How Flatulance Works

Learn about the causes of gas (flatulence) in this podcast from Marshall Brain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Get smarter in sixty seconds with brain stuff from how
stuffworks dot com Hi Marshall Brain. What is happening when
we fart? We all suffer from this problem to varying degrees.
Where does the gas come from? Just think about your
digestive system for a moment. One thing that's obvious is
that digestion involves breaking things down. Everything in food has

(00:24):
to be broken down into small units in order to
enter the bloodstream. Protein must be broken down into its
individual amino acids, Fats must be broken down into fatty acids,
and carbohydrates both simple and complex must be broken into
individual glucose molecules. Flagulence occurs when a food does not
break down completely in the stomach and the small intestine.

(00:48):
As a result, the food makes it to the large
intestine in an undigested state. For example, if you are
lactose intolerant, it means that you lack an enzyme lack
taste in your intestine. This enzyme breaks lactose apart into
two sugar molecules so they can enter the bloodstream without

(01:09):
lac taste. Lactose passes undigested through the stomach and small intestine,
and it arrives in the large intestine. They're the lactose
meets up with billions of hungry bacteria, the natural intestinal
fauna we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria
are happy to digest lactose. They produce a variety of

(01:33):
gases in much the same way that yeast produces carbon
dioxide to leaven bread. Gases such as methane, hydrogen, and
hydrogen sulfide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen
sulfide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulens.
Certain foods produce more flatulens than others because they contain

(01:56):
more undigestible carbohydrates than others. Being means, as you might expect,
are particularly well endowed in this regard. Do you have
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