When cookbook author and influencer Marilyn Smith discussed “fart walking” on her Instagram, she couldn’t have expected the concept to blow up as it did. Social media is abound with several posts with, "#fartwalk join in on the trend of taking a walk after dinner in order to better release intestinal gas and aid in digestion." While this crude method is a jokey trend, doctors are saying that fart walking can actually improve your life.
According to Dr. Tim Tiutan, an internal medicine physician at New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, fart walking does more than just help you better digest your meals. In an Instagram reel, Dr. Tiutan states that going on a five to ten minute walk after eating can help prevent blood sugar from spiking, thus lowering the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.
There are additional health benefits. Fart walking can also lower the risk of developing certain cancers. Some even say that it could lower the risk of dementia, too.
While “fart walk” is a current trend, the actual post-dinner stroll isn’t. Italians have done the after dinner la passeggiata evening walks around town since the Renaissance. Indian culture also promotes shatapawali strolls after an evening meal. Centuries before that, a Chinese proverb was written that said, “If you take 100 steps after each meal, you’ll live to 99.” And, yes, in the end, all of these cultures were promoting you to walk after meals so you can digest and fart better.
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While this does sound gross and immature, fart walking isn’t the only rude activity that can benefit you. Openly swearing is an example. There is research that shows that a well-placed f-bomb can help you regulate emotions, work out harder in the gym, and even boost pain tolerance on a physical level. Depending on the setting and situation, casual swearing can also create opportunities for certain communities to bond together since the taboo has been broken and can signal to folks that they can lower their guard safely.
In terms of physical health, as disgusting as it sounds, picking your nose and even eating your boogers could provide some health benefits. While there are certain obvious downsides to nose-picking and no one is recommending you make a meal of it, consuming mucus and boogers could help boost your immune system through additional exposure to certain pathogens. On top of that, salivary mucins within mucus can form a barrier on your teeth which can prevent bacteria that causes cavities.
Pictured: A healthy practice.Photo credit: Canva
While we’re on the subject of saliva, it turns out that the parental instinct to wipe off and clean faces and items with spit has some scientific backing. Human saliva contains amylase, an enzyme that can effectively break down starches, making it an effective cleaning agent if you run out of cleaning spray.
While fart walking, booger eating, and spit cleaning while you swear up a storm might have some health benefits, it might not be the best to do them all at the same time in public if you want any friends. That said, indulging in these habits, especially fart walking, could help extend your life. Just be sure to practice these things discreetly.
This article originally appeared in May.
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Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.