Are you always bloated? Testing your food intolerances could be the answer!
Picture this: You’re out with your friends for an epic feast at your favourite Italian restaurant. Everyone is having a great time, and the food is delicious. There is pizza, pasta, all the sides and cheesecake for dessert. Yum, yum, yum! Two hours later, you are at home clutching your gut in pain, with wind coming out your wazoo and a mad dash to the toilet to relieve the pressure you’re feeling. You’re still feeling bloated in the morning, and come to think of it you usually feel a little bloated at the end of each day too.
Does this sound familiar?
Read on for some great info on bloating and it’s causes, plus what you can do to relieve it.
Bloating 101
- The gas produced by the bacteria in our gut can cause lots of bloating when you’ve eaten copious amounts of carbohydrates and even fibre.
- IBS and heightened sensitivity in your gut can also be culprits of bloating. It’s believed to have a genetic component to it, but no one really knows why some people have this and others don’t.
- The amount of gas your gut naturally produces can cause bloating if you can’t absorb it and it becomes trapped. Hello wind pain!
- Constipation or diarrhoea can also cause bloating. Addressing these issues will usually also resolve the bloating.
- Food intolerances! These are a big culprit of bloating. It is a common symptom of both lactose and gluten intolerance.
How a food intolerance can cause bloating:
Let’s use lactose intolerance as the example here, as bloating is a prevalent symptom of this particular intolerance.
Lactose is a carbohydrate that is uniquely found only in milk from cows, goats, sheep and buffalo. This milk sugar needs an enzyme called lactase to be broken down properly. Unfortunately, for us humans who adore cow’s milk and all its delicious counterparts, a considerable percentage of adults don’t make enough lactase to break down milk sugars properly. This creates large amounts of bloating as bacteria in the digestive tract have a feast on the undigested milk sugars.
There isn’t a lot than can be done about this, other than avoiding milk. Bye-byecheesecake! Luckily there are some delicious vegan varieties for the cheesecake lovers amongst us, and if nuts aren’t an issue for you they will be gut-friendly too!
Ways to reduce your bloating!
- Avoid large meals. This sounds rather obvious, but overloading our digestion with large meals stretches everything and causes discomfort and bloating.
- Make sure that you chew your food really well! This is really important for the digestive process to work correctly. Large chunks of unchewed food can be the cause of bloating for some people. Chewing each mouthful at least 10 to 20 times is ideal.
- Try drinking peppermint tea after meals. The oils in peppermint relax your gut muscles and help to relieve any trapped or excess gas.
- Using a heat pack on your stomach can be enough to relax the muscles and relieve trapped gas. Go for a walk outside after the heat pack and let loose!
- Deep diaphragm breathing. This might sounds out of place here, but it works to relax your gut and your nervous system. When either are tight and strung out, it can cause bloating as a side effect.
- Don’t wear tight clothing around your abdomen if bloating is an issue for you. Tight pants can actually cause bloating over the day, it’s a real thing!
If none of the above strategies works for you, we highly recommend that you take a food intolerance test! You can order one here:
This test will give you a list of the foods that are problematic for youand removing them will also remove any inflammation they cause. We’ve had loads of happy customers report reductions in their bloating, and even the disappearance of it altogether.
Free your stomach and say bye-bye to your bloating today.