Whether it happens on your postprandial fart walk, right in the middle of yoga class or while you’re sleeping, everyone — even the poshest among us — farts.

According to Dr. Satish Rao, professor of Medicine at Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia, the average person farts seven to 24 times a day.

“It’s a normal physiological phenomenon,” he said, explaining flatulence as the byproduct of fermentation in the colon.

That fermentation creates gas, which is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen and more. One surprisingly smelly fact is that more than 99% of farts are odourless, but a foul smell comes from trace sulphur compounds. Unfortunately, our noses are extremely good at detecting sulphur, even in microscopic amounts.

Once that gas is formed, Rao said there are only two options for it to escape. “Some gas will move from the lining of the colon to the bloodstream, then get exhaled by the breath,” he said. “But the other pathway out is the fart. The gas will find its way out eventually, and if you produce a lot of gas too quickly, it won’t be absorbed, but will automatically push its way out through the anus.”

In general, a few farts a day are nothing to worry about, said Dr. Cait Welsh, postdoctoral researcher from Monash University and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. “Most of the time, the release of gas is a healthy sign that digestion and gut microbiota are happy and functioning well.”

While you produce gas all day long, you’re more likely to let ’em rip during sleep, when your anal sphincter relaxes and gas escapes more easily.

It might be hard to think of King Charles or the Pope as real toot machines, but Rao is positive that anyone who eats food, especially carbohydrates, is going to fart at least some time during each day. And some of us are certainly more, um, productive than others, said Dr. Folasade P. May, associate professor of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles.

“People who chew a lot of gum, drink carbonated drinks or eat too quickly may swallow more air, for example, which can cause flatulence,” she said. “Other people have gut bacteria that produce more gas. Diet, how fast you digest, and medications can also change how much gas you make and pass.”

If you’re thinking that President Donald Trump is making you fart more, you might be right. (Fun fact: An old Australian slang word for a fart is a “trump.”) Stress or anxiety, about the current political climate or matters closer to home, can have an impact on how much someone farts, May said.

“Especially in people with irritable bowel syndrome or other functional gut disorders, stress can change how fast we eat and digest, making flatulence seem worse,” May explained.

Dr. Ed Giles, a pediatric gastroenterologist and associate professor of pediatrics at Monash University, noted that the most well-known foods to cause gas are the so-called FODMAP foods, an acronym for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols.

The key term for these carbohydrates, Giles said, is “fermentable.” That means the foods have an ability to produce gas. “They feed the bacteria in the gut and the bacteria produce the gas, including methane, which smells,” he said.

May outlined some of the worst FODMAP culprits: beans, lentils, onions, garlic, crucifers like broccoli and cabbage, and some whole grains and fruits. “If you’re lactose intolerant, consuming dairy can also increase gas production,” she said.

Gas is concerning when it’s painful, disruptive or different from your normal pattern. If you’re regularly releasing gas more than 23 or 24 times a day and it’s causing problems, it’s worth investigating. However, some people may experience more flatulence than that and it’s still considered normal; it all depends on your diet and your personal health factors.

“The most important thing is that if excessive flatulence is persistent or accompanied by pain, weight loss, diarrhea or blood in the stool, it’s worth consulting a clinician for evaluation,” May said. “If gas is persistent or accompanied by these other warning signs, a clinician can help sort out causes.”

Some of the conditions a health care professional will want to rule out include celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, lactose or other food intolerances, pancreatic enzyme insufficiency and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Connective tissue disorders like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and other diseases like multiple sclerosis also come with increased flatulence.

You might be asked to keep a food journal and, yes, even count the number of farts you produce each day. Luckily, there are now several apps to help you do this, including Gaslog, FlareCare, Gutly and Vitalis. These apps aren’t medical diagnostic tools, but might help you spot patterns in how your diet and lifestyle contribute to gas symptoms.

And just keep in mind that everyone — every single one of us — has experienced an ill-timed fart, and lived to tell the tale. So unless your gas comes with pain or surprises, you’re probably just doing what everyone else is doing, too.

“You made a sex tape?!”

Susannah turned to her husband, Ron, mouth agape. He looked down, his cheeks reddening.

“It was right after college. I was experimenting,” he mumbled, twisting in his seat. “No big deal.”

As a couples therapist, I am always looking for how to mend the frayed edges of a relationship, but Susannah and Ron were different: they had come to my office to end their marriage.

I practice what I call breakup therapy — a short-term treatment I developed for couples who want to end their relationships without bitterness.

The premise is counterintuitive: instead of looking forward toward separate futures, we look backward at the relationship itself. It’s structured to look at the beginning, middle and end of their time together with exercises that focus on both their gratitude as well as their resentment.

The work culminates with the couple crafting a shared narrative about their union and literally writing it down – a story of what worked and ultimately what did not. Then, I ask them to sign it. In this way, they resolve the many unanswered, and often unasked, questions that can trap couples in recriminations and keep them from moving on.

The idea was born from my own bitter divorce. After my split, I was plagued by questions that repeated on an endless loop in my brain: “What was I thinking?”; “Why didn’t I see that red flag?”; “What is wrong with me – I’m a therapist and I should have seen what was happening.”

Then, one day, my therapist asked me a different question: who was I when I decided to marry? Suddenly, my internal feedback loop stopped.

“You’re asking me who I was, not why I married him?” I said, skeptically.

“Yes, I am,” she answered. “Marriages can be as much about identity as they are about a union. What were you trying to solve — or avoid — by marrying him?”

The question unlocked something for me. I’d been full of anger at myself, but I hadn’t really taken responsibility for my own actions. With her help, I crafted a story that I could hold onto about what function the marriage had served for me. Truly owning my choices helped me have more compassion for myself and less anger. The most startling realisation? When I had created a story that hung together, the nagging questions ended for good.

I have seen this same process unfold for many couples. But often, in the course of these sessions, new things surface.

“Susannah?” I said, surprised to hear the hurt in her voice. “This feels like a big deal for you. Why is that?”

Ron and Susannah had not been the most willing subjects for breakup therapy. During our first session, Ron blurted out: “You’re like a medical examiner doing autopsies on dead relationships! Your scalpel hurts. I don’t think you know what it feels like to be humiliated.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I answered softly. “I have a teenager.”

“This feels stupid,” he said on another occasion. “She’s done, I accept that. What is there to say? This feels like horseshit.”

“See what I’m working with here?” Susannah said, throwing up her hands and shifting away from Ron on the couch. “I knew he wouldn’t take this seriously.”

“No, he’s right,” I said. “If it’s really true that you fully accept and understand her decision, Ron, then this is horseshit. But is that true?”

His silence was all the answer I needed.

Over the next few sessions, we went over how they’d fallen in love (“It just made sense, we fit”); the birth of their three children (“The unit held us together”); the unraveling of their connection (“We were ships in the night for as long as I can remember, but then one day I woke up and just wanted more from life”).

We mapped the patterns their marriage had fallen into over the course of three houses, two cross-country moves and their children’s exodus from home. It was a saga spanning decades.

Then, in our fourth session, Ron mentioned the sex tape.

“Something about this is landing hard on you,” I said to Susannah, her mouth still ajar. “Why?”

“Yeah, why?” Ron echoed.

Susannah paused and looked out the window.

“It’s that you … you tried something that – I don’t know – was out there … bold and different.”

A tear welled in a corner of her eye.

“It’s not you. You’re not brave! Or, at least you haven’t been with me, not in all these years together.”

Then she began to cry. Ron and I looked at one another.

“Susannah?” Instantly, I regretted breaking the silence.

“All this time, I decided you just couldn’t try new things,” she managed after a while. “I gave up.”

Ron put up his palms. “What is happening?” he said, exasperated.

“But if you can do that …” she continued. “What was it? Did I just not ask? Did I build my life around a lie?” She looked lost. “Was it that you never really loved me enough?”

She turned back to Ron and banged her fist on the couch.

“I did ask! I asked you to look at porn together when we stopped having sex, to take classes with me, to go on that whale-watching tour. … You just ignored me!”

This time, I held my tongue.

“Is that a thing?” she went on, turning to me. “That you can reach the end of a relationship and not even have known what was possible?”

“I made that tape 30 years ago,” Ron blurted out. “She’s upset over something I did when I was a totally different person!”

This was the impasse that I had expected, that arrives in most of my breakup therapy work – the moment when two people realise that as well as they think they know each other, there are things they don’t know or have lost track of. It’s my job to help them hold that bitter realisation. Then it’s my job to help them arrive at forgiveness or some kind of reconciliation – if not with each other, then with what happened to them.

“It was 30 years ago, Ron,” I said. “But you aren’t a different person. You’re the same person, and she’s wondering why you couldn’t have been that with her.”

I turned to Susannah and said, “You have a right to be hurt, but were you truly honest with him? Did you give him the space and the safety and the encouragement to be that person? Do you think you both can forgive each other for what you weren’t?”

It was three weeks before they appeared again in my office, having canceled two sessions in between appointments.

“I was stirred and moved by what happened here last time,” Susannah began. “When we left, I thought: Maybe there’s enough left between us?”

Ron’s eyes were downcast.

“But I realised I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t open up that part of me with him anymore. I want … I need this divorce.”

I nodded. “Ron? How do you feel?”

“I can see where we are … I’m not fighting it.” His voice broke. “I’m just really sad.”

Often it requires some kind of shock to break through the built-up layers of anger, resentment and disappointment in a couple in order to illuminate the cracks in their relationship – something true that has been avoided or left unsaid. In this case, it was the surprise of an ancient transgressive act that lay bare how little they knew each other and how misaligned they’d become.

Susannah moved closer to Ron on the couch and laced her fingers with his.

“You guys seem calmer – closer. Tell me what you are feeling,” I said.

I knew something about that calm after the storm. After my own divorce, we had maintained an uneasy truce for years, until one long car ride after dropping our daughter at camp. As we rode in silence, I suddenly remembered my therapist’s question: Who was I when I decided to get married? For the next two hours, we talked over that question and everything else, and together realised how lonely we had been — two Israelis who, instead of understanding why we had both chosen to leave, had clung to each other and to a shared language. Before long, we were laughing as we had not laughed since the early days of our marriage.

“So, where do we go from here?” Ron asked me in their last session.

“Well, in my experience, when a marriage ends, a different relationship can sometimes be created,” I said. “That’s up to you guys. All endings are sad, but not all endings have to leave you broken. There’s an opportunity here to get to know each other in a different way. And …” I leaned forward to make eye contact with each of them “… to know yourselves better.”

After they left, I sat quietly in my chair for a while. I allowed myself to remember that moment in my therapist’s office when I realised that I had been using my marriage to escape a question I had been avoiding and what a relief it had been to finally face it.

When a sex tape from decades ago unlocks two people’s grief, it’s not so much about the end of the road as it is about the roads never taken – the versions of a marriage they never tried. It is a sad moment, but also a generative one.

They’d come to me to bury their marriage. What they found instead was a way to know each other – maybe for the first time in years – even as they said goodbye.

Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals appearing in this essay.

Sarah Gundle, Psy.D., is a psychologist in private practice and an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center. She is currently writing a book about breakups. You can find her on Instagram @dear_dr_sarah.

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What a soggy year it’s been so far. January alone saw three named storms – Gerotti, Ingrid, and Chandra – batter our shores, bringing with them snow, rain, and wind.

February has certainly not been drier. Reading, for instance, saw the longest continuous rainfall (25 consecutive days) that the town’s university’s Atmospheric Observatory has ever observed.

Aberdeen, meanwhile, has seen no rainfall for two weeks straight. Multiple yellow rain warnings are in place across the UK today (Friday, 6 February), too.

Which begs the question: why is the rain so relentless, and when oh when will it end?

Recently, the UK (and much of Europe) has been affected by an unusually southerly jet stream. This drives areas of low pressure north-east up to the UK, and is partly caused by a large range of temperatures across the Atlantic Ocean right now.

Low pressure weather fronts are associated with rain, wind, and unsettled conditions.

But there’s also a stubborn area of high pressure which is staying in place across north-east Europe, which helps to keep the jet affecting our weather in its southerly position. It also means areas of low pressure move more slowly.

That, the Met Office said, has resulted in a “conveyor belt of low‑pressure systems bringing frequent rain, strong winds, and, at times, wintry hazards”.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like the barrage of rain will stay with us for a while.

According to the Met Office’s operational meteorologist, Dan Stroud, “Unfortunately, there’s no end in sight… we’ve got a big area of high pressure way out to the far north and east of the country, and that’s stopping areas of low pressure from moving through.

“Until that area of high pressure sort of shifts out of the way, we’re not really going to see much of a change in the forecast.”

Southwestern regions of the UK are especially likely to face very high rainfall this week.

And while next week (starting 8 Feb) shows “tentative signs of a subtle shift” and northern parts of the UK are expected to become a little drier thanks to shifts in the blocking area of high pressure, that bad weather “conveyor belt” is expected to continue into the month.

This is because the jet stream’s return to its current position is predicted to encourage more soggy southern conditions.

In fact, the Met Office’s long-range forecast says that even as far away as 6 March, “low pressure systems will probably dominate” the UK.

Have you ever caught a nasty cold from being outside in chilly weather with wet hair? Spoiler alert: You actually didn’t ― no matter what your grandparents, great aunt and parents say.

The pervasive myth is something that older generations have told people for decades, but going outside with wet hair in the winter simply is not a possible way to catch a cold, according to doctors.

“There’s no evidence or literature to suggest that,” said Dr. Swapnil Patel, the vice chair of the department of medicine at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in New Jersey.

Going out with wet hair on a wintry day does decrease your body temperature, making you feel colder, but you won’t actually end up sick as a result, said Dr. Parul Goyal, an associate professor of clinical medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. (This is also true for going out without a jacket, she said.)

If you do notice that you suddenly have the sniffles after spending time outdoors in the winter ― with or without wet hair ― there is a reason for that. “Cold temperature, it can affect how your blood vessels constrict and dilate. So, cold [temperature] usually causes something called vasoconstriction, which tightens up your blood vessels,” Patel said.

When your blood vessels loosen, like in a warm shower or steam bath, your sinuses open up and you feel better, which is why hot showers are often comforting to people who have a cold, Patel said. But that works in the opposite way with cold temperatures. Cold air or chilly weather tightens you up, Patel explained.

If you have a cold but are asymptomatic, the frigid weather may force your blood vessels to react and bring those symptoms out — but the cold weather (or wet hair) isn’t the reason for the infection, he added.

While heading outside on a winter day with wet hair isn’t going to be the reason for your cold, there are other behaviours that actually make you come down with an upper respiratory virus.

You may get sick if you are exposed to a virus or exposed to bodily fluids that are infected with a virus. “Usually it’s contact with nasal fluids ― somebody sneezes, leaves their nasal droplet somewhere, you touch that same surface,” Patel said.

If you touch your dirty hands to your eyes or mouth, you can also end up with a cold.

Washing your hands with warm water and soap is an important way to keep yourself from getting sick with a cold or another virus such as COVID-19, the flu or norovirus.

“You can use more drastic measures, like masks and things like that, especially if you’re around people that are sick,” Patel said.

Goyal added that it’s a good idea to stay away from sick people when possible.

It’s also helpful for people who are sick to stay home and away from others and if they need to go out to wear a mask to prevent the transmission of droplets.

“We also recommend people get regular exercise so that our immune system is strong enough [and] we can fight off the viruses,” Goyal said. Getting enough sleep and eating a nutritious diet can also help keep your immune system in good shape to fight off any winter illnesses.

It’s also a good idea not to smoke, which can make you more susceptible to colds, Patel said. Staying up-to-date on vaccines can reduce the rate of transmission and severity of certain illnesses, too. For example, if you get the flu shot, you’re more likely to have milder symptoms than someone who didn’t get their vaccine, he said.

While you may not be able to totally avoid the occasional cold, the reason for your sickness is a virus spread to you by a loved one or from a dirty surface — not from wet hair on a chilly day.

Childhood trauma can have profound and lasting effects on our well-being.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, BACP-accredited integrative counsellor Nikki Howes said, “Research shows that when adversity occurs during childhood, it can shape the development of emotional regulation and threat-detection systems, leading to stress responses in adulthood that feel automatic and difficult to control”.

Other studies suggest that childhood trauma can keep people in a state of chronic stress, years after the direct threat from their youth has gone away.

BACP-accredited counsellor and author of Become The Parent You Needed, LJ Jones, added: “When difficult experiences happen early… the body and mind adapt in ways that once helped us survive; but those same patterns can later limit how safe, connected, or confident we feel as adults, and impair our mental wellness”.

Studies on adverse childhood experience (ACE) scores suggest that a childhood high in traumatic events could affect your mental and even physical health in adulthood.

But, Howes said, “I think ACE scores have often been communicated in ways that unintentionally make trauma feel inescapable.”

Here, the experts shared how to begin healing from childhood trauma, at any age.

Although both experts noted that childhood trauma has a real impact on people’s adult lives, they also agreed that healing is possible at any age.

“Healing from childhood trauma as an adult is possible at any age because the brain and body can still learn new ways to regulate and process experiences,” Howes told us.

And, Jones said, though there is “no timeline to healing”, and while healing from trauma isn’t “linear”, “Healing from childhood trauma is possible at any age because the nervous system remains changeable throughout our lives.

“Childhood trauma can feel like a life sentence because it shapes how our nervous system learns to respond to the world… [but] high ACE scores don’t mean someone is broken or doomed.”

Though different events and experiences can trigger old wounds, she added, “the key is to have enough tools to know how to take care of ourselves”.

“Healing isn’t about erasing the past,” Jones said, “but about owning our unique stories and helping people understand that their responses make sense and that new ways of relating to themselves and others are possible at any stage of life”.

“Trauma-informed approaches like EMDR, brainspotting, somatic therapy, and relational work help process distressing memories and build internal resources, but the trauma itself isn’t erased – we live with it differently, so it no longer drives automatic reactions and allows safety, choice, and resilience in the present.”

Jones shared that self-awareness can be a great start. Noticing “unhealthy patterns or self-sabotaging behaviours” can be a good clue as to how trauma might be showing up in our lives: “gently building new experiences of safety, regulation, and connection” can help, she said.

The pair also recommended therapy.

This can “offer a space where people feel seen and understood without judgement, sometimes for the first time,” Jones said.

“Through this process, individuals often recognise blind spots, learn to regulate overwhelming emotions, develop self-compassion, and rewrite deeply held beliefs formed in childhood, such as ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘I’m not safe.’”

The counsellor added that support, compassion, and care are key. And she highlighted “self-acceptance and empowerment within this process as they are often crucial elements which are stripped from those who suffered childhood adversities.

“Working on individual growth and celebrating small wins can help to eliminate feeling stagnant and tired of the ramifications of childhood trauma.”

• Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
• Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
• CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
• The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
• Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.