It's a common myth that women don't pass gas. Perhaps this myth stems from the fact that we are terribly embarrassed when we do whereas males, in the right context, are terribly proud. I once took part of a three day backpacking trip that included several young males. They farted heartily in the van the entire six hours down and back, farted around the campfire proudly, and spent one memorable evening lighting their farts.
Women, aside from the odd one or two, go to extreme measures to suppress, muffle, hide, or blame others for their flatulence. We certainly don't talk about bodily gas in any context other than shame and embarrassment. There is good reason for that: a guy farting in public is a source of amusement for anyone not downwind from him, a woman passing gas in public is looked upon as a decidedly unladylike.
However, the bitter fact is that women fart just like men to, and both sexes daily pass approximately a liter of gas in the form of 14 farts on average per day. We just can't tell anyone about it, except in a serious medical-type discussion. I could possibly attempt to make this article humorous and lively but I, like most women, don't find flatulence to be a source of rich amusement. If anything I am writing this as a plea for assurance that I am not the only female to suffer silently with this medical malady and to bring to light a question very seldom discussed in female gatherings.
In short, I have been suffering on and off most of my life with chronic gas. It seems to run in the family. Carnivores at heart, we are particularly sensitive to sugars and carbohydrates and moderately sensitive to dairy. Too much milk or dessert can see us crouched miserably over the toilet or futilely clenching our posteriors in order to prevent a puff of methane from escaping. For myself, I have had to keep a fairly tight rein on my food choices or my digestive system reacts with a vengeance.
However, for the last several months, I have been following a rigorous health regime of eating whatever I chose and avoiding the gym. Now, I naturally gravitate towards healthy food and I get a lot of exercise in my daily life, but I have been swilling lattes, munching cookies, and downing simple carbohydrates with willing abandonment. The terrific thing is that despite my gym phobia and mocha mainlining, I have not gained any weight at all during the past several months.
I would still be happily baking cookies and eating dessert twice a day (heck, why not, I wasn't getting any fatter!) had not one definite and overt side effect manifested a few weeks ago: chronic gas. As it turns out, simple sugars are readily sucked up by the human digestive track where they are quickly converted into copious amounts of gas. This bad aftereffects of my unruly sweet tooth coupled with my difficulties digesting milk products (milk allergies also result in gas) to produce one very troubled digestive system and one extremely unhappy human.
The past few weeks have been miserable as my system has enthusiastically pumped out enough natural gas daily to sustain a city for a week. While mornings were relatively quiet, late afternoons after lunch signaled the beginning of the daily gas production shift. Thankfully I teach college composition, a job that requires me to physically be at work only a small number of hours a week. Most of the worst farting times came when I was safely at home with just a dog for company and I could let the gas escape freely. And escape freely it did, many times a minute to the point that I was continually astonished at the rate of production and output.
Sadly though, I have had to face the public at times during the day and there have been many anxious leg-crossing, tushie clenching moments, moments where I checked behind me furtively to make sure the way was clear before letting a whiff of gas go, and unnecessary trips to the bathroom to free pent-up methane. The worst times have been while I was standing in front of my classes or moving about in my martial arts classes. Trying to keep a fart from escaping while trying to move around someone bent on clobbering your head with a wooden sword is difficult to say the least.
As if gas wasn't enough, my digestive system has finally had it with me pouring milk products, primarily in the form of coffee drinks, into it and has reacted with constipation, irritated bowel syndrome, and continual abdominal noises. For the past two weeks, my intestines have audibly burbled, groaned, trilled, burped, and grumbled loudly, often making it sound like I was passing gas even during the brief moments I wasn't.
