farts.
    Levitt's team also found that odor-producing ingredients don't consume much hydrogen: hydrogen sulfide, methanol, which smells like rotten cabbage, and garlic-smelling dimethyl ether, which together account for an average of only 50 ppm of farts.
    how much fart do we fart every day? Within four hours, 16 subjects farted between three and nine times, about 100ml at a time.
    this frequency is consistent with a 1998 study of healthy people by Rosemary Stanton and Terry Bolin of the University of New South Wales in Australia.
    Stanton explains that they are studying farting because some people think that dietary fiber increases bloating as a manifestation of indigestion and avoids consumption.
    they surveyed 60 men and 60 women and asked them to record the number of farts and food intakes per day.
    results showed that men farted 2 to 53 times a day, an average of 12.7 times a day, women 1 to 32 times a day, an average of 7.1 times, farting more often with fiber intake.
    that farting is common, Stanton said, "people who want to eat more dietary fiber are prepared for it."
    fart is only produced in the intestines, so what does it have to do with our health? There is evidence that imbalances in gut bacteria and diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can cause changes in hydrogen and methane levels in the farts, says Ben de Lacy Costello of the University of the West of England.
    methane gas can cause constipation because they appear to inhibit intestinal peristaltic.
    , hydrogen sulfide inhibits muscle contractions, which may be associated with intestinal wall damage, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colon cancer.
    , however, there are problems with the reliability of gas tests, such as the inability to know why so much hydrogen and methane are produced in a person's intestines.
    Levitt said he did not believe methane was linked to irritable intestines.
    Devices for analyzing volatile gas from feces (a smelly picture) at Costello.
    photo source: Ben De Lacy Costello / ref 6 So instead of studying the gas content of the farts directly, De Lacy Costell and his colleagues looked directly at low-concentration compounds emitted by feces.
    Initially, they mixed feces and mediums in containers to mimic the large intestine environment, then pumped out or pumped air from the upper part of the container through plastic pipes, and analyzed the ingredients through a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry joint.
    researchers found 297 compounds, including volatile sulphides, as well as molecules such as pyridine and fecal odor associated with fecal odors.
    , however, they also found a lot of good-smelling substances, such as alpha- beta-, lemonene and so on.
    the different levels of these compounds, it may be necessary to distinguish between healthy people and those with ulcerative colitis, or who have diarrhea as a result of thyroid and campylobacter infections.
    sothe presence of serene and lemonene makes feces smell like pine and lemon? Maybe, but these compounds are low in content, and the odor-causing pyridine, skunk and sulphides still dominate, De Lacy Costello said.
    scientists study the use of substances in farts and faeces? In a study published in 2014, they replaced mass spectrometers with simpler and cheaper metal oxide semiconductor detectors, making the entire system smaller.
    "If an instrument can be designed to analyze the composition pattern of a sample compound based only on volatile gases, disease can be detected without the need for a clear knowledge of the specific substance."
    ," De Lacy Costello said.
    so far, the system has been able to distinguish between IBS patients and IBD patients with 76% accuracy through feces.
    De Lacy Costello's team has also developed an "electronic nose" to try to use as a tool for early warning of disease and colon cancer screening.
    so it's possible to diagnose the disease directly by testing your farts later? "In the future, it's possible that we can diagnose certain diseases by directly monitoring the excreta of the body, such as feces, dander, and exhaling," De Lacy Costello said.
    "However, Levitt believes that only by using rectal int intage tubes to capture farts directly, as he does, can it be detected with farts, otherwise the dilution of the air will make the detection of trace components very uncontrollable.
    , the idea may not work.
    beans really make people fart more? In 2011, three different experiments showed that participants farted more than usual on the day they started eating beans or baked beans.
    over time, however, the subjects' bodies gradually adapted to the intake of beans, and after a few weeks, the frequency of farting dropped to normal levels, and Levitt experienced the effects first-hand.
    " is interesting about the individual and time differences in beans, and I don't know much about that.
    ," he says, "but once I give people beans, they certainly produce a lot more gas in their guts than they do when they eat other carbohydrates."
    ", is there any good way to control farting? "Don't hold on too long, it may make susceptible people feel pain or even IBS, " Stanton said. "Avoiding dietary fiber may reduce fart production, but dietary fiber is important in many ways, such as reducing the risk of colon cancer, hemorrhoids, and diverticulitis.
    soluble fiber in oats and many fruits promotes the growth of "good" bacteria in the gut, which produce short chains of fatty acids that are absorbed by the gut to lower cholesterol and blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of colon cancer.
    " Levitt also tried to get subjects to eat activated carbon four times a day for a week, and the results showed that eating activated carbon had no effect on controlling the smell and amount of farts.
    , if you want to fart less, the only option, apart from not eating dietary fiber, may be "don't swallow too much air."
    , as long as farts don't cause your physical pain, you and those around you should learn to be tolerant.
    : 1 A Strocchi and M D Levitt, Gastroenterol.
    , 1992, 102,846, (DOI:10.1016/0016-5085 (92) 90790-6) 2 J Z Ou et al, Trends Biotechnol.
    , 2015, 33, 208 (DOI:10.1016/j.tibtech.2015.02.002) 3 A Strocchi and M D Levitt, J Clin.
    invest.
    , 1992, 89, 1304, (DOI:10.1016/0016-5085 (92) 90790-6) 4 F L Suarez et al, Am J Physiol.
    , 1997, 272, G1028 5 T Bolin and R A Stanton, Eur J Surg, 1998, 164, 115 (DOI:10.1080/11024159850191553) 6 C E Garner et al FAS JEB.
    , 2007, 21, 1675 (DOI:10.1096/fj.06-6927com) 7 S F Shepherd et al J Breath Res.
    , 2014, 8,026001 (DOI:10.1088/1752-7155/8/2/026001) 8 D M Winham and A M Hutchins Nutr J.
    2011, 10, 128 (DOI:10.1186/1475-2891-10-128) 9 F L Suarez et al, Am J Gastroenterol.
    , 1999, 94, 208 (DOI:10.1111/j.1572-0241.1999.00798.x) Source: Scientific American, Chinese Edition of Global Science
    This article is an English version of an article which is originally in the Chinese language on echemi.com and is provided for information purposes only. This website makes no representation or warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness ownership or reliability of the article or any translations thereof. If you have any concerns or complaints relating to the article, please send an email, providing a detailed description of the concern or complaint, to service@echemi.com. A staff member will contact you within 5 working days. Once verified, infringing content will be removed immediately.

    Contact Us

    The source of this page with content of products and services is from Internet, which doesn't represent ECHEMI's opinion. If you have any queries, please write to service@echemi.com. It will be replied within 5 days.

    Moreover, if you find any instances of plagiarism from the page, please send email to service@echemi.com with relevant evidence.