A top story in today’s news is related
to a recent scientific paper published in Current
Biology concerning the dinosaurs. British scientists wanted to know, Could
methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate
warmth? By their estimates, some 520 million tons of methane (a
“greenhouse gas” emission) were produced by the flatulent beasts every year. This begs the question, do flatulent humans today
also contribute to global warming?
Probably not enough to be concerned
about. Even so, this doesn’t allay the anxieties people have about expulsing gas—anxieties
that have more to do with interpersonal relationships in the workplace than
with the implications of global warming.
As Dr. Wynne-Jones says in an
article on diverticular disease, many bowel-related problems are in fact confined
to modern urban communities affecting “the cultured, the refined, the considerate.”
Happily, Winham and Hutchins discovered that over 50% of people
can consume up to ½ cup of beans daily without any adverse effects. But how do
you know how much beans to eat on your own?
How do you arrive at the Goldilocks amount—not too much, not too little—that’s
just right for you?
Personal health analysis tools like
Aurametrix are already making it possible to apply systematic measures to
discover for ourselves our individual tolerance levels for a wide variety of
foods. As Aurametrix founder Irene Gabashvili remarked in her Forbes article: “A digital nurse can analyze hundreds of ‘health
variables’ in search of patterns in the data. She could do this with far
greater precision than a physician or nutritionist, due to her ability to
quickly and tirelessly check all possible combinations. In a relatively short
timeframe she could narrow down the factors that are positively and negatively
influencing your health, while taking into consideration your pre-existing
conditions and sensitivities.”
To see the digital nurse in action, see the video below. It
shows how to pin-point the causes of a related, though potentially embarrassing,
physiological process: frequent stomach growling.
REFERENCES
- Wilkinson, D., Nisbet, E., & Ruxton, G. (2012). Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth? Current Biology, 22 (9) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.03.042
- Winham DM, & Hutchins AM (2011). Perceptions of flatulence from bean consumption among adults in 3 feeding studies. Nutrition journal, 10 PMID: 22104320
- Wynne-Jones, G. (1975) Flatus retention is the major factor in diverticular disease. The Lancet, 306 (7927), 211 - 212, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(75)90677-7