"We don't actually know what normal flatus production looks like, said Brantley Hall, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, in a statement. (Flatus is the technical term for a fart.) Without that baseline, it's hard to know when someone's gas production is truly excessive, he added. Smart Underwear, a wearable device co-created by Hall and his colleagues, could help provide an answer to the pungent question."
"In a study of the device, Hall and his team found that healthy adults fart some 32 times a dayalthough some tooted a mere four times, while others passed wind 59 times in a day. The study did not measure whether the farts were smelly or audible, however. Hall and his team tested the device on 38 healthy adults, who all wore it in their underwear for a week while they were awake, except when they were engaged in heavy exercise or traveling."
Flatulence occurs frequently and baseline normal flatus production is not well established. Smart Underwear is a snap-on device that uses chemical sensors to track intestinal gas, especially hydrogen produced by gut microorganisms. Typical flatus contains microbe-derived hydrogen, sometimes methane, and body-produced carbon dioxide and oxygen. In a study, 38 healthy adults wore the device while awake for a week, following a low-fiber diet with half later given fiber supplements to increase hydrogen production. The device recorded an average of about 32 farts per day with individual ranges from four to 59, without measuring smell or sound.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]