Today’s research news on flatulence and masturbation come from Ananova:
Venezuelan researchers have come up with a new way of preparing beans so they don’t give people wind. The process consists of fermenting them in a new way before they are packed. Professor Marisela Granito, from Simon Bolivar University, told Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that 95% of the substances that create gas could be removed. The study will be published in the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture next month. Professor Granito said the study was motivated by the decrease in popularity of Venezuela’s traditional dish, pabellon creollo. It consists of rice, beans, tomato sauce, meat and bananas and has a reputation for giving people wind. No word yet on how these new beans taste…
(For those of you who think flatulence is a laughing matter, let me tell you from some readings and meetings I attended back during my Boeing space-station design days, it isn’t. It’s an extremely serious health issue in spacecraft. Pile seven people in an RV (that’s recreation, not re-entry, vehicle) and recycle their individual up-to-two-liters-per-day of passed gas for two weeks and you’ve got a description of a Shuttle mission. Imagine the Space Station – or a trip to Mars. Astronauts on orbit report getting used to the smell as it slowly builds up and the scrubbers fall behind. Post-landing Orbiter cleanup janitors have been known to puke from the stench upon entering the crew compartment – or so I’ve been told.)
Meanwhile, new research suggests frequent masturbation may protect men against prostate cancer in later life.
The Australian study questioned more than 2000 men about their past sexual habits as part of a prostate cancer study. It indicated men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer, reports the news.com website. “What we found was men who ejaculated most in their twenties, thirties and forties had about a third less prostate cancer risk than men in the lowest category of ejaculation,” said Professor Graham Giles, head of cancer epidemiology at the Cancer Council Victoria. “The men who were the high performers in terms of ejaculating had a third less prostate cancer risk than men who were in the lowest category of ejaculation.”
He said one explanation for the apparent beneficial effects of self-pleasuring was that frequent ejaculation prevented semen from building up in the ducts, where it could potentially become carcinogenic. Prof. Giles said previous reports had found an increased risk of prostate cancer among prisoners and Roman Catholic priests. Prof. Giles said the study may have implications for prostate cancer patients who grew up at a time when the practice was frowned upon. “I really think that masturbation is a quite normal human activity, and if the habit can also be shown to be healthy and beneficial, why not?”