“Fellow travellers” with their attendant poo, I should think.
What about burping? I almost never burp, and I can’t make myself burp either. Is that unusual, too? (Yes, I do fart consistently. Ew, that felt so gross to write out.)
Eau de Poo
Hmmm, a fart by any other name is still a fart.
There are tears running down my face, and I’m at work, people! Why, why do I open threads with “fart” in the title at work? I know better than that … don’t I? (I lost all self-control at “some systems of gaseous taxonomy.”)
Slit, I can’t make myself burp, either, so don’t feel so alone. Can’t fart on cue, either, and I’m a tiny bit afraid I’d shit myself if I tried too hard.
Nothing as bad as that story, but…
When I was in highschool and early college, I worked at a local grocery store. One of the other people on our stocking crew had notoriously pungent and frequent gas; the rest of us teased her mercilessly. I didn’t want to wind up the subject of that kind of teasing, so at some point I decided to fart no more while at work. Don’t really remember deciding not to let it out at home either, but whatever the reason, I wasn’t releasing the pressure. I’d say it took a few weeks before I was in the worst sort of pain. Not necessarily constant, though there was a constant level of discomfort, but frequent abdominal pains bad enough to double me over. I put up with that longer than anyone with any sense would’ve, then finally gave it up and went to the bathroom one night at work and… oh, the relief.
Learned my lesson–since then, I’m careful to release the pressure as needed.
I’m not going to say I never fart, but I never fart outside of the one in the morning. You know, that first morning pee/fart?
I attribute it to giving up grains. They made me miserable, only I didn’t know how much until I quit eating them.
Oh, dh quit farting except appropriately in the bathroom at the expected time, when he quit the bread too.
No (unless you have no intestinal bacteria in which case I don’t know what would happen but my guess is unending diarrhea, or else you severely limit your diet to not-gas-producing foods, in which case I imagine there are side effects but I don’t know what they are).
But it’s certainly possible for a person to minimize the “experience” of farting. They can either, as others have mentioned, fart only during pooing sessions, or alternately, you can fart in such a way as it’s a really slow leak, rather than intermittent large bubbles. In which case, it’s possibly below the threshold of noticeability for both you and your surrounding humans.
There is no such thing as “not-gas-producing foods”. There are foods which produce more gas than others, but anything with polysaccharides can be fermented by bacteria, producing gas. Starches or glycogen will do, and that’s in everything we can eat, except maybe an all lard diet. So the main side effect of a not-gas-producing food diet would be an acute case of death by starvation.
As for eliminating all intestinal bacterial, while the constant diarrhea would be annoying, the more dangerous effect is infection. Intestinal flora stimulate the GALT (immune system cells), which uses the bacteria as templates to form antibodies against other more nefarious bacteria. These cross-reactive antibodies then leave the intestine, searching for bacteria throughout the body and destroying them before they can cause infection. No bacteria, no cross-reactive antibodies, more infections all over the body, not just in the intestines.
You’d also be more prone to vitamin deficiencies. We rely on our intestinal flora to make Vitamin K and some of the B’s, IIRC. So not only is that diarrhea going to dehydrate and interfere with our absorption of vitamins and other nutrients from our food, but we won’t have our back up supply of locally grown vitamins to replace what we’re not getting from our food.
Sure, just blame it on the dog.
Regards,
Shodan
That is about the only time I fart. Unless I eat a really fartmakingly heavy meal of all Colibrifoods, I rarely ever pass gas while awake. I believe it is due to my dietary control regimen for diabetes.
Though I have noticed that lentils don’t tend to give me gas like kidney or great northern beans do, and I tend to prefer lentils. I have also noticed that adding beano when I do eat chili or baked beans does not seem to have any effect on my pooting.
I could never date a girl, or even even be friends with someone, who claims they never fart.
Half of the gas in your toots is swallowed air anyway. So even if she had no gut flora and was getting purely IV nutrition, she’d still have to burp and fart at some point. Swallowing small amounts of air is unavoidable.
This reminds me of the Family Guy parody of the Shawshank Redemption. After the implied prison rape scene they say his farts never made a sound again and you hear a quiet whooshing sound.
User name/post combo win.
This reminds me of a story. I was actually dating a guy (lasted all of 2 weeks) who DEMANDED I never fart in front of him. I laughed in his face and dumped his ass. He had a pretty severe madonna/whore complex and apparently “real women don’t fart” (or cuss or play computer games… hurrr).
Anyway, to address the OP, it is certainly possible to hold in one’s farts while conscious or not pooping. But when pooping and sleeping, one’s voluntary sphincter control goes away.
I gotta tell everyone here that past the age of fifty, I can’t really hold my farts in–so far, I’ve only let loose while I’m by myself. I’m dreading the day I’m putting my groceries in my car and let out a four alarm fart while a group of people pass by. There’s no way I can blame that one on the dog!
This post combined with the user name is priceless.