Ten Weird and Interesting Facts and Stats About Farts

Forget Breaking Bad, this is the story of Breaking Wind! Nothing goes down as badly as a fart in church, right? Well, try farting in the shower, it will definitely smell worse. It is common to feel ashamed when you accidentally pass gas in public; Even Gerald Ford had his secret service agents take the blame for his fart. Farts are just gasses that accumulate in your stomach while you eat or as your stomach digests food and when sulfur-containing gasses are formed, that “sweet” rotten egg smell will appear. Now, while it is normal to fart, there is still so much you probably don’t know about this biological process.

Farts Are Highly Flammable

In 2016, a woman undergoing surgery passed gas while the surgeon was doing his job using laser and got badly burned. The poor surgeon also got a fair share of the burns because his face was in the direction of the gas. Farts can therefore catch fire because they contain flammable gasses including methane and hydrogen. You should therefore be careful when farting near a flame.

Holding Farts Back Is A Bad Idea

It is normal for some people to try and hold back farts especially in a public gathering where it might cause embarrassment. You will feel uncomfortable when holding back the gas because it only causes more pressure to build up in your gut. If you hold it back for too long, it may be reabsorbed back into circulation and come out through your breath causing a smelly breath. Held back farts may also explode on you in an uncontrollable fart. The worst part of holding back is that in only makes your fart smellier.

Eating Fast Can Increase Your Farts

While swallowing food, you trap air in your esophagus and as food goes down into your stomach, it traps the gas in there. Eating fast increases the quantity of air trapped in your stomach which is why babies that suckle too fast end up needing a burp to hold the milk down. Eating more slowly can therefore help you reduce or prevent farts.

Eating More Fatty Foods Increases Smelly Farts

Fatty foods are harder for your gut to digest than other simple foods and so will stay in your stomach longer. The longer the food stays there, the more gas it produces as gut bacteria acts on it. Fatty meat also contains amino acids that have Sulphur which bacteria breaks down to Sulphur dioxide leading to smelly fats. If you eat lots of fried meat and other fatty foods, you are therefore more likely to release stronger smelling farts.

A Health Person Farts Up To 25 Times A Day

Farting or flatulence as known in medical terms is a natural process and every healthy person does it every day. While the frequency may change from person to person, it averages out at 5 to 15 times a day. Some people are fartier than others though. Activity and diet also change the frequency of farts but age and gender are not really a factor. Children fart nearly as many times as adults and men and women have a similar farting frequency.

Only 1% Of Farts Smell Bad

Breaking a wind and not feeling that bad smell is a great relief for many people. What most people don’t know is that a huge percentage of the wind they break doesn’t smell at all. The smelly contents of farts such as hydrogen sulfide only make up 1% of farts. The rest is just nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and some oxygen.

Beans Really Do Make You Fart More

You may wonder why you break more wind after eating a meal with lots of beans and science actually agrees that beans make you fartier. Beans have lots of soluble fibre which end up fermenting in your gut leading to smellier farts than other foods will give you. Beans are not the only food that makes you fart more than others. Almost every food type can make you farty depending on how you eat it and how your gut digests it. Beans still have more health benefits than most legumes so breaking a wind shouldn’t make you shy away from them.

You Fart More While Sleeping

Farts don’t exactly discriminate; they can creep on you at any time of the day and cause an embarrassment often when you least want one. Farts actually are more respectful than you think of them though since they don’t come unless they don’t really have a choice. For some reason, you pass most of your daily share of farts while sleeping so you won’t even realize when it happens and it won’t bother anyone.

Farting In The Nude Makes The Smell Worse

It is a common misconception that farting in the shower leaves smellier farts than any other time. Well, it is not a misconception anymore because your clothes absorb a fair share of your farts and muffle the smell. When you fart while naked and in a closed space, there is nothing to hold back the gasses and the smell so most of it wafts to your nose. The gasses from a hot shower may actually have something to do with why farting in the shower is worse than anywhere else.

Studying Farts Can Be A Career

Did you know that farts travel at a speed of 10ft per second? Although rare, you can actually transmit diseases through farts. It is true that there is so much that farts can tell about the health of a person which is why having a scientist studying farts is so important. The scientists that have given the world these important facts about farts are called flatologists.

Do you know any other facts about farts? If so why not tell us about them in the comments below.