# Does everyone have leaky gas?



## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hi all,

I've been looking at a few things on the internet which suggests to me that we should possibly be looking at our problems in a new way. Firstly for me anyway leaky gas is where you pass wind but you don't smell or feel anything. Like there have been countless times when a person has turned to me and said ugh you farted or something along those lines but I have been totally unaware that I had. If I ever have normal flatulence I am well able to hold it in if I have to but with lg it just seems to seep out without me feeling anything. I think I'm right in saying a lot if not most people on here suffer from something similar.

Anyway this is what I've come across on an Irish health authority website on the subject of flatulence in general -

"Flatulence is very common and everyone experiences it. It is a normal biological process, just like breathing or sweating. Most men will pass wind between 14-25 times a day and most women between 7-12 times a day.

*Sometimes, you may not notice that you have passed wind because the gases that are passed are usually odourless and are often released in small quantities*. The bad smell commonly associated with flatulence is caused by trace elements of sulphur gases, which can develop if food has not been properly digested and begins to decompose."

_(_http://www.hse.ie/eng/health/az/F/Flatulence/Treating-flatulence.html)

Now the bit that really stands out to be is what I've put in bold. It seems then that we actually don't differ from the general public over having leaky gas, it's a natural process everyone has. However the difference is that our lg is not odourless and i guess we also have much greater quantity of it which is all related to the nature of our gut bacteria.

I know some people get really annoyed when debating the cause of lg, there definately can be different causes and I've no doubt for some they may have a fissure in their anal sphincter or something similar. However the main point I take from this article which is on medically backed website is that it is not necessary to have some physical defect to suffer from leaky gas. A lger should probably first examine what is their digestion like before moving on to other possible causes.

At least that's my theory anyway.


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## tummyrumbles (Aug 14, 2005)

I have also read this elsewhere, that normal people release small quantities of gas subconsciously. I don't think normal people have leaky gas to any significant extent because people don't generally say to one another "Did you just ****?" Even if they release tiny bits it's not enough to cause problems and probably other people don't notice.

I think about roughly half of Leaky Gassers are aware of their gas and are trying to hold it in. The other half aren't. Leaky Gas is probably a lot tougher for people who don't feel anything because it's harder to judge what particular diet or lifestyle change is working. Gas is a good guide to how effective your diet is so it helps to know it's there.

I define Leaky Gas as a form of IBS that ruins your life, not by whether or not you feel the gas. What I'm interested in with Leaky Gassers who don't feel that they're releasing gas when people make comments is whether they're aware of their gas normally. Are they generally flatulent during the day or night? Are they saying that they have normal gas when they're at home, that they can sense, but when they're at work or in social settings they're not aware of their gas? Why would gas awareness suddenly "switch off" at work? The only time that I had leaky gas without knowing was after a heavy drinking bout when someone said something to me. It could be that alcohol is so sedating that it relaxes the sphincter as well as everything else. But most people here with non-aware leaky gas get comments at work when we don't drink alcohol.

Maybe you can shed some light on this if this is the type of leaky gas you have. Do you have normal gas at home? Do you have a high fluff frequency - say one per half hour or hour on average? What happens when you go to work? Does the gas frequency suddenly stop? You're never aware of having to hold in gas at work?


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

Firstly, I am not too confident of the scientific reliability of your source.

Sulfur compounds is always produced by feces, it does not take undigested foods it is normal fecal smell.

But it may be true that small quantity of gas can pass without awareness in healthy people. Probably it is an absent minded thing rather than any reduced sensation of the anal canal mucosa, which is one of the densest areas of nerve endings in the body.

At such quantities, you have to question whether the odor produced would be enough to be detected by human nose.

If gas is escaping without awareness, this means some problem of sensation and/or some problem with seal of anal canal, like muscle weakness or some defect which is preventing normal closure of the sphincters like hemorrhoid or fissure.

Just to emphasize how much of a made up term "leaky gas" is, because some people are just not getting it

In all 23 million medical publications on Pubmed, the term leaky gas does not appear once.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22leaky+gas%22

Whereas "anal incontinence" appears >1000 times

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22anal+incontinence%22

"flatus incontinence" 80 times

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22flatus+incontinence%22

"gas incontinence" 40 times

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22gas+incontinence%22

You get the picture...

If you are passing gas without awareness, it is a type of incontinence. Leaky gas not real.


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## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hi guys thanks for the replies,

Firstly just to clarify when I talk about leaky gas I'm referring to the situation where apparently you pass gas but are totally unaware you're doing it, have no sensation of it at all and don't even smell it. You only become aware of it when someone complains. Actually in a way I can see why some people have been quite hostile to me, like a lot of people must think I'm an incredibly ignorant person farting in front of them while the reality is I've no awareness what so ever.

However as you were saying JMH leaky gas is not a recognised medical term so if you have a different definition of it Tummyrumbles thats obviously just as valid it goes without saying.

I think that article is important in that it suggests maybe we're not as different to non sufferers as we think. Perhaps the difference is that when most people leak gas it doesn't smell while it does for us. Don't know maybe that's taking it too far.

In answer to your question TR the really weird thing is I don't think I have too much gas of the normal variety anyway. Like can't say for sure but I don't feel the need to pass gas very often and when I do I can well hold it in. Yet for years and years now I've had to put up with snide remarks about me farting when I didn't know I did so I just don't understand it. I can't say for sure is there much difference between home and work, I'm guessing there is seeing I'm a bit more tense at work but it happens at home too. Actually one thing I've noticed is that as well as anxiety whenever I'm tired it gets worse also. How about you can you feel something or not?

You know it's a pity JMH, I remember last year having the exact same argument with someone about this and I know people have been doing similar since this forum was set up. It just re emphasizes how no research is being done on our condition so we're just left to our own devices making up our own theories.

I can't say I agree with you to be honest about leaky gas being not real seeing how I've been living with it for so long now and seen it destroy my life though you're definitively right to say it isn't a medically recognised problem, not that I'm aware of anyway. And its true "leaky gas" is a user generated term on this forum. Though be careful when you see the term "flatus incontinence", just putting it into google I see how some doctors use that term to refer to a situation where a person can't distinguish between flatus in the rectum and stool thereby leading to some accidents unfortunately. So it's not the same thing as we have in that case.

What I don't understand is when people attribute leaky gas down to an anatomical fault like with the seal of someone's anal canal as you mention yet there is no leakage of other stuff like moisture or muscus. Maybe you have a theory on this?

Overall my totally non expert judgement on this is that if you have lg plus moisture/muscus leakage then first thing you should get your behind checked out for any physical faults.

But if you have lg without other leakage but also suffer from other ibs symptoms (like constipation, diaherra, bloating, cramps in stomach or weird bo which unfortunately I also have) then having a long hard look at your digestion and the balance of you gut bacteria is the first thing to do.

Just wish someday a doctor might take pity on us lgers and start doing some clinical trials, maybe then we could have some answers.


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## tummyrumbles (Aug 14, 2005)

Yellow11, I'm always aware of my gas and I produce lots of it. The foods that aggravate the symptoms seem to be starches and high FODMAPs. I believe some of us might have caused nerve damage to the colon, either through excessive alcohol intake, drinking milk, diet high in starches - which leads to malabsorption, gradual constipation and incomplete emptying.

It could be that Leaky Gas and other forms of IBS are SIBO. The theory explains a lot that happens in IBS. So every time we eat foods that cause gas we could be making our IBS worse. We love the foods that cause the symptoms which makes it all very hard to fix.

Thanks for explaining about your gas as I've always wondered about the non-aware type of leaky gas. It's possible that there is a disorder of your sphincter which is allowing gas to escape before it builds up in the colon. This is a very contentious issue and some people jump to the conclusion that the sphincter is therefore faulty and recommend operations to "strengthen" the seal. I don't believe an operation of any type will cure leaky gas and these operations were designed for fecal incontinence not gas incontinence. IBS is extremely complicated and the gut has its own brain as well which further complicates things. We don't want to compromise complete evacuation in any way. Anything that artificially strengthens the sphincter will also retard evacuation and this will cause more problems. People have had these operations and you never hear back from them.

I think our leaky gas is worse than for a normal person who simply fluffs because a lot of our gas is associated with gassy stool, from malabsorbed carbohydrates mostly.

Do you think you completely evacuate? So you can eat things like bread, crackers, broccoli, baked beans etc and you don't generate gas, say an hour or so afterwards? I'm assuming your diet is much the same as anyone else's. Most people with IBS complain of gas so I'm guessing that you produce the gas but you're not retaining it. As soon as it's produced the sphincter is releasing it.

There's a lot of variation here on types of anal incontinence. Some people just leak gas, some mucus, some gas and mucus, some leak stool but I think the connecting links are malabsorption and incomplete evacuation (which includes gas). Don't produce all the gas in the first place, and if you do, completely evacuate the gassy stool from the lower colon before going out. It can take me over an hour or two to completely evacuate so you need a bit of patience.

See if reducing starches and high FODMAPs make a difference to the comments. (Do you think you can re-train yourself to feel the gas?)

This is a really good site that lists the starch content of all foods.

http://nutritiondata...0000000000.html

This is a fairly comprehensive list of FODMAPs.

http://www.cassandra...for a happy gut

An IBS diet is really tough. Starches are among the worst foods for IBS but the tastiest to eat. Fried chips have a higher starch content than watery, mashed potato. The dryness adds to starch content which is why very few of us can tolerate crackers. Mashed veges with small quantities of meat, or fish or eggs might be a good start. No constipating foods like too much meat, rice, refined flour foods like cakes etc. I'm still struggling with diet.


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

yellow11 said:


> What I don't understand is when people attribute leaky gas down to an anatomical fault like with the seal of someone's anal canal as you mention yet there is no leakage of other stuff like moisture or muscus. Maybe you have a theory on this?


Yes, Olfactory reference syndrome. A real medical condition.

Which perhaps you could suggest links easily with the inability of people to understand that this word is not real.

Real passage of gas without awareness is anal incontinence / gas incontinence.

Maybe eventually people will hear this if I say it enough

leaky gas not real


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

It is just endless bs on this forum


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## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hey Tummyrumbles,

Thanks a mil for your very informative reply. You made an awful lot of good points there, thanks for the links too, will defo check them out. What you said about damage to the colon leading to malabsorption chimes with something I read in a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle, which deals with these issues. The author was saying how sometimes a person might have a food intolerance of say for example gluten. So when wheat is eaten the colon doesn't recognise it as food but rather as a potential pathogen so the stomach lining produces a kind of mucus to protect itself from it. Only problem then is that this mucus makes it much more difficult for all foods to be digested correctly which leads to all sorts of other issues like you mentioned.

Actually surprisingly constipation is something I've never had a problem with thankfully which is weird as from what an awful lot of lgers have written on here most of them suffer from constipation, it seems to go hand in hand with lg.I think I don't have incomplete evacuation either but it can be hard to tell sometimes.

Possibly another place where i differ is that for me red meat and grains seem to be the most problematic. If I were to eat a plate of rice for example my stomach would be in bits. And I find red meat again not only kills my stomach but also makes me really tired after eating it sometimes. But you're right about the starches, they can be very bloating.

I totally agree with you too about sibo. I did a breath test for it and was shown up positive for it. Got given a number of antibiotics for it but it didn't seem to have any effect on it sadly. Did you ever for for a sibo test may I ask?

Yeah the ibs diet is a killer alright, I've tried be very strict with what I eat but find it hard to keep it up for long. I was put on a low fodmap diet for a while but it didnt seem to make much difference. I remember one poster who used be on here - common response who swore by the diet though. Probably while on the ofdmaps I should have cut out other stuff as well for like as you suggested starch, maybe grains too though that would have left me very little to eat.

Do you take probiotics? I've been on them for a while but I think its said if you are still eating things you shouldn't then its hard for them to work properly.

We're on the same page as regards how operations are not the answer to lg, in the vast majority of cases anyway. It's a very good point you make about how it might lead to a person not evacuating their bowel properly, didnt think of that. Wouldn't it be great if there was some silver bullet out there that could fix us of this curse but as you said ibs is extremely complicated, it would probably take a number of factors like diet, probiotics etc. for us to get on top of our problems









JMH, I know you mean well

but I don't think we're ever going to see eye to eye. I accept totally a lot of what you say about problems with the anal canal etc might be applicable to some people on here but when you say leaky gas is not real.







I've suffered countless humiliations throughout my entire adult life to do with lg, countless snide remarks about gas at the lower end to outright hostility, saying I stink etc. in the worse cases. And no I've never leaked moisture or mucus and I certainly don't suffer from ors unless I somehow imagined all those bad incidences in which case I'm totally off the wall. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

It may be body odor condition also. Body odor can smell like feces too, either because of volatiles in the blood being passed to the sweat (either genetic defect of liver enzyme function, acquired defect of liver enzyme function, or overgrowth/imbalance of gut bacteria overloading the liver enzymes), or a surface phenomenon to do ith imbalance of skin bacteria (Bromhidrosis). This would also explain someone who says they cannot feel any gas being passed, has no leakage of mucus etc. but still people say they have fecal odors. That or Olfactory reference syndrome. Sometimes I think that my odor is body odor, at least in partially.


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## tummyrumbles (Aug 14, 2005)

Yellow11, you're lucky you tested positive for SIBO as that helps a lot. It's possible that all leaky gassers have the same problem - an overgrowth of bacteria in the small colon that eats our food before we do, causing excess gas. Common Response also suggested eating dinner early. He ate his at 4.30 pm which is very early and I would be starving by bedtime. I try to have mine around 6.30 pm. The underlying theory of this is also due to SIBO. The migrating motor complex sweeps bacteria from the small intestine into the colon. This only works during fasting and may be more efficient overnight so the earlier you eat your dinner the longer this digestive process has to work. Some doctors believe we might also have a disorder with MMC which further adds to SIBO. I posted on this topic here:

http://www.ibsgroup.org/forums/topic/179961-migrating-motor-complex-sibo-the-importance-of-fasting/

Common Response ate a lot of tuna and rice, and rice is highly constipating for me. I found initially that the low FODMAP diet wasn't effective if I ate gluten-free breads and rice which are allowed. These are extremely high in starch. The FODMAP theory only focuses on complex sugars, not starches. All carbohydrates that we digest are starches, so we need these - but some foods have differing levels of starches depending on how they're cooked. Mashed potato is much lower in starch than potato crisps or fried chips.

I stopped eating yoghurt because it might cause more bacterial growth in the small intestine but I'm still experimenting.

Rice and all grains contain prolamines which can cause maldigestion, similar to Celiac disease.

http://www.ibsgroup.org/forums/topic/171085-problem-foods-and-why-theyre-problem-foods/

Rice, red meat and milk also contain exorphins, which are dietary food opioids. These are peptides that mimic opiates (like heroin) and have reward and addictive properties. Food opioids, like opiates, can cause constipation in some people.

http://www.ibsgroup.org/forums/topic/177625-food-opioids-addiction-to-constipation/

As to how you can cure your leaky gas:

If you go every day it could be that some stool remains in the lower colon. I can have up to an hour between BMs on a bad day. If you're not embarrassed to do this, try spending longer in the toilet to make sure all of it comes out. Compared to other leaky gassers, you're at a disadvantage because we at least are aware of the gas so can judge whether a particular diet is working or not. Maybe you can retrain yourself to become aware of the gas? It could be you have such a low threshold to gas pain that your sphincter opens in sympathy to this even before you're aware of it, just a possibility. Maybe you could try kegal exercises and do these as often as you can remember. Try to get in the habit of clenching your butt, especially a few hours after eating when most of us get gas, and see if you gradually become aware of the gas. They have tested IBS people and we're supposed to have a low threshold to gas pain but it could also be that we just produce a lot of it, so I'm not sure there. Maybe you could post a new topic and ask the non-aware leaky gassers if they've ever managed to become aware of their leaky gas and how they did it. I've only had the non-aware LG once, when I was drunk, and I think it was due to relaxation due to the sedating effects of alcohol but I'd imagine you'd be fairly tense at work etc.


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

And on the other hand, there is no such word as "leaky gas", and there is not a shred of evidence in anything you say about the made up condition


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## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hey Tummyrumbles,

Thank you so much for such an amazingly informative post. Had some laptop trouble so sorry I didn't reply sooner. You obviously are extremely well up on these issues. I notice your from Australia, I wonder have you come across the blog mytummytantrum? It's written by a very nice guy called Jordan who is a fellow sufferer. I mention it as he's Australian as well, maybe ye might live in the same city. The blog is well worth checking out anyway.

I seem to remember reading about that mmc process in Mark Pimental's book A New IBS Solution which identifies sibo as the main culprit behind ibs. Didn't pay it too much attention to be honest but think i will now after what you've said. In a way the three square meals a day goes against what was the standard advice for ibs sufferers in terms of eating little and often so as to more easily digest your food. But thanks for explaining the science behind it, think I will try to go that way of cutting out the snacks.

I'm with you about the rice and grains, I don't really get constipation to be honest, at least not yet anyway, but if I eat a plate of rice I can get stomach cramps that lasts for hours afterwards. Yeah I really do wish I could feel the passing of gas, for one thing if I could feel the pressure building up I could step away from a social setting if I needed to.

It's really impressive what you know about these issues, you must have done a huge amount of research into it.


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## hopefullPatient (Jul 31, 2014)

What about using a rectal tupe (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-rectal-tube.htm) or in alternative a preservative that acts like a bag.


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## JMH91 (Apr 16, 2014)

Not heard of that before... sounds like something that is more done is hospital for people who are recovering from surgery rather than everyday in healthy people.

If you have gas sounds easier to just stick to low FODMAP diet?


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