Why Am I so Bloated?
Have you ever gotten that feeling of pressure in your abdomen? It happens sometimes after you’ve eaten a big meal. I would be very surprised if you said no; bloating is so common that most of us, if not all of us, have experienced it at one time or another. Sometimes the bloating is accompanied by passing gas, either as belching or flatulence. And it can also cause your belly to get noticeably bigger, which is technically called distention.
It’s totally normal to deal with bloating, gas, and distention occasionally. You ate too much, you indulged in a meal that was harder to digest, or maybe you ate something that disagreed with you. But if it’s happening daily, despite a clean healthy diet, it’s time to dig a little deeper and figure out why.
There are 4 main underlying causes to chronic, daily bloating. I’ve listed them from easiest to fix to hardest to deal with, or least serious to most. So start at the top of the list, try the first suggestion first. If, after a few weeks, you haven’t made a dent in the bloat, move on to the next item on the list. Numbers 3 and 4 really require working with a practitioner, and can take longer than a few weeks to show improvement. If you’ve made your way down the to the bottom of the list, it may be a few months before you’re seeing significant improvement.
1. Eating too quickly or mindlessly
When you rush through your meal without paying attention to your food, and especially if you’re not chewing your food well enough, this alone can cause bloating.
By taking a moment to breathe, look at, and smell your food before eating, you’re engaging your parasympathetic nervous system, the one that’s involved in “rest and digest”. This allows the nerves that control your gut to digest your food properly.
In addition, eating slowly and chewing your food fully mixes important digestive enzymes into your food. This allows the food to be broken down properly in your gut (see #2 for even more on this).
While this is a simple fix, it is by no means easy. But I encourage you to step away from your desk, put your phone down, and turn off the TV during mealtimes. Take your time to eat your food mindfully, and really taste it. This alone has helped many of my patients with daily bloating after meals.
2. Low stomach acid or digestive enzymes
If you’ve been eating slowly and mindfully for a few weeks but still can’t shake the bloat, it could be caused by low stomach acid or insufficient digestive enzymes. Both of these are responsible for breaking down your food into nutrients that your body uses to function.
When stomach acid is low (which happens with stress and age) our food doesn’t get fully broken down. It’s at that point that these little bits of undigested food start to ferment and release gas. This gas causes bloating and distention.
Consider adding herbs or supplements to support enzyme production at each meal. My favorite is bitters, a combination of bitter herbs that stimulates the release of enzymes and increases stomach acid. Try the Urban Moonshine brand, they’re very effective and include other herbs that calm gas and bloating. You can also add either a good quality, broad spectrum digestive enzyme, or Betaine HCl with pepsin, a replacement for your own stomach acid. You’ll need to take one of these with every meal at first, and once you’re feeling better, you may find you only need it with a large meal.
3. Food sensitivities
If you’ve been eating mindfully and taking bitters for a few weeks, and still dealing with the daily bloat, it’s time to move on to the big guns. First up, let’s take a look at food sensitivities.
It’s well known that some people have lactose intolerance and get gas and bloating when consuming dairy. For others, it may be bean and legumes. There’s a whole host of (sometimes controversial) science behind what causes food intolerances, but the short story is that if your body is unable to fully break down certain foods, it will cause gas and bloating – just like we talked about above.
The foods that are the most likely to cause problems are ones that contain large carbohydrate molecules, or long chains of proteins. This makes these foods more challenging for your body to break down. The gold standard for finding out if food sensitivities are weaking havoc on your digestion is to do an elimination diet.
If you have a basic idea of what foods may be causing your issue, go ahead and just remove those few foods from your diet for a little while. But if you’re clueless, your best bet would be to do a full elimination diet, removing a number of foods that are known to cause problems in some people. Once you’ve been on your new restricted diet for 4-6 weeks, you should be feeling better. At that point, start introducing new foods, one food every few days, to test and see if it’s the culprit. If not, you can add that food back in to your diet. If it does cause bloating or other issues, take it back out and move on to challenge the next food.
This is a process that’s really better done with a practitioner. A qualified professional can help you decide which foods may need removing, and what order to reintroduce foods. And if you find you have quite a few intolerances, a health practitioner can help you repair your gut so that you can eventually add all healthy foods back in to your diet.
4. SIBO
If nothing you’ve tried so far has worked, the end of the line is SIBO, which stands for Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth. While your large intestine hosts a whole mess of beneficial bacteria, your small intestine should be relatively free of them. But, for many complex reasons, bacteria can relocate into the small intestine. Once they’re in the wrong place, they start feeding on the food that’s meant for you in your small intestine. While they’re feasting they release gas, which builds up in your small intestine and causes bloating. The bacteria also rob you of nutrients, so over time you can become deficient in things like iron, B12 and others.
SIBO (along with IMO – intestinal methanogen overgrowth) is a very complex condition. You’ll definitely want to work with a practitioner who can test, diagnose, and treat you. SIBO isn’t a root cause by itself, there’s always some underlying condition that also needs treated. It is thought to be the root cause of 70-%-80% of all IBS cases. So if you have IBS as well as bloating, consider finding a practitioner who can help you find out if SIBO is causing it.
And if you do suffer from ongoing constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain or nausea along with bloating, take a look at our post all about IBS.
Author:
Dr. Elizabeth Williams, DACM, LAc. is an acupuncturist, herbalist and Doctor of Chinese Medicine in Greenville, South Carolina, specializing in women’s health, digestive issues, psycho-emotional issues and chronic illness. She’s passionate about helping people feel their best and sharing her wealth of knowledge with the community. Elizabeth is the owner of Dragonfly Acupuncture & Massage on Wade Hampton Boulevard. Appointments can be made by calling 864-451-4313 or scheduled online.