How much study was done into this? And why wasn’t it front page news?
Apparently, according to Dr. Lester Gottesman, a proctologist from St. Luke’s Roosevelt in the US, and reported via Vice, the smell of our farts are pretty much determined by the bacteria in the digestive system, and these usually get passed on to us from our mothers.
“A baby is born with a sterile intestinal track,” Dr Gottesman says.
” During the delivery, there’s lots of fluid and stool and whatever, and it’s thought that at that exposure the baby’s colon is populated by the mother’s colon bacteria, thereby affecting the smell of the individual’s farts for the rest of their lifetime. There’s also other theories claiming the colon is populated during the first few months of exposure to fecal material, but that probably doesn’t affect the smell as much as the initial intake of feces by the baby during delivery.”
The magazine asked, does that mean that what your mum ate before you were born influence the aroma of your bum cough today?
“Yes,” replied the good doctor.
“In fact, they now also think that the appendix keeps an arsenal of bacteria so that if, for whatever reason, the bacteria in your colon gets killed by antibiotics the appendix can repopulate your colon with the bacteria that you’ve had since birth. That’s the new thought as to why the appendix is around.”
He said arsenal.