Fart Yourself Healthy

I

While flatulence has inspired the world’s most repugnant jokes and songs, it found an unlikely ally in scientists.

t’s been known to clear a room full of guests at a wedding reception, drive an unforgiving wife to relegate her blushing husband to the couch, and leave even the most famished group of repatriated POWs without much of an appetite. But there’s new evidence it might actually lower your blood pressure.

Flatulence—or if put more colloquially, farting—is the release of the excessive gas from the human digestive tract. Unwanted gas in the gut is caused by taking in too much air (usually by swallowing), eating carbohydrates like beans, onions, and other starches, as well as the presence of undigested foods in the colon.  

And while flatulence has inspired the world’s most repugnant jokes and songs, it found an unlikely ally in scientists last week at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

A recent study has determined that hydrogen sulphide, which leads to our bloating and flatulence, has shown to control blood pressure in mice. Researchers also concluded that flatulence is produced by an enzyme in blood vessels, which can relax and lower blood pressure.

Though encouraged by the latest breakthroughs in flatulence/blood pressure treatments on rodents, scientists at China's Southeast University in Nanjing are now determining whether a safe and effective treatment can be developed and tested on humans suffering from high blood pressure.

Until the method is approved for use on humans, the only useful link between science and flatulence will continue to be the iron clad law that states that the methane accuser is the nostril abuser.