Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, we all have our own gross habits. From picking your nose to biting your toenails, chewing with your mouth open, or any of the other disgusting things we do behind closed doors and in the general public, one is arguably more common than the rest and can’t be helped.
While we balk at people who go barefoot to the airplane bathroom and those known for peeing in the shower, it turns out that farting could actually have an unexpected health benefit.
Everyone farts, and with it being a natural function of the body, it’s not something that many of us will spend too much time thinking about – unless you’re astronauts on the International Space Station.
We’re not sure the woman facing jail for ‘cyber farting’ could get away with this as an excuse, but according to research from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, smelling farts could reduce your risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Those foul-smelling expulsions are said to reduce the chance of getting Alzheimer’s by up to 37%. That’s according to Bindu Paul, M.Sc., Ph.D., faculty research instructor in neuroscience in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience.
Researchers found that the egg-like hydrogen sulfide found in farts can potentially protect your brain’s aging cells against the disease. Testing on mice, Paul and the team looked at how the body creates small amounts of hydrogen sulfide to regulate bodily functions and act as ‘cellular messenger molecules’ to the brain.
Target proteins are modified by chemical sulfhydration, which co-corresponding author Solomon Snyder says modulates their activity.
It’s said that your brain’s sulfhydration levels decrease with age, and that’s amplified by those suffering from Alzheimer’s. The Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists looked at mice that’d been genetically engineered to mimic human Alzheimer’s disease, injecting them with a hydrogen sulfide-carrying compound called NaGYY over 12 weeks.
This was developed in tandem with collaborators at the UK’s University of Exeter, with the passenger hydrogen sulfide molecules being slowly released around the body.
Behavioral tests suggested that the hydrogen sulfide-injected mice had improved cognitive and motor function by up to 50% when compared to those who hadn’t received NaGYY.
The NaGYY mice were apparently able to remember the locations of platform exits and seemed more physically active than the others.
Impressively, the results appeared to show that the behavioral outcomes of Alzheimer’s disease could be reversed via hydrogen sulfide.
Experiments also suggested that the common glycogen synthase β (GSK3β) enzyme acts as a signalling molecule in the presence of healthy hydrogen sulfide levels.
In the absence of hydrogen sulfide, GSK3β is apparently overattracted to another protein that’s called Tau.
When GSK3β and Tau interact, the latter clumps inside nerve cells and causes them to die. Loss of cognition, memory, and motor functions are all characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease.
PhD student Daniel Giovinazzo explained: “Understanding the cascade of events is important to designing therapies that can block this interaction like hydrogen sulfide is able to do.”
Researchers previously lacked the necessary pharmacological tools to mimic how our bodies make hydrogen sulfide inside cells, with collaborator Matt Whiteman concluding: “The compound used in this study does just that and shows by correcting brain levels of hydrogen sulfide, we could successfully reverse some aspects of Alzheimer’s disease.”
The Johns Hopkins team has continued its research into how sulfur groups interact with GSK3β and other proteins that are linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
So, the next time your significant other lets ’em rip, just remember that they might be doing it for your benefit.
