In Middle Eastern countries, it is not acceptable to burp out loud in public, and one should silence ones burp, or at least attempt to do so.Despite virtually no scientific research on the subject, small online communities exist for burping as a sexual fetish. Online, both men and women of any sexual orientation anecdotally report some attraction to burping, with what appears to be psychological and/or behavioural overlaps with other sexual fetishes including body inflation, feederism, vorarephilia, and farting fetishes. Anecdotally, the loudness aspect appears to be an important element to burp fetishists. Despite being a rather uncommon fetish, it continues to follow a general well-known pattern of sexual behaviour where hearing influences sexual arousal and response, noting that "it is the noise made rather than the action itself that appears to be what is sexualized and/or interpreted by the fetishist as sexually pleasurable and arousing". Infants
Babies are likely to accumulate gas in the stomach while feeding and experience considerable discomfort (and agitation) until assisted. Burping an infant involves placing the child in a position conducive to gas expulsion (for example against the adults shoulder, with the infants stomach resting on the adults chest) and then lightly patting the lower back. Because burping can cause vomiting, a "burp cloth" or "burp pad" is sometimes employed on the shoulder to protect clothing. Contest
The Guinness World Record for the loudest burp is 109.9 dB, set by Paul Hunn at Butlins Bognor Regis, United Kingdom, on 23 August 2009.
Other sedative and analgesic drugs, such as opiate narcotics and benzodiazepines, add to narcosis. Mechanism
The precise mechanism is not well understood, but it appears to be the direct effect of gas dissolving into nerve membranes and causing temporary disruption in nerve transmissions. While the effect was first observed with air, other gases including argon, krypton and hydrogen cause very similar effects at higher than atmospheric pressure. Some of these effects may be due to antagonism at NMDA receptors and potentiation of GABAA receptors, similar to the mechanism of nonpolar anesthetics such diethyl ether or ethylene. However, their reproduction by the very chemically inactive gas argon makes them unlikely to be a strictly chemical bonding to receptors in the usual sense of a chemical bond. An indirect physical effect – such as a change in membrane volume – would therefore be needed to affect the ligand-gated ion channels of nerve cells. Trudell et al. have suggested non-chemical binding due to the attractive van der Waals force between proteins and inert gases.Similar to the mechanism of ethanols effect, the increase of gas dissolved in nerve cell membranes may cause altered ion permeability properties of the neural cells lipid bilayers.