Now I know for a lot of people the very word ‘farting' sounds offensive especially offensive to a lot of women for some reason, I know my wife and my aunts and mum hate the word. However it seems a lot of men suffer from this, especially in the morning. The reason I wrote about this was because I woke myself up this morning because of a gargantuan fart, honestly! my stomach must have deflated by 2 inches.

I know what is causing this, for me, to happen, it's the sweets I eat. I gave up sweets as a trial for 3 weeks and my bloating and my flatulance levels were at an all time low. So, I thought, I can give up sweets lets see what happens when I start eating them again. Within a day or two I felt bloated again and my flatulence levels increased. I have now been eating the sweets, by this I mean biscuits, sweets, cake and flapjacks, for almost two weeks.

So I now know what causes my bloating and flatulence problems so I can cut them out of my daily diet altogether. But I got to wondering how farts are formed (I know I know I'll never mention this again in any other post but somebody's got to do it).

I went over to How stuff works for an explanation and here is their explanation:

Flatulence occurs when a food does not break down completely in the stomach and small intestine. As a result, the food makes it into the large intestine in an undigested state. For example, if you are "lactose intolerant," it means that you lack an enzyme (lactase) in your intestine -- the enzyme that breaks lactose apart into two sugar molecules so they can enter the bloodstream. Without lactase, lactose passes undigested through the stomach and small intestine and arrives in the large intestine.

There, the lactose meets up with billions of hungry bacteria -- the natural "intestinal fauna" we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria are happy to digest lactose. They produce a variety of gases, in much the way that yeast produces carbon dioxide to leaven bread (see How Bread Works for details on yeast). Gases such as methane, hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen sulfide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulence.

Certain foods produce more flatulence than others because they contain more indigestible carbohydrates than others. Beans, as you might expect, are particularly well-endowed in this regard.

A few ways to reduce flatulanece.

* Take a probiotic to counteract any loss of the good bacteria we have in our stomachs
* Cut down on food offendors which may cause gas such as dairy products, apples, pears, wholegrain foods, soft drinks and fruit drinks. Experiment as not all of the aforementioned foods cause it for you.
* Limit high fat foods as this takes longer to digest and causes more gas in your stomach
* If you are lactose intolerant cut out dairy foods from your diet
* Experiment with all differnet types of food. Cut one food out for 48 hours and note the effect and keep on doing this until you find offending foods which may cuase flatulence.
* If it becomes a real problem see your doctor who can get some tests done for various problems you may have.

I hope this has helped a little but it still begs the questions why do men fart more than women?