Most adults release intestinal gas 10 to 20 times a day. Some of the healthy foods like beans, cauliflower, some whole grains tend to cause gas.
- Slow down, do not eat too fast.
Whenever you eat or drink something, a little bit of air goes down with it. Some of that air beats a hasty retreat in the form of a burp, but some may also get into the stomach and eventually make its way through the entire digestive tract. To reduce flatulence, reduce the amount of this incidental air intake. Eat and drink slowly and chew food thoroughly.
- Airy now, pay later.
Air also gets into the gut if it is incorporated into food and drinks. Beer, cola and other carbonated beverages are prime culprits.
- Smoking.
Apparently some air gets swallowed when people smoke. If dire warnings about heart disease and lung cancer has not scared you, may be the prospect of flatulence may just do the trick.
- Avoid the brimstone.
Flatus contains a mixture of gases, but the bad smell comes from the ones that contain sulfur, chiefly hydrogen sulfide and methylmercaptan.
- Beans and some vegetables can be trouble.
There is a trio of larger sugars – raffinose, stachyose, and verbascose that manage to arrive in our colons relatively unscathed because we lack the enzymes to digest them. The reprieve does not last long, though. Bacterial residents of the colon feed on these sugars, producing gas as a by-product.
- Not so sweet in the end.
Foods sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup can cause bloating and flatulence in some people because their small intestines can’t absorb large amounts of fructose.
- Remedies with question marks.
Charcoal pills are supposed to absorb the smelly sulfurous gases in the colon before they are emitted as flatus.
- Odour eating underwear.
They are the opposite of the whoopee cushion: seat cushions with charcoal filters that are supposed to absorb flatus.
- Adjusting the ecosystem.
The bacteria in the intestines operate as a little ecosystem. Too few or too much of a particular species can produce excessive flatulence. Taking probiotics, which restock the gut with bacteria, can help.