{"id":461002,"date":"2026-02-10T23:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/461002\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T23:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T23:02:10","slug":"how-many-times-do-you-fart-a-day-smart-underwear-says-its-way-more-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/461002\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Times Do You Fart a Day? ‘Smart Underwear’ Says It’s Way More Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the lab that brought you the reason behind yellow pee<\/a> comes another monumental advance in digestive science: a fart-tracking sensor to be attached to your underwear. As it turns out, farts are also part of the mundane things that science has yet to fully explain\u2014an issue this sensor purports to address.<\/p>\n

A paper published today in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X<\/a> introduces Smart Underwear, a tiny device that snaps onto your underwear to, well, track your gas. The electrochemical sensor detects the hydrogen and other gases generated in your gut, providing the user with information about gut microbial activity. It\u2019s the first noninvasive device to objectively measure flatus, or excess gas in your digestive system typically released as burps or farts.<\/p>\n

\"SmartA visual representation of the positioning of the sensor. Credit: University of Maryland <\/p>\n

\u201cUp until now, studying flatulence meant either asking people to count their own farts\u2014which doesn\u2019t work well\u2014or bringing them into a clinical setting and using extremely invasive techniques like rectal tubes for short, controlled measurements,\u201d study senior author Brantley Hall<\/a> told Gizmodo.<\/p>\n

Hall, a molecular biologist at the University of Maryland, added that Smart Underwear is a \u201cresearch measurement tool\u201d for the Human Flatus Atlas<\/a>, a first-of-its-kind study of intestinal gas patterns for better understanding flatus.<\/p>\n

The primordial study of passing gas <\/p>\n

Clinicians have long struggled to objectively study or understand flatulence, even as a recent analysis<\/a> suggested that roughly 20% of the U.S. population suffered from excess intestinal gas. This is in contrast to how, for other common physiological phenomena like blood glucose or cholesterol, numerous studies have confirmed a \u201cnormal range\u201d for doctors to reference, Hall said.<\/p>\n

That was because previous approaches to studying flatus typically relied on patient-reported outcomes. However, these testimonials weren\u2019t that reliable, as \u201cpeople miss events, can\u2019t log gas during sleep, and have widely varying sensitivity to their own gas production,\u201d Hall explained.<\/p>\n

The few studies that did investigate flatulence took place in highly controlled, invasive settings, meaning their results likely do not reflect flatus activity for people living their normal lives, he added.<\/p>\n

Testing the gas tracker \"HumanAn image of the new sensor. Credit: University of Maryland <\/p>\n

For the new study, Hall and his colleagues had 19 adults wear the device for a week during waking hours, except while traveling and during heavy exercise. According to the paper, the participants were individuals without notable gastrointestinal problems within a year before the study.<\/p>\n

The researchers were surprised to find a sizable discrepancy between the study\u2019s measurements and the average cited in medical literature for the frequency of flatus events.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe measured an average of 32,\u201d Hall recounted. That\u2019s more than twice the textbook average of daily flatus events, known to be 14, he added. \u201cWe also saw enormous individual variation, ranging from as few as 4 events per day to as many as 59.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists want to track your farts <\/p>\n

That said, Hall clarified that the results do not replace previous data, given the small sample size of the trial. However, the study allowed the team to confirm that the sensor works and is generally comfortable for users, giving them the green light to \u201cenroll more and more people across the U.S.\u201d via the Human Flatus Atlas, he said.<\/p>\n

That is correct. Hall\u2019s team wants more people using the fart-tracking underwear to collect data from a larger, more diverse population. Anyone in the U.S. over the age of 18 can join, and the lab will ship the Smart Underwear sensor directly to participants, according to Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is simple: we need to know what normal looks like before we can define what abnormal is,\u201d Hall said. \u201cParticipation is anonymous, and no one will know you\u2019re wearing the Smart Underwear. Your data is genuinely useful. It helps build the first objective reference ranges for flatulence and microbiome activity in everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can register to participate in the Human Flatus Atlas here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the lab that brought you the reason behind yellow pee comes another monumental advance in digestive science:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[45068,173312,97],"class_list":["post-461002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-digestive-health","tag-farts","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}