If you hold in a fart, will it come out your mouth?

Farting might seem gross, but we all know how necessary it is to get that gas out of our stomachs and relieve some pressure down there. Problem is, it’s not always socially acceptable, especially in public, and, worse, it’s never a good thing to pass gas while in front of a girl.

While most of us find ourselves holding in those farts, new research offers a pretty good reason as to why you should try to get that gas out — and it’s absolutely disgusting if you try to hold it in.

That’s because, per Mental Floss, a publication called The Conversation in the U.K. talked to Clare Collins, a nutrition and dietetics professor at the University of Newcastle, to breakdown some of the concerns with not farting. Their findings? All that pent-up gas can pass through your stomach and gut wall, recirculating to come out of your mouth. How gross is that, guys?

Here’s what Collins had to add, via Mental Floss.

“Holding on too long means the build up of intestinal gas will eventually escape via an uncontrollable fart,” Collins writes. In this case, the fart comes out of the wrong end. Talk about potty mouth.

In a related study, 10 volunteers were fed half a can of baked beans to be added to their normal diets, then were given an anal catheter to measure their farts over a 24-hour period. The results proved that both men and women farted about the same amount during that cycle, eight times — so who says that farting is gross, we clearly all do it.

There’s also other scientific research that supports Collins’ advice to push those farts out when you feel one brewing, with one paper on “Methane and the gastrointestinal tract” saying that gases like methane, hydrogen sulfide and other gases in the intestinal tract are either exited through the anus or “expelled from the lungs,” which can lead to belching, farting, bloating and pain. Why would you want to do that to yourself, guys?

So, the next time you feel like farting, make sure the coast is clear and go ahead and let out a toot, it’s how Mother Nature intended it to be. After all, who wants pain in their stomach, or worse, breath that literally smells like sh*t!?