Being Gassy Can Actually Be A Good Thing, Says This MD — Here's Why

When produced in the right amounts, new research shows that postbiotic gases play several important roles in the body, including acting as a second set of powerful signaling agents, similar to short-­chain fatty acids. In this way, postbiotic gases invisibly influence infinite amounts of your bodily functions including your inflammation levels, brain clarity, and mitochondrial energy production.

The most abundant intestinal gases in the human body are nitrogen and carbon dioxide. They primarily originate from inhaled air that you swallowed, so most of us who suffer from "gas and bloating" are actually air swallowers from talking and breathing.

However, some gases are produced by bacterial fermentation, like hydrogen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide, as well as the afore­mentioned CO₂. These have only very recently joined the league of gasotransmitters led by nitric oxide—the first gasotransmitter "discovered" to be not just a vasodilator but also a signaling molecule used by the microbiome to influence a wide array of bodily functions. This breakthrough discovery garnered a Nobel Prize in 1998. Whoever thought that your gas could be worthy of a Nobel Prize?

OK, so you make some gas, you pass an embarrassing fart that smells like rotten eggs (that's hydrogen sulfide), you play the old Boy Scout trick of lighting it with a BIC lighter (that's hydro­gen gas; think Hindenburg, highly flammable), or you contribute to greenhouse gases like the cows (that's methane gas).

No big deal, you might think; that's just the cost of doing digestion. Except these biome­-generated gases, which it turns out are all constantly sending signals to the cells in your body, are a really big deal.

For example, not only did nitric oxide signaling function get recognized with a Nobel, it actually got an even bigger accolade in 2019, when researchers declared it to be a hitherto unrecognized sophisticated system that "communicates with and controls the host's DNA like a chemical language1 instead of single words." How's that for impressive?