Intestinal Gas Production — Recent Advances in Flatology

Abstract

Production of gas in the intestinal tract is an aspect of human physiology that has received far more attention in the scatologic than the scientific literature. In recent years, however, a few reports have threatened to deflate some of the mythology surrounding this topic and pump some data into a field that has been filled largely with hot air.Three gases are produced in appreciable quantities in the human gut: hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide.¹ Hydrogen and methane are not produced by human metabolic processes but are produced in the human gastrointestinal tract by the bacterial flora.² Carbon dioxide arises . . .