I fart a lot. Sometimes a lot. More than anyone I’ve ever known. There’s nothing unusual about my diet, so far as I can tell, and no apparent correlation between my flatulence level and what I ate yesterday. Why are some people more flatulent than others? Isn’t the chemical process of digestion pretty much the same in every human intestinal tract?
When it comes to biochemistry, we’re all basically the same, but there are little variations here and there, and those can add up to big differences. There may not be any explanation beyond random variation.
Could eating fast and swallowing too much air have anything to do with it?
I Am Not A Doctor.
Do you eat a lot of “fart food”? Beans, onions, cabbage, stuff like that? Those aren’t unusual foods for anyone’s diet, but please don’t sit next to me the next day, OK?
Flatulence can come from a remarkable number of different foods. However, all share the same basic route to gas production: the undigested residue of the food reaches the colon where it is fermented by the bacteria that naturally live there.
In lactose intolerance a lack of the enzyme lactase means that some of the lactose in dairy products gets fermented. With beans and other starchy legumes, it’s the oligosaccharides that get fermented. There’s actually a relationship between the two, surprisingly. The sugars in lactose have an alpha bond, and the sugars in the oligosaccharides have a beta bond, but are otherwise similar. That’s why Lactaid can also make Beano: the enzymes needed are almost identical.
You say there’s nothing unusual about your diet, but there isn’t anything unusual about dairy products or beans either. Foods like them are part of almost all normal American diets.
You can try taking Lactaid or other lactase products, and/or Beano and other similar products when you have dairy or beans. You can also try taking acidophilus pills. Lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria are bacteria that digest rather than ferment lactose and other gas producing sugars. By repopulating the bacteria in your colon you can reduce gas tremendously.
Of course, it’s also possible that you have some actual disease that’s causing the problem. If simple dietary steps don’t help a visit to a gastroenterologist would be a good idea.
I also think some people are better at hiding it (women especially) and so the total volume may be the same, but just in little bursts rather than one ferocious rip.
I am a woman and I know that I do not fart as much as my spouse and sons.
We all eat a fairly nutritious diet; they eat more meat than I do.
However, I think I might burp a bit more than they do–I just do it discreetly.
This is not medical advice. It’s not based on formal research. It’s just an anecdotal report. I am not your doctor!
As noted, flatulence is mostly caused by the action of the intestinal microflora on undigested reidues in the colon. In other words, you’re not farting, the bacteria in your gut are. You are, at best, refarting. Does that make you feel any better?
The exact list of species of bacteria in each individual gut, and their balance, can be unique. Every colon is a micro-ecology whose internal conditions (pH, available ions and chemicals, etc. are determined as much by the past history of the ecology, and its microbial component, as the host. Many bacteria can operate in different biochemical modes, so even if the bacterial composition inside two colons were identical, they might produce different conditions
But bacterial compositions are usually not identical. They can vary with such things as environmental and food supply bacteria [e.g. cross-colonization of gut bacteria between patients can be a major problem in hospitals. Clostridium difficile, for example, can be a normal gut bacteria or can produce a devastating, life threatening, diarrhea that can sweep through a wing and be very difficult to eradicate, even if the wing is closed and thoroughly scrubbed with disinfectants) Antibiotic history, and even certain foods (e.g. lambic beers) could potentially have long lasting effects on the exact bacterial population
*When I see people who were troubled with flatulence that is not easily explained by “the usual suspects” (and even some cases which are) I often suggest “bacterial supplements” to change the microfloral composition to something that is less “flatulogenic”. While you can buy “healthful” bacteria or spores in capsules in a health food store, I mistrust them slightly. At least 70% of my patients report relief after 7-10 days of eating yogurt with live cultures. *
It’s more likely to be effective if it’s fresh [distant sell-by date], and carefully/uniformly refrigerated in your store: storage conditions [e.g. frequent temperature cycling in the refrigerated case, (near-)freezing exposures] that may not appreciably harm its wholesomeness or nutritive value may still kill or “upset” the culture. The “Sell by” date, by itself, only guarantees that its safety as a food, not that the culture is alive and thriving.
Commercial “live culture” yogurts seem to work just fine. If one brand doesn’t seem to be yielding results, try another manufacturer: there could be differences in storage and distribution on the way to the store. A local brand would seem to be a good bet, for many reasons, but that’s just a guess. It’ll only take a month to try 3-4 brands, by which time you’ll have some idea if this method helped you.
It’s relatively cheap, harmless, convenient, etc. and the effects are lasting (once the bacterial mix is changed, it may drift, but it is unlikely to “snap back”. The bacteria in the yogurt are just “a seed of a change” and don’t need to be “topped off” unless the microflora drift to another flatulogenic mix over months/years.
Harold McGee mentions this in his book On Food and Cooking. He sais that gas formation varies from person to person, and claims that a lot of research has gone into this subject - at NASA! It does actually make sense, if you want to keep people confined in a small capsule to investigate the agents that would pollute the atmosphere.
He even hints that astronauts could be selected partly based on gas formation.
Sorry, BrainGlutton, We would have loved to have you on board on the first manned mission to Mars, but you fart too much.
I wonder what the effect would be if one “reset” the intestinal flora and then re-ingested a brand-new bacterial culture?
Indeed, that question of mine just reminded me of a thing I read a few years ago about an operation in Australia where fecal matter from healthy people was placed into the recti of people with IBS to alter the flora.
South Africa eat your heart transplant out: the Aussies performed the first shit transplant.
Welcome to my world, BrainGlutton! My wife claims that I produce more toxic gas than New Jersey. My doctor says that it is just my default state, and that my intestinal flora are just very efficient in their job. That, and I eat onions with just about every meal.
If you think you fart now, go to a homebrew festival and drink beer with live yeast in it all day! :eek:
Live culture yogurt is also ridiculously easy to make, without any fancy equipment. I eat roughly 8-16 ounces per day to keep this hellacious candida at bay. (Yes, cultured and diagnosed candida colonies on the cervix.)
Take one gallon milk. Whole will make the thickest yogurt, but you can use skim if you’re watching fat content. Sometimes if I have skim, I’ll throw in a handful of instant milk powder and stir it into the milk to end up with a thicker yogurt. (if you want to sweeten it, do it here. 4-8 Tablespoons of sugar or honey.) Pour the milk into a glass baking dish or corning-type casserole dish - a shallow one. Stir in one cup of really fresh live culture yogurt. If your oven sets this low, set it to 110. If not, set it to it’s lowest temp. Place the dish in the oven. If your oven does not have a 110 setting, prop open the oven door. Go away for a while. Several hours later, you’ll have over a gallon of yogurt.
Remember to set aside a cup of your yogurt for starting the next batch. This way, you’ll know your cultures are alive. If they die, your milk won’t make new yogurt.
A course of antibiotics will kill off a good percentage of whatever bacteria happens to be in your colon. Many people report a recurrence - or a recognition - of lactose intolerance after antibiotics because their digesting cultures had been killed off, or because fermenting recolonized first.
The solution is to recolonize again.
I agree that yogurt with live and active cultures will work in most cases. I’m just leery of recommending them because too many yogurts on the market today are barely recognizable as yogurt. Plain yogurt is probably best, as fewer companies feel they need to distort the natural culture/lactose balance with added milk products, which can lead to LI symptoms and confuse the whole issue.
Does that mean I should not add milk solids (instant milk powder) to my milk when making yogurt from skim milk? I’m not lactose intolerant, if that makes any difference. But maybe some of those reading the recipe may be. [/hijack]
Yogurt is normally considered to be “auto-digesting” in that the lactase made by the yogurt bacteria is sufficient to digest the lactose in the milk. When you add milk solids you throw off this balance.
Whether this will be enough of a difference to cause symptoms will vary even among people who are lactose intolerant. It’s probably not much of an issue, especially since you mention it as an option. Perhaps all you need are a few more words suggesting that those who are LI not add the extra milk powder.