Speaker 1: Get smarter in sixty seconds with brain stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com Hi Marshall Brain. What is happening when
Speaker 1: we fart? We all suffer from this problem to varying degrees.
Speaker 1: Where does the gas come from? Just think about your
Speaker 1: digestive system for a moment. One thing that's obvious is
Speaker 1: that digestion involves breaking things down. Everything in food has
Speaker 1: to be broken down into small units in order to
Speaker 1: enter the bloodstream. Protein must be broken down into its
Speaker 1: individual amino acids, Fats must be broken down into fatty acids,
Speaker 1: and carbohydrates both simple and complex must be broken into
Speaker 1: individual glucose molecules. Flagulence occurs when a food does not
Speaker 1: break down completely in the stomach and the small intestine.
Speaker 1: As a result, the food makes it to the large
Speaker 1: intestine in an undigested state. For example, if you are
Speaker 1: lactose intolerant, it means that you lack an enzyme lack
Speaker 1: taste in your intestine. This enzyme breaks lactose apart into
Speaker 1: two sugar molecules so they can enter the bloodstream without
Speaker 1: lac taste. Lactose passes undigested through the stomach and small intestine,
Speaker 1: and it arrives in the large intestine. They're the lactose
Speaker 1: meets up with billions of hungry bacteria, the natural intestinal
Speaker 1: fauna we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria
Speaker 1: are happy to digest lactose. They produce a variety of
Speaker 1: gases in much the same way that yeast produces carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide to leaven bread. Gases such as methane, hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: hydrogen sulfide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: sulfide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulens.
Speaker 1: Certain foods produce more flatulens than others because they contain
Speaker 1: more undigestible carbohydrates than others. Being means, as you might expect,
Speaker 1: are particularly well endowed in this regard. Do you have
Speaker 1: any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please
Speaker 1: send me an email at podcast at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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