This blog is all about a topic that women and men alike experience: bloating. Whenever you’re trying to treat a problem you want to figure out the root rather than just putting a bandaid on it. So here’s the 3 possible underlying causes for your bloating:
- Air: This seems so weird but there are certain ways to eat, drink, and even breathe to stop you from holding too much air in your stomach. A few things to be mindful of:
- Gum – If you chew a lot of gum you’re swallowing more air so this can lead to bloating. Try switching gum with something like a sugar-free candy that you can suck on, that way you avoid the act of unnecessarily chewing which causes you to swallow air.
- Straws – Using a straw in general can be a culprit of bloating, especially when you drink fast. If you’re drinking something cold or you’re trying to keep your teeth white thus really want to use a straw, try to drink slowly.
- Breathing – Do you ever notice in yoga that they ask you to inhale through your nose and exhale out through your mouth? This helps you get oxygen to your brain, and if you breath in through your mouth too much you can actually end up trapping more air in your stomach.
- The way you’re chewing – Digestion starts in your mouth as soon as you take a bite of food! If you shovel food in you might be swallowing too much air along with your food. So my recommendation is to take a bite, put your fork down, and chew mindfully before taking in another bite.
- Sodium: Water follows salt. If you eat foods that are super salty, water will follow leading to retention, bloating, and swelling. This bloating could be not only in your stomach but also your face, feet, etc. A few tips to prevent this from happening:
- Eating out – you have no idea how much salt is going into things when eating out, which is why home cooked meals are often healthier by default.
- Frozen foods – if you look on the back of frozen foods (as well as canned, processed, and pickled foods), sodium is often added as a preservative, so you want to avoid this as much as possible…Not only for bloating but also because too much sodium in your bloodstream creates pressure, leading to high blood pressure.
- Poor digestion: Little things you can do:
- Avoid water 20 minutes before and 1 hour after a meal – water dilutes the digestive enzymes you need to digest your food.
- Homemade tea – Boil water with fennel, coriander, and ginger & sip 20 minutes before your meal.
- Digestive enzymes – I recommend talking to a nutritionist or doctor to help you find the one that would be best for you.
- Eat fruit on its own – Combining fruit with other foods does not work well in your gut. Fruit is broken down so quickly that it can’t digest well with other foods that take longer to digest. It literally ends up sitting in the digestive tract and putrefying, leading to toxic buildup. I love to eat it in the morning as an easy way to ensure I haven’t eaten anything else beforehand.
So – if you experience bloating definitely try these air, sodium, and digestion tips, they should be super helpful :) If nothing ends up working, I would recommend seeing a nutritionist. I’m a huge fan of doing diagnostic tests to check nutrient levels, hormones, etc. The more you know the better… knowledge is power 🖤
