Good question! In this section, Health Net is looking for answers to nagging questions. This Time: Do You Burn Calories When You Fart?
It is a message that regularly circulates on Facebook and other social media: that you would burn 67 calories with one fart. With 52 winds a day you would even burn a pound of fat. Unfortunately this is not true, it is a so-called hoax; a made-up message.
You let about 10-25 winds a day to release gases from your intestines. Extreme flatulence is called flatulence. Most of the time you don’t even notice when you fart. If you think about it carefully, it is almost impossible that you burn calories with wind. After all, when you let a wind blow, your muscles relax and it is the (gases in the) intestines that do the heavy work. The only way to wind down and burn calories is to exert yourself enormously at the same time, for example by doing push-ups or planking.
Incidentally, it has been proven that withholding wind is bad for your health. So even if it doesn’t make you slimmer, holding back isn’t smart.
