Fourteen farts a day always sounded suspiciously polite. Clearly, that number was invented by someone who’s never shared a studio apartment or taken a long-haul flight in economy.
Now, researchers at the University of Maryland have proof that tells the real truth, in the form of “Smart Underwear.” The idea is simple and a little gross. Clip a small device onto your underwear, go about your day, and let it track intestinal gas production in real time by measuring hydrogen in flatus. The catch is that it can’t collect data while you’re on the toilet, which seems like we’re not getting the full picture of body honesty here, but hey, they had to draw the line at privacy somewhere.
For years, the accepted average hovered around 14 daily toots, based largely on self-reporting and imperfect testing. With the new device, researchers found the average was closer to 32 farts a day, according to reporting on the project and the published research. People varied a lot, too. Some participants clocked only four farts a day. Others hit 59, which deserves its own wellness badge, or maybe a warning label.
Scientists Say We Fart Twice as Much as We Admit, After Testing New Smart Underwear
Why was the old number so low? Because humans are bad at monitoring themselves, especially when the subject is something we’ve been trained to pretend never happens. Some people forget. Some people round down. Some people only count the loud, obvious ones and ignore the stealthy little leaks that still count.
Back in 2000, gastroenterologist Dr. Michael Levitt, sometimes dubbed the “King of Farts,” summed up the problem. “It is virtually impossible for the physician to objectively document the existence of excessive gas using currently available tests.” Smart Underwear exists because “currently available tests” weren’t cutting it.
Brantley Hall, an assistant professor at UMD, said the bigger issue is that medicine still doesn’t have a clear baseline for normal gas production. “We don’t actually know what normal flatus production looks like,” Hall said. “Without that baseline, it’s hard to know when someone’s gas production is truly excessive.”
Hydrogen gives researchers a clue about what your gut microbes are doing as they ferment food. That helps with studies of digestion, microbiomes, and GI conditions where gas affects daily life.
The team is also building the Human Flatus Atlas, a project aimed at tracking patterns across hundreds of people and sorting them by diet and microbiome composition. They want the high-fiber folks who barely fart, the frequent farters, and everyone living in the hazy middle.
If this sounds ridiculous, good. It’s still useful. The numbers were off, and the underwear sensor corrected them. Scientific progress, one toot at a time.
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