How to stop passing wind so much, foods that cause excess flatulence, how much is normal, ‘hot’ ones and why we do them in the first place
- In most cases, excessive wind can be controlled with changes to your diet and lifestyle – including eating more slowly and drinking more water
- Flatulence caused by swallowed air tends to be louder but less smelly, while that driven by digestion and bacterial fermentation is usually quieter but smellier
Everybody toots. This is a fact. The average number of times a person passes wind in a day is 13.6.
The decimal point attests to the fact that somebody has actually studied flatulence frequency. That somebody is Dr Michael Levitt, an American gastroenterologist who is an expert in flatus – the medical word for passing wind.
Each of us, on average, releases between 500 and 2,000 millilitres of gas per day via our back passages, with the average volume of a single toot between 35 and 90 millilitres.
One young man that Levitt treated passed wind up to 90 times a day – releasing an average of 5,520 millilitres of gas per day, or 62 millilitres per event. He turned out to be lactose intolerant; when that was fixed, his excessive flatulence stopped.
Maxi Schoenteich, a UK-trained osteopath and nutritional therapist in Hong Kong, says that food intolerance is one reason you may pass wind more often.
But there are other reasons too: dietary and lifestyle factors play a great role in gassiness.