If you think shows like "The Pitt" make being a doctor seem sexily gritty and full of drama, consider this: Harvard is studying farts for medical purposes.
Why is that exactly? Because the gases one releases reveal what's in your gut microbes. Those microbes are connected to your brain in that they 'talk' to each other, in layman's terms.
And the new study from Harvard University suggests that doctors could potentially treat or prevent certain mental health conditions by manipulating gut microbes.
In a nutshell (a foul-smelling one), scientists have found that gut bacteria use hydrogen gas from flatulence to convert bile steroids into hormones, and those hormones affect your mood.
Specifically, gut bacteria produces gases that create hormones associated with mood regulation, so they're tracking the gases released by microbes as a potential new way to treat depression and postpartum depression.
“While it’s common knowledge that gut health is important to our overall well-being, exactly how bacteria that reside in our GI tract interact with one another and with our own cells to impact our mental health is still being uncovered,” lead author Dr. Megan McCurry wrote. She conducted the work at Harvard Medical School.
“This work reveals how certain gut bacteria perform a chemical transformation that produces a steroid that could impact women’s health and postpartum depression,” McCurry wrote
The focus of this study was the use of gut microbes to treat postpartum depression, a serious mental illness that can worsen into dangerous territory for new moms, such as postpartum psychosis.
The study of farts revealing a potential new course of treatment for the ailment comes on the heels of another breakthrough. The New York Post reported that Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have found that hydrogen sulfide — the rotten egg-smelling chemical compound released by farts — could protect from Alzheimer’s.
And yes, that means that smelling farts could help to keep your brain sharp. For one, you'd definitely be able to figure out who dealt it by who smelt it first.
“Our new data firmly link aging, neurodegeneration and cell signaling using hydrogen sulfide and other gaseous molecules within the cell,” said Dr. Bindu Paul, co-author of the study, which was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Post noted that previous research in the odorous sciences has discovered that female flatulence has a “significantly higher concentration” of hydrogen sulfide than farts from men — meaning women’s gas tends to have “greater odor intensity” than men’s.