Health

PBS -  A new CDC report found that alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. rose by 29 percent in just five years.

Men's Health - Farting might be embarrassing—especially when it’s noticeable (sound, smell). But it’s actually important for your health.  There are benefits to letting it rip throughout the day (most of them go undetected, anyway.) “Farting can tell us a lot about our digestive health. It’s actually very normal to pass gas over a dozen times a day, and lack of gas may indicate less diversity in lower digestive tract bacteria,” says Kelly Jones MS, RD, CSSD, LDN, of Kelly Jones Nutrition. Having a diverse microbiome is important to good health in many ways, including improved mood and fitness performance, better heart health, and a healthier immune system. If you aren’t farting enough, see a doctor to better understand why and how to get things moving better in your digestive system. In the meantime, start making your microbiome more diverse with these strategies.

But if you are farting frequently enough, here’s what it’s doing for you: Farting is telling you you’re getting good, complex carbs. “A diet rich in legumes, vegetables, fruits, whole grains nuts and seeds has long been associated with health benefits, and a healthy amount of flatulence can be indicative of this,” says Jones.  These foods provide fermentable fiber, resistant starches and oligosaccharides, which are all complex carbohydrates that good bacteria ferment and feed off of in the lower digestive tract. Gas is a byproduct of this fermentation, and that’s what you release when you fart. So, by farting, you know you’re getting a good variety of these types of fibrous foods to improve your gut health and the microbiome that helps keep it going. MORE