Bloating is such an annoying symptom to have. One minute your feel like your a size 12, the next minute your bloated and your tummy feels like your 6 months pregnant and you have to open your button.Believe you me you are not alone, it’s a very common symptom that I see in my clinic.
So let’s get straight to it with my Tips for bloating.
Easy on the sugar– Sugar most definitely can cause bloating. When we eat a processed foods or high sugary foods, that will quickly turn into sugar. They can sometimes cause gas and ferment …causing bloating. If you have dysbiosis (dysbiosis is when you have more bad bacteria in your gut than good bacteria ) in your gut, you will bloat even more. If you want to reduce your bloating that cut down on the processed foods, biscuits, buns, cakes and treats in your diet. Check out my online program Ditch the Sugars, this is specificity catered for helping, educate and support you ditching the nasty sugar. Becoming more an even healthier you.
Probiotics – Add probiotics to your day. They come in a capsule or powder. Probiotics will help to repopulate your gut with healthy strains of good bacteria. They will also reduce the bloating by supporting your digestion, aid to regular bowel movement, strengthen your immune system and improve overall general health. When choosing a probiotic make sure that you purchase a good quality brand, that the bacteria will withstand the stomach acid and is suitable for your needs dairy, gluten or yeast free.
Digestive Enzymes-These littles guys are stimulated in our mouth when we start to smell, think, touch our food. We get another helping hand from the digestive enzymes in the stomach, pancreas, and intestines. Unfortunately, we are not chewing our food slowly or taking our time when eating and we are not letting the natural process of digestion to take place. Therefore we are getting a lot of bloating and wind. The solution is to add some bitters before your meals, apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. This will help to stimulate the digestive enzymes in your body.
Food Intolerance Test– Running a food intolerance blood test, by a small finger prick of blood and sending it to the Laboratories. At the lab, they will run an ELISA – Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay test for a number of different foods. You will receive a grade for each food, at this stage you need to remove the high-grade food and your symptoms may reduce.This is a test that I have available for clients.This can be a really effective way of reducing bloating.
Fiber– This may sound like an obvious tip, but I am not talking about the regular fibre like bran or bran flakes. I’m talking about lots of fibres vegetables like broccoli, spinach, courgettes, cauliflower, chia seeds or flaxseeds.This types of food will stimulate digestion, reduce bloating, support a regular bowel movement and feed the good bacteria in your gut.
While all of the above tips are extremely effective for reducing bloating, there can be another area that needs attention. That is in small and large intestine there quite possibly could a bacteria, fungi or parasites that are stopping your gut/intestines from doing its job. So it’s a good idea to get the whole picture and treat the root of the cause, this may need for further advanced testing like Stool test or SIBO test ( SIBO- Small intestine bacteria overgrowth ). These types of test which I as a Nutritional Therapist have access to run with clients.