As with some of my self-experiments, Acarbose is one of those where I can’t remember my reason for starting it. I think it was some sort of simplified cave man reasoning ™ along the lines of “Acarbose.. modifies gut bacteria.. good.. must try.. walking to pharmacy now.. showing doctor’s ID.. thank you”.
And so it began.
Being the impatient cave man as I am, I had to start immediately. Mind you, the literature says to ease in to Acarbose by slowly upping the dose and taking it before meals. I, however, was not into easing in, but I was into upping the dose – right now! So I took my first pill of Acarbose shortly after a solid Berlin Pizza Dinner with my then-coworker Sören.
Oh boy.
I think the experience can be summed up as: Do you remember when you last were not able to sleep due to having to shoot out a crazy trumpet fart every minute? Your answer is likely “no, I’ve never had that”. And that’s fair. That’s your answer. My answer, however was oh yes, I remember that night. It was the Epic Fart Night after the Berlin Pizza Dinner.
Even with the above summary, it’s still hard to put in words. So here’s another description from a story unrelated to Acarbose, yet surprisingly fitting:
Finally my anger reached a point that overcame Shamefulness. I no longer cared. I gripped the toilet paper holder in one hand, braced my other hand against the side of the stall, and pushed with all my might. I was rewarded with a fart of colossal magnitude — a cross between the sound of someone ripping a very wet bed sheet in half and of plywood being torn off a wall. The sound gradually transitioned into a heavily modulated low-RPM tone, not unlike someone firing up a Harley. I managed to hit resonance frequency of the stall, and it shook gently.
That, dear reader, that’s Acarbose farting.
But all is good when you’re in the confines of your cozy home, able to shoot out trumpet farts freely any time, blissfully ignoring the fact that you’re living in a hundred-year-old German “Altbau” house in which your neighbours are likely listening in to your private-yet-not-so-private concert. Still, it’s fine.
Stuff, however, gets tricky in public locations – like in our coworking space.
The Coworking Space
I was scheduled to meet Sören the next day at the coworking space for some, well, coworking.
Reflecting on what had gone down in the past twelve hours (or rather, what had gone out of my body, gas-wise), I was pondering multiple things:
- How to make the 20-minute walk to the coworking space. Is it viable to fart while walking, physically and anatomically? What if it doesn’t work? Will my colon explode?
- How to fart at the coworking space. Given that I was expecting one huge trumpet fart approximately once per minute, and holding that sort of volume in was not an option – the question of whether my colon would explode in this situation can likely be answered with “yes”.
Important medical side note: I don’t think colons just explode like that. But it sure felt that way.
Now, back to those questions.
Regarding the 20-minute walk, my first observation was an interesting one: I call it the “morning of silence”. For whatever reason, in the mornings, the farts always magically stopped. I don’t know why. It’s as if the colon went to sleep, and it would stay asleep for most of the mornings, just like a grumpy old dog.
But I stopped questioning this – when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right? So when life gives you a break from farting, you walk to the coworking space. Off I went.
At the coworking space, things became tricky. You see, I consider myself an adept stealth farter, having graduated from “noobie farter” quite a while ago, some time around high school. So farting quietly is no problem for me. It’s the Schrödinger Farts which are the problem.
Schrödinger’s Farts, in simple terms, can be described as follows: You don’t know if you’re going to fart, or shart. That’s it.
So with Acarbose farts, it’s extremely hard to differentiate this because your colon essentially get’s turbo-loaded with a crapton of gas within a few seconds. The only information your poor vegetative colon neurons can send your brain are “dude, it’s a ton of stuff, but no clue what it is”.
But I’m a founder and CEO, so I should know how to make decisions with limited information, right? Yes. I came up with a decision tree:
- If sharting probability <1% and it doesn’t feel like a shart: Let it out quietly and hope it’s not smelly – I’m good friends with Sören after all, he’ll understand.
- If sharting probability >= 1%: Go to the bathroom for risk mitigation purposes.
This algorithm served me well in averting sharts. However, it caused me to venture out into the bathroom many times. I stopped counting, but maybe ten times that afternoon or so.
Now, you might think I this would feel embarassing for me because e.g. attractive women might be sitting in the coworking space, wondering “why the hell is this half-asian dude always running to the bathroom?”.
But I didn’t feel embarassed – not because I’m shy (I am) but rather because it was a Berlin coworking space, which meant that its main audience consisted of male hipsters who arrive at 10:30 and leave at 15:30, spending the four hours in between (one reserved for lunch) staring at spreadsheets, ideating their next business idea which will take over the world, and meanwhile getting into useful discussions with the café barista on topics like whether oat milk is gluten-free (the answer is “it depends”, if you were interested).
Suffice to say, the male hipsters were pre-occupied with their own “work” and wouldn’t notice a half-asian dude running to the bathroom ten times, emitting some crazy trumpet sounds before, during and after visiting the bathroom.
So that’s what I did.
It feels weird, going to the bathroom, bracing for a volcanic eruption, only to be greeted by a rather lengthy trumpet concert. But still – not sharts. So this counts as a success. Good CEO decisions were made that day.
So that was the coworking space. The next challenge was walking.
Walking
Remember how I was pondering whether it’d be possible to fart while walking? Now it was time to find out.
First off, I’m not an experienced farter when it comes to the niche activity of fart-walking. I haven’t done it often.. yet. My working assumption was that you just wait until you’re stationary, best case in a seated position, and handle thing stealthily then.
This was not an option here.
Sören had left the coworking space already (after the hipsters), so it was just me. And I was still happily letting out huge farts, albeit stealthily, while staring at my computer.
Yes, I was only staring, and not really working, because I was pondering this: I don’t think I can make it home. Because that means walking 20 minutes, and with this amount of gas, there’s no way I can hold it in for 20 minutes. Colon explosion possible. What to do? Can I somehow trigger a “pre-emptive” fart, which would at least buy me a few minutes head start for my walk?
Pre-emptive farting (or at least thinking about it) didn’t work, and I said “okay, screw it, I have to get home somehow” and got up and started the high-stakes walk.
Here’s what I learned on that walk: Fart-walking is actually surprisingly doable. You somehow have to squeeze your knees together a bit to, um, make the gas deployment easier, and then you’re mostly good. This, however, comes at a cost: Stealthiness. Fart-walking seems to have a solid 20% probability of leading to loud trumpet farts.
But that’s a cost I was willing to pay. Luckily, meanwhile, the Berlin streets were full of other people making lots of noise – among others, the hipsters were now hanging out in bars, discussing how much their new venture will scale and how hard they’ve worked on it today in the coworking space.
So anyway. Yup. That’s Acarbose.
Acarbose Effects
On a slightly more serious note, some interesting observations:
- 95% of my brain fog went away.
This is quite crazy. - After 1-2 weeks, the farts stop and you’re good.
Nowadays, I can take Acarbose and no farts happen. - If you go off Acarbose, you don’t start farting.
You might expect some sort of inverse effect, right? Like, if you’re on Acarbose for a long time and are not farting, going off it might trigger a similar “fart reaction”. But that’s not the case. - You don’t start farting if you go off it for a few days and go back on it.
This is super interesting. So it likely changes your gut microbiome, and those changes likely last for a while even if you go off Acarbose. For how long? I don’t know, the maximum I tried was a few days. - You get really good at swallowing pills without water.
You have to take Acarbose before every meal, and if you’re at a restaurant or kebab place or wherever, you might not always have a drink at hand.
Conclusion
Should you try Acarbose? That’s up to you. It’s an interesting experiment if you’re into gut microbiome stuff, or looking to try out something against brain fog. There also might be some interesting longevity aspects as it reduces your post-eating blood sugar level (it’s a diabetes drug after all), which can be considered beneficial.
The usual disclaimer applies: I’m a doctor, but not your doctor, so discuss this with your healthcare professional (who likely less.. colorful experience with Acarbose).
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