Post by Yeti on Dec 9, 2023 17:27:20 GMT -5
Make sure to sniff farts.
www.healthline.com/health/digestive-health/smelling-farts-is-healthy
www.healthline.com/health/digestive-health/smelling-farts-is-healthy
Is Smelling Farts Healthy? Research Says Maybe
Recent research in animals suggests that hydrogen sulfide — one of the major components of smelly gas, the one that gives it that “rotten egg” smell — might provide some health benefits in humans, from preventing heart disease to kidney failure.
One 2014 study conducted by a collaborative research team at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and University of Texas provides some ample support for the idea that smelling hydrogen sulfide could be good for you.
The study was based on the notion that mitochondria, the part of your cells that help produce energy, could benefit from this gas.
In this study, researchers noticed that when cells in arteries or veins experience damage or stress linked to certain conditions, these cells use the body’s own enzymes to create hydrogen sulfide.
This gas then allows the cell to better regulate the oxidative stress often caused by these conditions, which eventually results in inflammation that can kill the cell.
But as a condition becomes more severe, mitochondria can’t produce enough of the gas to keep up, and the disease continues to get worse.
Researchers thus decided to test a theory: Can exposing cells to artificial hydrogen sulfide help keep their mitochondria strong and prevent diseases from getting worse?
So, they created a compound they named AP39 that mimicked hydrogen sulfide. They then exposed cells in blood vessels to it.
Early results suggest that up to 80 percent of mitochondria exposed to AP39 are preserved by the gas. This could have far-reaching effects on many conditions linked to cell death caused by mitochondrial function.
More research needs to be done on the interactions of AP39/hydrogen sulfide with other body systems, but early results are promising.
This result wasn’t just a stroke of luck. The same year, a team featuring some of the same researchers also foundTrusted Source that AP39 protected mitochondria from damage caused by inflammation.
The study was based on the notion that mitochondria, the part of your cells that help produce energy, could benefit from this gas.
In this study, researchers noticed that when cells in arteries or veins experience damage or stress linked to certain conditions, these cells use the body’s own enzymes to create hydrogen sulfide.
This gas then allows the cell to better regulate the oxidative stress often caused by these conditions, which eventually results in inflammation that can kill the cell.
But as a condition becomes more severe, mitochondria can’t produce enough of the gas to keep up, and the disease continues to get worse.
Researchers thus decided to test a theory: Can exposing cells to artificial hydrogen sulfide help keep their mitochondria strong and prevent diseases from getting worse?
So, they created a compound they named AP39 that mimicked hydrogen sulfide. They then exposed cells in blood vessels to it.
Early results suggest that up to 80 percent of mitochondria exposed to AP39 are preserved by the gas. This could have far-reaching effects on many conditions linked to cell death caused by mitochondrial function.
More research needs to be done on the interactions of AP39/hydrogen sulfide with other body systems, but early results are promising.
This result wasn’t just a stroke of luck. The same year, a team featuring some of the same researchers also foundTrusted Source that AP39 protected mitochondria from damage caused by inflammation.
) and I can appreciate the comedy in these sorts of articles - and I have certainly read worse - but the sort of lazy journalism and "toilet humour" that these subjects often engender does a great disservice to the scientists and researchers who spend years trying to come up with ways of curing often quite debilitating and little-understood illnesses and generally making people healthier. 
