How to manage bloating
- from our friends at Wild Dose
Bloating can impact your life at any time, sometimes seemingly at random. This uncomfortable sensation is typically caused by trapped gas and water retention, while the triggers are numerous - from stress to trigger foods, fizzy drinks and allergies.
Many people suffer with bloating for years, with it affecting their mental and physical health. A recent survey from Wild Dose indicated around 73% of people with regular bloating suffer from psychological concerns around eating. It’s not just eating that’s affected either, with 71% of participants saying bloating has interfered with their sex life and intimacy.
It’s clear bloating is a problem in our world but few understand how to manage it. It’s important to know what bloating is before you look to fix it - trapped gas and water retention. Knowing this, we can deal with each facet of bloating - it’s also important to distinguish between bloating and fullness. The latter happening simply because there’s too much food in the stomach, sadly there’s only one way to stop that!
Gas Relief
When gas is the culprit of your bloating, you might feel a distended stomach, gurgling, excess burping or some lower stomach pain. This is quite common and can happen when we eat hard to break down foods - such as food containing gluten, or more frequently artificial sugars and sweeteners.
With trapped gas two problems need to be solved - 1) the body making even more gas and 2) releasing the gas already there.
To stop the body making even more gas and retaining it, lifestyle changes can make a massive difference:
Eating / drinking slower
Avoiding fizzy drinks
Avoid chewing gum
Chewing food thoroughly
On top of that, you can take digestive enzymes before you eat which help the body break down food before they reach your gut. Undigested food in the gut is feasted on by your gut bacteria and a by-product of this is gas released by the bacteria - so making sure food is properly digested before is essential to avoiding bloating. This includes eating slower, chewing thoroughly and taking digestive enzymes if needed! We would recommend taking something like Wild Dose before a meal which is rich in digestive enzymes.
Next up, we would want to release gas that’s already causing you to bloat. As it’s trapped we want to make sure we are giving it every chance of escaping - either by moving, forcing it out, or by relaxing the digestive tract creating more space and helping the bowels move carrying the gas with it.
The best ways to do this are:
Going for a walk or yoga (gentle movement!)
Reducing stress
Drinking plenty of water to soften stool
Taking herbal supplements/teas such as ginger or peppermint
When you feel bloated, doing all of the above is the most effective way at getting your body to create movement and space for the gas to be released.
Water Retention
Typically this occurs after eating salty food but can also occur during a period or menopause due to hormone fluctuations. This feels kind of “puffy”, you might even feel it around your face, under your eyes and ankles. This is when your body tries to cling onto water due to imbalances in salts.
The best way to combat this are:
Drinking more water
Avoiding salt
Taking magnesium
It might sound counter intuitive to drink more water when you’re retaining it but drinking more helps your body flush out the imbalances and retained water.
Combining this with either a magnesium supplement or magnesium rich food will really help counter balance the mineral imbalances in your bodies tissues. In fact, recent research showed that magnesium supplements may help decrease symptoms of PMS, including bloating and water retention.