Scientists develop smart underwear to track how regularly people fart and it's not what you'd expect
The smart underwear could assist medics with treating certain conditions
Featured Image Credit: PonyWang/Getty Images
Experts have developed a new technology that will track how regularly people actually fart.
Yep, scientists have unveiled new ‘smart underwear’ that gives us never before known insight into how the human metabolism works.
Before this, researchers would have to accept participants of studies reporting how often they farted but now, they won’t need to.
This comes as a new study tested out the smart underwear and found that people surveyed were able to comfortably wear them for over 11 hours a day.
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The underwear has been described as working as a ‘continuous glucose monitor, but for intestinal gas’, which could assist medics with treating certain conditions.
They work by tracking the release of microbiome hydrogen from the gut, with developers highlighting how this new tech could be used in medical research surrounding things like irritable bowel syndrome and food intolerance.
The results of the study were published in the Biosensors and Bioelectronics journal which saw 60 people take part.
Out of the 60, 19 of them wore the underwear for a week to test out its comfort while 38 people underwent a controlled diet to see whether the underwear could detect changes in gas production.
So, how often do people fart a day? It’s the question we’re all wondering and it turns out that, according to the study, healthy adults let it rip around 32 times over a 24 hour period.
Brantley Hall, who is one of the authors of the study from the University of Maryland, said: “Objective measurement gives us an opportunity to increase scientific rigour in an area that's been difficult to study.”
He continued: “We don't actually know what normal flatus production looks like. Without that baseline, it’s hard to know when someone's gas production is truly excessive.”
However, the study has enabled the experts to gain more insight into how the body works.
Hall went on to say: “We’ve learned a tremendous amount about which microbes live in the gut, but less about what they’re actually doing at any given moment.
“The Human Flatus Atlas will establish objective baselines for gut microbial fermentation, which is essential groundwork for evaluating how dietary, probiotic or prebiotic interventions change microbiome activity.”
Many people have taken to social media to share their own reactions to the innovation, with one person writing on Reddit: “I just want underwear with built in silencers.”
And another added: “Finally, an answer to possibly the greatest mystery in human history - who farted?”