A search for \u201cdoes farting burn calories\u201d used to bring up a seemingly plausible stat that a single fart burns 67 calories, which quickly spread online. A calculation in your head (erring on the side of generous) probably puts you at about 15 or so gas passings a day.<\/p>\n
Does that mean you\u2019ve really burned 1,005 calories over the course of a day just by farting? The popularity of the stat would lead you to believe that you\u2019d stumbled upon the holy grail of life hacks.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s take a step back and look at the bigger picture here before we let the air out (sorry) of that balloon.<\/p>\n
Tiny bacteria in our large intestine\u00a0feed on\u00a0dietary fiber, some\u00a0starches and sugars, and other substances the body\u00a0can\u2019t otherwise digest. This process\u00a0produces gas, known as \u201cflatus,\u201d most of which is absorbed into our blood stream or expelled when we breathe.<\/p>\n
But some flatus \u2014 roughly 1,500 ml a day \u2014 is expelled, becoming flatulence (a.k.a. farts).<\/p>\n
A\u00a0typical fart\u00a0consists of nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen. What\u2019s curious is that all of these gases are largely odorless. So why do farts smell?<\/p>\n
It comes from the\u00a0less than 1 percent trace amounts of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and certain aminos and fatty acids. The hydrogen sulfide, particularly, is responsible for the sulfur-like smell.<\/p>\n
The associated sound of flatulence depends on\u00a0several factors, including the volume of gas expelled, tension of the muscles, and force of expulsion.<\/p>\n
A relaxed fart will register at lower decibels than a forcible one, which is why your \u201chome alone\u201d blasts don\u2019t match the \u201cat work\u201d squeakers.<\/p>\n
In short: No.<\/p>\n
The \u201c67 calories per fart\u201d myth is just that. The closest you can get is straining your muscles to\u00a0hold in\u00a0flatulence \u2014 which is not recommended, but\u00a0might burn a paltry few calories through \u201ctime under tension.\u201d But you can\u2019t shed pounds simply by letting it rip.<\/p>\n
There are, however, some potential health benefits to not just the act of farting \u2014 which proves that your intestinal system is working well and its bacteria are doing their job \u2014 but the smell as well.<\/p>\n
Remember hydrogen sulfide? Not only can it help clear a room,\u00a0research has shown\u00a0that its signature \u201crotten egg\u201d redolence could be the key to new treatments for diabetes, stroke, heart attacks, and dementia.<\/p>\n
A compound mimicking hydrogen sulfide\u2019s ability to protect mitochondria is key, since preventing or reversing damage to the \u201ccell\u2019s powerhouse\u201d could help not only treat these afflictions but could also help treat the overall effects of aging.<\/p>\n
Well, you just\u00a0want\u00a0it to be true, don\u2019t you? Imagine being able to burn off half of the burrito you just ate on your walk to the car.<\/p>\n
But the truth is that this \u201cfake news\u201d started \u2014 where else? \u2014 at the epicenter of all misinformation: Facebook.<\/p>\n
According to a\u00a0Snopes investigation\u00a0into the phenomenon, a Facebook page called \u201cF A C T\u201d posted the claim in November of 2015, and it took off from there. F A C T\u2019s source for the information, which quickly became a top Google result, seems to have been\u2026 Google.<\/p>\n
So in a kind of odd circle of lies, a Google search based on nothing became a fake fact thanks to Facebook which quickly became a top search result on Google.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A search for \u201cdoes farting burn calories\u201d used to bring up a seemingly plausible stat that a single fart burns 67 calories, which quickly spread online. A calculation in your head (erring on the side of generous) probably puts you at about 15 or so gas passings a day. Does that mean you\u2019ve really burned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-2621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-fitness"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}