What gas is released when you fart and why?

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There are things that are quite unpleasant, but from which there is no escape. Various physiological

processes belong to this category. And some processes are different from others. For example, there is a process that people traditionally want to avoid when they are in the company of other people. This is farting or, in more scientific terms, flatulence. This process is one hundred percent natural, therefore, in principle, you should not be ashamed of it. If it does not occur on any excessive scale, it only signals that all processes in the human body are proceeding normally.

But still, it definitely won’t be superfluous to understand this phenomenon in an unnecessary way, although talking about it usually makes people embarrassed. But I want to understand what and how it works, and in more detail. After all, the better you understand your body, the easier it is to respond to any deviations in its functioning, if they still manage to manifest themselves. So let's go in order and consider the mechanism of this process, how it proceeds and, importantly, what gas is involved in this process.

How does gas occur in the intestines?

For gases to appear in the intestines, they need to come from somewhere. And there may be different situations. The easiest way is with air - it is simply swallowed along with food, especially when you are in too much of a hurry, when you eat on the go, when you talk while eating. In a word, it actively enters the intestines due to improper eating behavior, although it always accumulates in small quantities. Improper eating behavior only affects its quantity. And the larger it is, the greater the amount of gas that leaves the body.

Next comes carbon dioxide. This gas is formed inside the stomach when digestive juices interact with each other and with water. The remaining gases are released during the life of various bacteria that live in the large intestine. Different bacteria are responsible for producing different gases.

What gas is released when you fart?

A healthy person's gastrointestinal tract contains about 200 ml of gases. The gases include a mixture of hydrogen, methane, nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon monoxide. A healthy person can release from 0.5 to 1.5 liters of gases per day. The “food” for colon bacteria is digestible fiber - cellulose, hemicellulose, pectins, dietary fiber. Under normal conditions, large amounts of gases are absorbed by bacteria (aerobes), which also live in the large intestine. A violation of the ratio of bacteria that produce gas and bacteria that absorb it causes flatulence.

The composition of gases in the human body can vary depending on the activity of enzymes

Putrefactive processes ( dyspepsia ) develop with excessive consumption of food proteins due to enhanced enzymatic digestion of them. Flatulence is less pronounced, but the gases released are more smelly due to hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.

In the formation of carbon dioxide, the level of hydrochloric acid in the stomach and the activity of pancreatic secretions, enzymatic deficiency (intolerance to lactose, fructose, wheat) are important.
A larger amount of gases is represented by intestinal gases (up to 75%). They are formed during the enzymatic activity of intestinal bacteria during the digestion of food components.
In the small intestine, small gas bubbles mix with food. Only 20% of gases are of bacterial origin.

In the colon, gases are 100% formed by bacteria, and due to the high density of the contents in the intestine, the processes of penetration of gases into the blood are disrupted. This creates conditions for the accumulation of large amounts of gases.

Composition of gases

Now let’s figure out what the specific composition of gases is when they come out of a person. It is clear that no case is one hundred percent similar to another, but it is more than possible to identify approximate general proportions.

54 percent of the total content is nitrogen.
21 percent is hydrogen.
9 percent comes from carbon dioxide.
7 percent comes from methane.
4 percent is oxygen.
1 percent comes from hydrogen sulfide and other gases.

What kind of gas stinks when you fart?

Intestinal gas is a byproduct of digestion. Formed as a result of the activity of intestinal bacteria. They are a mixture of the following gases (in order of decreasing concentration): nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, mercaptans. The last three types of gases give the mixture an unpleasant odor. Mercaptans, by the way, are added to household gas (methane, propane) to give it a characteristic odor to signal possible leaks. Therefore, intestinal gases sometimes resemble the smell of household gas, and many people mistakenly think that methane gives them this smell.

Why bacteria?

It was mentioned above that the production of many gases is caused by bacteria that are found in the gastrointestinal tract. But why are they there? To do this, it is worth understanding what the large intestine is for. If processed food were excreted in a liquid, mushy form (which often happens with diarrhea), then the body would constantly lose a considerable amount of water. And this would lead to unwanted dehydration. Therefore, food spends about a day in the one and a half meter thick intestine, which creates a real nutrient medium there. Well, it serves as the basis for the existence of bacteria, of which, according to various estimates, there may be about three hundred. In the direct process of their feeding, they emit carbon dioxide, as well as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen, methane and much more, which are released when a person farts. So if you are wondering why I fart smells, the reason is bacteria.

Why is there constant gas in the stomach and farting?

One of the leading causes of increased gas formation, and as a result, bloating of the stomach, is malnutrition - eating food with a high gas-forming potential. These include: dairy products (cheese), vegetables and fruits (potatoes, carrots, onions, peaches and plums, apricots), legumes (beans and peas), grains (bran, wheat and oats), mushrooms and beer.

Separately, “problem products” are distinguished: oligo- and polysaccharides that enter the body unchanged. Fermentation processes in the intestinal lumen provoke gas synthesis.

The next reason is a violation of the circadian rhythm, i.e. unsystematic consumption of food, intake at large intervals or in excessive quantities. Such conditions lead to disruption of the movement of eaten particles through the gastrointestinal tract and impaired motility. As a result, food is delayed and fermentation processes begin.

The described conditions provoke the development of pathology in 90% of cases. Less common etiological factors include:

Dysbacteriosis (increased number of pathogenic and opportunistic microorganisms in the intestine).
Infectious and inflammatory diseases (acute intestinal infection, toxic infection, salmonellosis, etc.).
Mechanical obstacles in the path of food. These can be malignant and benign proliferative diseases, adhesions after previous inflammation, an increase in the volume of other organs (hydronephrosis, liver enlargement due to heart failure, etc.).
Stress and neuropsychic overstrain, which lead to disruption of the autonomic regulation of peristaltic activity of the intestinal tube.
Other gastrointestinal diseases. For example, gastritis causes disruption of food digestion. Solid and practically unchanged lumps, moving along the digestive tract, linger and begin to rot, causing the accumulation of gas. This group also includes Crohn's disease, hepatitis, calculous cholecystitis, pancreatitis.
Worm infestations. Helminths can be enormous in size - up to several meters in length. A lump of such a worm can completely obstruct the intestinal lumen and lead to food retention.

Additional factors that increase the tendency to develop excessive gas include:

severe systemic infections with intoxication syndrome;
obesity degree I and above;
physical inactivity (less than 8,000 steps per day);
allergic and autoimmune pathologies.

Interesting Facts

Finally, some interesting facts about these gases. Not only can this gas smell like rotten eggs, it is also flammable, so when someone is “farting”, it is strongly recommended not to set it on fire. It’s not just humans who “fart” with such gases—animals also produce them in large volumes. And out of competition here is not just any pig, but a camel. Zebras, sheep, and a number of other animals also fart a lot. But the herring actually “farts” to communicate with other individuals, to transmit information.

Gases can leave the body at high speed, up to 10 meters per second. The average adult farts up to 14 times a day, but you can hardly find anyone who admits it to any extent openly. In addition, a fairly large proportion of the processes during which gas is released occurs not during the daytime, but during sleep.

Intestinal gases as a cause of spontaneous combustion in humans

Flatulence affects about 30% of the total population. It is typical that during flatulence, gases are released 300 times a day, which is 20 times more often than normal. (M. Lewitt).

At the beginning of the third millennium, in an age of unprecedented advances in science and technology, man is still faced with miracles. But now, unlike his predecessors, he increasingly asks the question: why? Science provides the answer. She persistently dispels the “fog of secrecy.” More recently, researchers have solved the mystery of two more phenomena.

On January 5, 1996, during a treatment session at the barocenter of the St. Petersburg Pediatric Academy, 12-year-old Sasha Chekeres burned alive in a pressure chamber. The criminal case into this tragic incident was dropped due to the fact that four months after the tragedy, the remains of a lighter, which the boy allegedly carried with him, were allegedly found at the scene of the incident.

In recent years, similar fires in single-person medical pressure chambers have occurred in other cities: Minsk, Rostov-on-Don, Barnaul, Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk. In some cases, nothing is known about the causes of fires in such pressure chambers, since investigative experiments were not carried out. What was the cause of the fires?

Lurking danger

In Russia, 99% of medical institutions are equipped with single-place medical pressure chambers, which are unsafe to use because the pressure increases with medical oxygen. Fires in them occur violently, like a slow explosion, with a rapid increase in pressure and temperature (up to 1400 ° C). In multi-place pressure chambers, which are filled not with oxygen, but with air, the likelihood of a fire is lower. And even if this happened, some victims managed to escape (albeit with body burns and poisoning from combustion products).

There are many causes of fire in pressure chambers: flammable items (lighters, matches, transistors, etc.); static electricity; clothing that accumulates an electric charge (nylon, nylon, etc.); even cotton fabric washed many times can spontaneously ignite; cosmetics; some intercoms.

In “silent” cases of fires in a pressure chamber filled with oxygen, intestinal gases, abundantly released from patients, may be to blame. This version was put forward by Vladimir Ivanovich Tyurin, an employee of the Military Medical Academy, Candidate of Medical Sciences.

Explosive mixtures inside a person

What could be burning there, you ask? Not only burn, but also explode! American flatologists (doctors who study the formation of intestinal gases in various parts of the intestine, their composition, volume and frequency of release) determined that these gases contain approximately 60% nitrogen, 5% oxygen, 15% carbon dioxide and 20% hydrogen. And hydrogen sulfide, methane, carbon monoxide, and mercaptan also “wander” inside us. All this either burns well or explodes when combined in certain proportions with oxygen.

Researchers have even found out which parts of the intestine produce which gases. To do this, 11 volunteers were given three tubes (into the stomach through the mouth and into the intestines through the anus) for 14 days. Well, they probably suffered too much. But now a lot is known.

It turns out that when an average lunch is digested, almost 15 liters of gases are formed! True, only a few percent of them come out with farts, and the rest penetrates the intestinal walls into the blood and is excreted through the lungs.

Normally, the amount of intestinal gases is small - 0.9-1.0 l. With flatulence (bloating), this volume increases to 5-10 liters, due to flammable and explosive gases - hydrogen and methane. There are even cases of inflammation and explosions of intestinal gases during operations and complex medical procedures.

It is possible that an explosive mixture is formed under the patient’s blanket in the pressure chamber.

As you know, oxygen barotherapy is prescribed to sick people. This nonspecific method treats many serious diseases: gas gangrene, extensive burns, sepsis, heart and vascular diseases, psoriasis, periodontal disease, gastrointestinal disorders and much more.

Thus, patients in a pressure chamber emit flammable gases not only from the intestines, but also when breathing.

"Fresh breath"

Since the time of Hippocrates, doctors have been able to identify diseases by the smell of exhaled air. In patients with diabetes, the exhalation “smells” of acetone, in case of severe liver damage a fishy odor emanates, in case of renal failure the mouth “pulls” urine, and in case of a lung abscess a putrid stench is emitted.

Breath analysis was first carried out in 1784 by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (who discovered the role of oxygen in combustion) and the French mathematician Pierre Laplace. They did this on a guinea pig and found that the animal inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. Other volatile components of exhaled air have been discovered only since the mid-19th century.

In 1971, there were 250 known volatile organic compounds in exhaled air, and currently there are about 400 of them, including flammable methane and hydrogen. Dangerous fun

Some people use the burning properties of intestinal gases for entertainment. This is often shown in youth comedies. A certain Michael Lewitt set fire to his waste gases with a burning torch. Sometimes the flame length reached 25 cm or more.

And a few years ago, the Irish newspaper The Irish Times, in an article entitled “Gone with the Wind,” spoke about the serious consequences of such entertainment. One of the farmers in County Offaly decided to make a joke and released gases onto a lit match to trace their trajectory while in a cowshed. And he didn’t calculate: the trajectory turned out to be so great that the fire, under the pressure of intestinal gases (which can burst out at a speed of 0.1 to 1.1 m/s), reached a haystack. And after a few minutes everything burned down.

It’s better to have “harmless” fun following the example of rock and roll star Rod Stewart. Together with his wife, supermodel Rachel Hunter, he indulges in his favorite pastime and even competes with her, betting big money on who can fire the loudest “burst of charges.” The biggest nuisance for outsiders is the spoiled air.

"Heavenly Voice"

But is the release of gases in a pressure chamber really that dangerous, the reader may doubt?

According to foreign and domestic researchers, about 30% of the entire population suffers from flatulence, while gases are released almost 300 times a day (20 times more often than normal). It is estimated that during flatulence, people pass gas 12-13 times per hour, with the volume of each “charge” being 40 ml or more.

Flatulence often occurs after operations. To reduce it, patients are sometimes placed in a single medical pressure chamber. With increased pressure, the patient's stomach drops, intestinal motility is restored, and intestinal gases begin to escape. Surgeons call this the “heavenly voice.” This “voice” manifests itself especially strongly when the pressure in the pressure chamber decreases. This is where spontaneous combustion of the released methane, hydrogen sulfide or detonating gas can occur.

The potential for a fire or explosion in the pressure chamber due to the accumulation of intestinal gases has been substantiated by experts. However, not everyone finds this reason convincing. In the event of a hyperbaric chamber fire at the Pediatric Academy of St. Petersburg, the commission examining this incident did not consider it necessary to mention intestinal gases among the probable causes of the tragedy.

Astronauts burned in oxygen

In 1971, a Soviet cosmonaut died on Earth in a fire in a soundproofing chamber filled with pure oxygen (under a pressure of 259 mm Hg). When oxygen burns, the temperature rises very quickly, even lead wires and stainless steel melt.

In 1977, in the USA, three astronauts burned to death in the cabin of a spacecraft, also filled with pure oxygen (at a pressure of 270 mm Hg). After this, in order to increase fire safety, the Americans began to use a nitrogen-oxygen mixture (69% nitrogen and 31% oxygen) in spacecraft, and only compressed air in pressure chambers.

And in Italy, due to the danger of fires, they completely abandoned the use of single-place medical pressure chambers.

But is it dangerous to “shoot intestinal charges” in space? After all, when a gas stream flows from the astronaut’s anus, jet thrust is created. At what speed does such a jet allow movement inside and outside the ship?

One of the Russian cosmonauts who went into outer space said that this problem is not relevant. The force of the released jet is less than the total impulse of the thrust of one's own breathing. A serious problem that even dissertations are devoted to is the blanket air that each of us breathes.

(Much more problems when working in space are caused by the beating of the heart: in zero gravity, the body vibrates due to its impacts. This prevents astronauts from working on ultra-precise optical instruments. They have to fix the body in order to accurately “aim” at the crosspiece of the device.)

It turns out that it’s safe to blow gases in space, you won’t even hit your head.

By the way, a person “salutes” from the intestines on average 8 times a day, that is, 2900 times a year, and over the course of a lifetime, a man releases a burst of gases of 209 thousand charges, and a woman – 232 thousand. Plus it makes a noise effect!

Dangerous occupation

It turns out that the “heavenly voice” (as surgeons call this phenomenon) sometimes has more than serious and tragic consequences. Los Angeles researcher Jim Dawson published an entire book, Who Cut the Cheese, dedicated to the "cultural history of farting." Some excerpts from it indicate the severity of the problem.

For example, a single “blank shot” cost the lives of 10 thousand people in the 1st century AD. A Roman soldier decided to express his contempt for the Jews and loudly released gases in the presence of a crowd of thousands. The people were outraged and staged a riot, during which many innocent people died.

“Pour me a drink!”

In 1998, during one of the fires in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg, two firefighters admitted that in their practice they had encountered unexplained cases of spontaneous combustion of people. Official reports only record cases of fires and casualties. Spontaneous combustion of people, if it occurs, is counted as a casualty, without specifying the cause.

The fire tamers refused to give names: the authorities do not like extraneous conversations at the sites.

About three years ago, Nikolai was on call in a communal apartment in the Vyborg district. Neighbors called the fire department when smoke and a strong burning smell came from the drunkard’s room. Arriving firefighters broke down the door and saw a completely drunk, burned man on the floor. His body had terrible burns and was charred in places. The clothing has been preserved in fragments. When they began to lift him, the man woke up and began to ask: “Pour me a drink!” Then he died. What’s surprising: except for him, nothing burned in the room. Even if he had set himself on fire, the furniture would have caught fire, but here everything remained intact.

One acquaintance who recently worked in the fire department heard about a similar case from colleagues from the Nevsky district. From time to time, reports appear in the press about people burning from the inside. The reasons for such incidents remain a mystery.

Blazing from within

This dramatic incident occurred on February 19, 1725 in a small Parisian hotel and became the first official evidence of spontaneous human combustion. The wife of the owner, Jacques Millet, suffering from alcoholism, went down to the basement, taking with her a bottle of wine. The owner fell asleep without waiting for his wife. The smell of burning woke him up. Jacques Millet quickly got dressed and rushed to the basement. There a terrible picture appeared before his eyes: the remains of an unfortunate woman were smoldering on a chair.

The court tried to accuse the hotel owner of premeditated murder, but the innocent man was saved from execution by one surprising circumstance: his wife burned out from the inside. The victim's clothes turned out to be unscorched! The doctor Le Sha, who was at the hotel that night, was able to prove to the judges that not a single mortal is able to burn a human body without damaging surrounding objects.

Such chilling incidents are far from uncommon in the annals of history. Most often, overweight women addicted to wine became victims of spontaneous combustion. Therefore, even 300 years ago, many believed that this was God’s punishment for an unrighteous lifestyle. But sometimes fire also punished innocent people.

American Jack Angell, completely sober, went to bed in his camper on November 12, 1974. He woke up only four days later and saw with horror that his right hand had burned to the ground. Significant areas of skin on his back were also burned. When questioned, the unfortunate man could not say anything intelligible. He could only remember “a strange semblance of an explosion in his chest.” Neighbors at the campsite, who came to the rescue, were amazed to find Jack Angel wearing intact pajamas.

Forensic medical experts were also extremely surprised - the victim’s hand was burned from the inside. This was evidenced by the preserved skin and bone in some places, which had turned to ash. Experts spent more than two years disassembling and reassembling Jack's campervan, trying to discover the cause of the mystery in it, but to no avail.

They started burning more often

In 1985, several cases of spontaneous combustion of people occurred in England. So, on January 28, a young student who went down to the hall of Widnes College in Cheshire suddenly burst into flames in front of her shocked friends and soon died.

Another victim was elderly widow Mary Carter, who was found dead in the hallway of her flat in Ivor Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham. Although there were matches in the room, they were not found near the corpse. They could not figure out where the fire came from.

A month later, 19-year-old computer operator Paul Hayes' stomach flared while he was calmly walking on Stephen Green in London. He managed to get to the hospital, where doctors saved him because the fire burned for about 30 seconds.

In 1988, a 71-year-old woman in England survived spontaneous combustion, but her husband was seriously burned while rescuing his wife from the fire.

In April 1990, a 14-year-old boy from Hunan Province, China, burst into flames several times. Small streams of flame erupted from the round pores on his skin.

On May 29 of the same year in Los Angeles (USA), 26-year-old Angela Hernandez, a patient at a medical center, suddenly burst into flames on the operating table and died.

Similar cases are known in Russia. One of them occurred in October 1990 on the border of the Saratov and Volgograd regions. Two shepherds accidentally wandered onto the slope of a hill, which, according to local beliefs, should be avoided. Feeling tired, one of them sat down on a stone (according to other sources, he sat down out of great need), and the other went to calm the sheep, which were frightened by something. Returning from the flock, the shepherd discovered the burnt corpse of his partner. No more than five minutes passed.

Before the doctors and police arrived, the body was transferred to a cart. Eyewitnesses testified that his clothes were not damaged by the flames. However, when the body was removed from the cart, its bottom turned out to be burnt. The case of accusing the shepherd of setting his partner on fire was closed due to lack of evidence.

Theoretical spark

Can these strange cases of living torches be explained? According to South African professor Jackie van Strijp, there may be several hypotheses. The most plausible is the following: our body contains chemical elements (for example, phosphorus), which, when in contact with each other or air, can spontaneously ignite. Probably, under certain conditions, in an unknown way, pure phosphorus formed reacts with oxygen and... explodes.

Another assumption is based on the fact that other substances can also ignite: flammable gases released by the body, as well as fats, which are especially abundant in the body of fat people. A theoretical spark capable of igniting a combustible mixture can be formed as a result of the difference in electrostatic potentials of individual internal organs.

In the 19th century, a popular hypothesis was the spontaneous combustion of drunkards, whose bodies were soaked in alcohol and therefore burst into flames from any spark, even when smoking.

The listed hypotheses still cannot explain why, in most cases, surrounding objects, and sometimes even the clothes of the victims, remain intact.

A number of researchers of this phenomenon make other assumptions. The fire that burns the unfortunate person from the inside is caused by ball lightning, microwave radiation and even... the reaction of atomic fusion in the body.

Which hypothesis will be correct?

Recently, British researchers have uncovered a mystery that has existed for almost three centuries. It was found that the cause of the phenomenon is methane. It accumulates in the intestines due to dysfunction of the digestive system. Sometimes it is enough to light a cigarette at the wrong time for the gas accumulated in the cavities of the body to ignite.

The ability of unusual fire to destroy bones is no longer a mystery. The experimenters roasted a fattened pig over low heat for 5 hours. It turned out that the bones of the animal that died in the name of science became black, easily crumbling firebrands.

The fat helped turn them into ashes. It turned out that the fat layer of mammals significantly increases the destructive power of the flame. This discovery also made it possible to explain the mysterious preservation of the lower part of the body in victims of spontaneous combustion. As you know, there is practically no fat on the legs.

From the book “Phenomena, Mysteries, Hypotheses” Potapov A.V.