Showing posts with label wind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wind. Show all posts

Friday, 28 September 2012

Farts and how to survive them

I'm not going to pretend i'm happy with this video and i plan to re-make it some time soon.  In my defence, it was a little hard to concentrate given my physical condition.  Frustratingly, this was supposed to be a "link" video to attract people from the other channel over to this one.



The problems are, of course, poor visual quality, framing and the fact that i couldn't fart through most of it when the video itself was supposed to be about farting. Problems also beset the video to which this is a sequel on the other channel, but i'm going to upload that one too because i want to keep going.

So:  basically, flatulence is caused in two ways.  One is the entry of gas into the colon from elsewhere and the other is the breakdown of carbohydrates by archaeans in the colon, namely Methanobrevibacter smithii.  It is sometimes possible to ignite farts but inadvisable.  Farts in most people usually consist largely of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane and sometimes hydrogen sulphide.

Farty vegetables include those with sulphur compounds and those with carbohydrates in them.  The former include the Brassicas such as Brussels sprouts and cabbage, and the latter the pulses and beans as well as plants in the daisy family which contain an unusual carbohydrate called inulin.  Instead of our own digestive system being able to break the offending compounds down, organisms called archaeans do it instead.  These were until fairly recently thought to be bacteria, but have been found to be as different from them as bacteria themselves are from us, and they are therefore now placed in a completely separate kingdom.  The species which does the fart generation is called Methanobrevibacter smithii, as mentioned above, namely the methane.  Surprisingly, methane itself does not contribute to the stinkiness of farts, and nor to skatole or indole:  it's the sulphur-containing compounds, including hydrogen sulphide, which do that.

The herbal approach to farting is to use carminatives.  These are generally familiar herbs and spices as found in the larder, such as turmeric (Curcuma longa), peppermint (Mentha x piperita), caraway (Carum carvi), ginger (Zingiberis officinale), cinnamon (Cinnamonum zeylanicum) and cardamoms (Elettaria cardamomum), along with a host of others.  My personal favourite as a carminative herb is caraway, which i've found most successful, although in terms of taste i would prefer various other herbs on and off that list.  Carminative herbs tend to be found among the Zingiberaceae, Lamiaceae and Apiaceae - ginger, mint and celery families.  Their familiarity and presence in food is partly to aid digestion.

There are also physical and practical approaches.  Much of the substance of a fart comes from swallowed air.  This can be remedied by avoiding overbreathing and concentrating on the diaphragm, chewing each mouthful fifty times, not eating on the run and sitting down after food.  Once the gas is down there, there are various ways of relieving the problem, including the "telephoning teenager", the Cobra, the Child and the Shoulderstand, the last three also being known as (without diacritics) bhujangasana, balasana and sarvangasana.  Unfortunately, the second major thing to go wrong with this video was that the camera was too high to catch me doing these, so they're basically left to the viewers' imaginations.

So this video needs to be re-made, but because i'm determined to upload at least one video a day, i have insisted on posting this one too, even though it could've turned out so much better.

Sunday, 23 September 2012

Nobody will notice, it's fine

People worry a lot about their privacy on the internet.  I find this quite strange in some ways, although i do understand it and i take those concerns seriously.  The reason i find it strange is that for the past thirteen years, i have tried to promote the herbalism on the internet, or rather, i did for a while and then decided it was a waste of time.  I used to see anything i put on the internet as a postcard, i.e. anyone could see it.  Whereas this is true, it's also the case that the internet is a blizzard of postcards and the chances of any one of those postcards being seen is very small.  If this were not the case, it would mean that people would only be able to make money publicising other people's things on the Web if people's beliefs about publicity being hard here were ill-founded.  As a result, i don't really care what i put on the internet because i realise most people have better things to do with their lives than pay attention to what some obscure middle-aged tranny thinks or does.  Basically, i can shout as loudly as i like about whatever takes my fancy without ever being heard against the clamour of other voices.

With this in mind, i would ask you to consider watching the following video without mousing over or clicking on any of the recommendations at the end.  If you do, you have only yourself to blame and you won't be able to unsee or unhear any of it.  If you want, i can give you a context based on concern for people's safety, a certain Wikipedia article which got deleted and a certain psychotherapist who was afflicted with scepticism:

Anyway, on the subject of the video itself, it's mainly about the stomach and associated tubing.  The stomach varies in size according to its content and is far from a passive receptacle, although oddly not much digestion takes place in it compared to a little lower down.  As it fills, it relaxes, thereby preventing damage, and it can hold up to five litres of liquid, solid or a combination of the two.  It also signals the colon hormonally as it empties, encouraging the movement of the contents of the digestive system down towards the anus to make space for the next lot.  Liquids are not compressible, so five litres outside the body will be five litres inside it, but in the case of air and other gases, five litres at atmospheric pressure will be less inside the stomach and as a result the capacity of the stomach for air seems to be greater than five litres although in fact it isn't.  Further down in the digestive system, the intestines have a capacity of about ten litres, so the whole digestive system from the bottom of the oesophagus downwards has a capacity of about fifteen litres overall.  Add to this the five litres of vital capacity in the lungs and you have twenty litres.

Some people might realise that what i'm writing here has a different significance than what the uninformed reader might think, which really just proves my point that you can shout as loud as you like on the internet and nobody will hear you.

Next stop Violet Beauregarde!