But this is far from the whole picture. For one, H2S may only have biological effects close to or in your mitochondria, meaning it has to get inside your cells first. This is no easy task. Imagine the cell as a strictly gated community. Only certain molecules can get inside, and different cells have different gate codes to get in. And if H2S doesn’t get into your cells where it needs to be to have positive effects on your mitochondria, it is quickly metabolized, or changed, into a variety of other products. And you can’t just overload the body with H2S either, in order to make sure some of it gets to where it belongs. Excessive production of H2S can have other extremely harmful effects in the body.

A second challenge exists for H2S. Your cells might be tiny to you (you can’t see them without a microscope) but they are HUGE to our little H2S! Once this little guy gets into one of your cell’s gated communities, he has to find his way to the factory (the mitochondria) and to the right place in the factory to do his job. [Ok, I know there aren’t factories inside gated communities, but you know what I mean – this could be a gated village!]

So what you REALLY need is a specialized little vehicle to ‘carry’ the H2S into your cells to where it belongs, or where its presence is often lacking if you have hypertension, diabetes, inflammation, etc.

THIS is where our flatulence-producing study comes in. Despite poor media coverage, this study accomplished an interesting little feat of drug delivery. The researchers produced a new carrier for our familiar fart-scented H2S. The H2S was combined chemically with this carrier along with a molecular component called TPP+ that acts like a tiny magnet for the mitochondrion. Traditionally drugs haven’t been great at delivering H2S straight to the mitochondria. But this new drug, named AP39, was able to deliver H2S to the right place in cells grown in the lab.

When the researchers tested their AP39 “H2S-donor” on human cells (in a petri-dish), they found an increase of H2S inside the cells – actually near the cells’ mitochondria. They also found that the drug reduced stress damage to mitochondria when it was delivered along with a dose of hydrogen peroxide solution.

You can see a pretty picture of the H2S (stained green) at higher doses inside cells treated with the AP39 drug here. By also staining the mitochondria red, the researchers could confirm that the H2S was specifically located near mitochondria inside the cells (green and red in the same locations produces yellow!)

In other words, this paper was ACTUALLY about a successful delivery system for H2S, NOT the benefits of H2S on any sort of clinical (human) level. The potential therapeutic effects of H2S for humans are actually “controversial due to conflicting published results regarding its effects on cellular activities arising, perhaps in part, from the use of different H2S donors.” In other words, different carriers of H2S might have varying effectiveness in getting the compound to where it needs to go in the cell to have positive effects. On top of that, researchers still don’t know the exact mechanisms and pathways whereby H2S might protect your mitochondria from various stressors.

So while you can go ahead and enjoy those farts if you’d like, the free H2S in those “fart fumes” won’t have any health benefits that I know of.