It’s official, y’all – holding it in is definitely more fraught with complications than just letting it out.
According to University of Newcastle nutrition and dietetics professor Clare Collins, pent-up gas can pass through your gut wall and re-absorb into your bloodstream where it could then circulate through your body.
If that happens, the gas has nowhere to escape except…yup, you guessed it – your mouth.
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“A build up of intestinal gas can trigger abdominal distension, with some gas reabsorbed into the circulation and exhaled in your breath,” she writes on The Conversation.
A 2010 paper on “Methane and the Gastrointestinal Tract” supports Collins’ comments about farts making their way elsewhere if you hold them in, stating that methane, hydrogen sulfide, and other gases that are produced in the body are mostly eliminated via the anus, but can also be “expelled from the lungs.”
But there’s so much more we can learn from these scientists who study flatulence as part of their profession! In one study, 10 volunteers ate a half a can of baked beans in addition to their regular diet, then signed up for rectal catheters that measured their expelled gas for the following 24-hour period.
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No word on where they find the people for these studies or what they offer them in return, but it’s got to be something good, right?
The outcomes showed that the average number of gaseous episodes per 24-hour period was 8 with no difference between men and women.
A second study showed that high-fiber diets led to fewer but bigger farts, while a third found that diets containing foods that broke down into sulfur were behind the smelliest sort of gas.
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I can only hope the people judging this horrifying contest of toots made it out of the room without passing out on the floor.
In conclusion, science says go ahead and let those farts out because holding them in can lead to excess belching, more gas, bloating, and intestinal pain. It can even, in some severe cases, lead to diverticulitis. Plus, you know, some gas may come out your mouth.
And nobody wants that.
