[Dialogue] An Article for your health and Humor

[Jack Gilles]

This was sent to me by my dear friend Marguerite Theophil

Jack


>Everything you want to know about flatulence, and some things you don't.
>- - - - - - - - - - - -
>By Stephen G. Bloom
>
>Feb. 24, 2000 |
>
>When I told my wife I was going to write a story about farts, she said that 
>if I mentioned her name I was dead meat. Fact is, there is nothing to be 
>ashamed of. Everyone farts. The amount of gas and the volume at which a 
>fart is expelled are another issue. My wife does fart and she farts loudly 
>but, thank God, her farts are mostly odorless. This is not the case with 
>mine.
>
>To understand the nuances of farting, or flatulence, I called upon Dr. 
>Michael D. Levitt, a gastroenterologist and associate chief of staff at the 
>Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Levitt, 64, could well be 
>called Dr. Fart because he is the world's leading authority on flatulence. 
>He has had 275 articles printed on flatulence in medical journals, as 
>either the principal author or the co-author.
>
>In fact, Levitt's career could only happen in America. "In other countries, 
>no way would a scientist study farts. But for reasons I can't completely 
>figure out, farting is considered wrong in America and people are worried 
>about it. Farts have been good to me. I've done very well, thank you."
>
>Levitt works with four assistants out of a small laboratory on the third 
>floor of the V.A. hospital, about a mile west of the Mississippi River. 
>Every day he receives at least one long-distance phone consultation from a 
>worried farter, almost always a man whose wife has prompted her husband to 
>find out why he cuts the cheese so often.
>
>Levitt's job doesn't end when he leaves the hospital at night, either. 
>"Every cocktail party I go to, I always get at least one wife who comes up 
>to me and complains about her husband's farts."
>
>To clear the air (there will be no more puns in this story), Levitt says 
>that his research has shown that on average the normal number of flatulatic 
>occurrences a day is 10. There are scores more, but they are all internal 
>explosions and since this gas technically never leaves the body, it can't 
>really be considered flatulence.
>
>Levitt notes that if you have on average more than 22 separate flatulent 
>occurrences a day, then you may want to consider several things: what you 
>eat, how fast you eat it and how much air you swallow when you eat or 
>drink.
>
>In his 40-year career, Levitt has seen only two patients (both men) who 
>farted upward of 140 times a day, but these extraordinary cases were 
>lactose-intolerant individuals and, once dairy products were cut out of 
>their diets, they returned to the normal range of acceptability. "These two 
>were the biggest farters of my career. One of them complained that his sex 
>life had been ruined by his chronic farting," Levitt says.
>
>There are four possible reasons why some people fart more than others: They 
>eat a lot of carbohydrates; they swallow air when they eat; the bacteria in 
>their intestines are more efficient in turning carbohydrates into gas; or, 
>conversely, the bacteria in their intestines don't consume carbohydrates 
>efficiently, and therefore produce gas.
>
>Levitt says an average male fart is made up of about 110 milliliters of gas 
>(almost half a cup), with 80 milliliters for a woman's (a third of a cup). 
>That adds up to a lot of gas -- 38 ounces during a single day for men, 27 
>ounces for women. Although some women claim they never fart, Levitt says 
>that's not true. They just fart less because they are smaller.
>
>Gassy food is gassy food for everyone, says Levitt, with a crucial caveat. 
>Some people are able to absorb and tolerate the gas they produce better 
>than others. The single most gas-producing food for most everyone, Levitt 
>says, is -- no surprise -- baked beans. The musical fruit is made up 
>entirely of simple carbohydrates, which are not absorbed in the intestines. 
>Once inside the intestines, the sludge that was once beans is broken down 
>by bacteria and enzymes, and then ferments. In that process, the thick, 
>gooey substance can produce potent gases that have nowhere to go but down 
>-- and out, thank goodness.
>
>Out is important.
>
>While Levitt says he has never treated someone who held a fart in too long, 
>there are dangerous side effects (including dizziness and headaches). Your 
>colon becomes bloated, and theoretically, the methane and other lethal 
>gases could add enough toxins to your blood to poison you. Levitt does not 
>recommend holding in farts.
>
>Besides beans, vegetables (especially broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage 
>and cauliflower) are also gas producers, as are grains and fiber. 
>(Pumpernickel, the dark-grain bread, means "goblin that breaks wind" in Old 
>German.) In fact, some of the healthiest foods, touted as anodynes for 
>cancer and heart disease, are the foods that produce the most gas.
>
>But what if you don't eat lots of veggies and carbs and you still exceed 10 
>explosions a day on the fart-o-meter scale that Levitt says is normal? 
>There could be several reasons:
>
>Drinking too many carbonated beverages. The fizz in most carbonated 
>beverages comes from carbon dioxide, which is dissipated by the time it 
>reaches your intestines. But many soft drinks contain fructose, a sugar the 
>intestines have a difficult time absorbing, thereby causing flatus, the 
>medical term for farts (which comes from the Latin meaning "the act of 
>blowing").
>
>Drinking through a straw. If you sip air when you swallow, then the air has 
>to come out some way, often through your butt.
>
>Eating too fast, and eating too much fast food. Chew your food slowly. The 
>act of eating quickly tends to induce the diner to take in air, thereby 
>bloating the colon, as well as turning the air inside deadly.
>
>Chewing gum. When you chew gum, you swallow air, and that means more of the 
>above.
>
>Not enough exercise. Exercising helps the body absorb gases in the colon, 
>thereby dissipating them by the time they reach your anus. If you happen to 
>fart while you are exercising, particularly in a health club, it's usually 
>not so bad because most people wear headsets and listen to music, which 
>tends to obscure the sound. As for smell, workout places often are venues 
>of assorted bodily odors, so run-of-the-mill farts often go undetected, 
>particularly if you don't look suspicious.
>
>Speaking of silent but deadly, Levitt doubts their existence. "Noisy farts 
>can smell just as bad as silent ones," he says. "That's another myth that 
>needs to be put to rest."
>
>Whether silent or musical, all farts are made up of a variety of gases. The 
>majority are made up of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and 
>methane -- all odorless. As anyone who has been to summer camp knows, 
>methane, even in small amounts, can torch a match. The higher density of 
>methane, the greater the bluish-green flames. The hydrogen in farts can 
>cause a loud popping sound when ignited. Fart smells come in when sulfur 
>gets stirred into the gaseous mix. Hydrogen causes the fart to waft quickly 
>upward.
>
>So, now that we know what's in them, how do we make them go away? Levitt 
>says that over-the-counter items like Bean-O and Gas-Ex rarely work. Bean-O 
>does, though, have a 24-hour toll-free hot line, (800) 257-8650 (no, it 
>doesn't spell out F-A-R-T), and has a nifty collection of promotional 
>materials, including a fanny pack and yellow windbreaker (get it?). 
>Antacids work on some people, but Levitt stresses that for the best 
>results, users should take no more than four tablespoons or tablets a day.
>
>For odor, about the only thing that Levitt says works is a fart cushion 
>made of charcoal, called the Tooter Trapper, invented by a man whose 
>co-workers complained of his farts so much that they demanded he be moved 
>out of the office pool into a separate room with a door. The air filter, 
>which you sit on, does a good job of eliminating fart odors but, of course, 
>treats only the results, not the symptoms, of the noxious-smelling gas.
>
>Forget Glade or Airwick, or even matches, to eradicate fart smells. The 
>thing that works best is opening a window. Lighting a match may camouflage 
>the smell but will not dispel it, says Levitt.
>
>And as for masking the sound, Levitt says that depending on the anatomical 
>peculiarities of a person's anus, sounds can vary when gas is squeezed 
>through such a tight opening. The larger the volume of gas expelled and the 
>greater the pressure exerted, generally the greater the noise, although 
>Levitt says that standing usually tends to minimize the sound over sitting, 
>which can amplify the toot.
>
>Besides food, antibiotics occasionally cause some people to fart more, 
>Levitt says, because the medications can disrupt the natural flora of the 
>colon, thereby making it more difficult to break down certain foods, and 
>thus leading to more flatus.
>
>Americans are probably the most supercilious about farts. Other cultures 
>are less squeamish about them. The British explorer and linguist Sir 
>Richard Francis Burton, who first translated the "Kama Sutra" in 1883, 
>contends in one of his many books that a tribe of Arabian Bedouins created 
>a language of arcane codes and warnings through a series of intricately 
>nuanced farts.
>
>Farting came out of the closet in the United States in the breakthrough 
>1974 film "Blazing Saddles," in which Mel Brooks plays Gov. Le Petomane, 
>who serves up baked beans around the campfire one night and hears the 
>results from a bivouac of cowboys. Actually, Brooks' character was named 
>after Joseph Pujol, known as Le Petroman (which translates to the 
>"Fartiste"), who in 1892 debuted at the Moulin Rouge in Paris with a show 
>that featured Pujol paying a flute, smoking a cigarette, blowing out 
>candles, even singing La Marseillaise from anus air. Pujol extinguished 
>candles from 2 feet away and became famous for his imitations of thunder, 
>cannons and 2 yards of calico fabric being ripped. Pujol opened his own 
>theater (the Pompadour), in which he starred for two decades before dying 
>in 1945.
>
>Levitt says Pujol probably was able to aspirate through his anus, that is, 
>suck air in through his butt, and with that air performed his assortment of 
>tricks. So it really wasn't Pujol's farts that amazed his audiences, but 
>merely air that traveled a wee distance, instead of the longer, more 
>arduous trip from mouth to colon to buttocks.
>
>Farts, of course, predate Pujol. The Aristophanes play "The Clouds" 
>contains a reference to farts. In Dante's "Divine Comedy," flatulent demons 
>in the eighth ring of Hell make "trumpets of their asses." Hieronymus 
>Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" shows a young woman with red roses 
>shooting out from her derrière. And in 1776, Benjamin Franklin published a 
>book of bawdy essays called "Fart Proudly."
>
>Franklin wasn't the only one who knew that farts are funny. For a host of 
>complex cultural reasons, farts render 10-year-old boys silly, not to 
>mention more than a few grown men who still get amused for some reason by 
>anal gas. It's a strange thing, though, farts. Take, for example, the 
>expression "old fart." It's a term of insult when spoken in the third 
>person, but one of pride when spoken about oneself.
>
>And for those of you who must have an Internet fart connection, there are 
>plenty of places. My personal favorite is farts.com, which offers an audio 
>sampling of scores of farts, and allows viewers to rate the flatulence on 
>several criteria, including verisimilitude, pitch, duration and volume.
>salon.com | Feb. 24, 2000
>
>
>
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>
>       About the writer
>       Stephen G. Bloom teaches medical reporting at the University of 
>Iowa.
>
>
>

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