Have you ever had the unstoppable urge to shred some serious ass at 30,000 feet? Of course you have. Who the hell hasn’t? But why? Why the hell do you always need to fart when you’re on an airplane and why does it seem like your stomach and butthole are conspiring against you by never allowing you to let it out when you finally get up and go to the bathroom? It’s a fickle body part, the human asshole.
Well, wonder no more, because we have one of those answers. Not both, though. You’ll have to find out, on your own, why your butt suddenly can’t fart the instant you give it some privacy to raise hell.
According to an article on BBC about Danish doctor and fart connoisseur, Jacob Rosenberg, there is a very good reason for all the in-flight flatulence.
Jacob Rosenberg’s interest with in-flight flatulence began on a long-haul trip to a New Zealand. He looked down at his stomach and it seemed to have visibly grown since he stepped on the plane. When he opened his bag and saw his empty bottle of water this made sense. The bottle had expanded in the low pressure and then crumpled as the plane reached the ground. The gases in his stomach, he realized, must have been doing exactly the same thing.
Its frequency on planes is simple physics, Rosenberg says. “The pressure drops and the air must expand into more space.” That 1 litre of gas now needs to fill a 30% bigger volume, leading to that nasty bloating feeling.
This explains EVERYTHING. But what should we do, all-knowing Rosenberg? Should we hold it in to save face, or should we unleash the fury, no doubt to the delight of the other travelers?
You could just try to hold it in, of course, but that’s not necessarily a wise idea; besides the discomfort, Rosenberg thinks there could be a slight risk. “If you are young and healthy it’s not a problem, but for a frail old person, it may put strain on cardiac function,” he says.
Now you know who you can blame the next time you fly and the entire vestibule smells like a fucking toilet: Jacob Rosenberg.
[H/T BBC]