Why do we get bloating?

Bloating

One of the most common symptoms of digestive disfunction is bloating. I have suffered in the past massively with bloating myself and know just how uncomfortable, annoying and upsetting it is! I am going to cover a few tips on how to reduce the bloat.

1.       You are not chewing your food long enough. You need to drink your food and chew your drink, if you can still detect what you are eating when you swallow you are not chewing enough! We need our saliva to break down our food as much as possible to aid the digestion process and break down of food. Slow down and focus on your food, chew 20 times per mouthful and put your cutlery down 3 x per meal.

2.       You have an intolerance to a certain food, gluten and dairy are common triggers. Keep a food diary and note down when you are feeling bloated. Remove the food for a few weeks and see how you feel.

3.       You have an overgrowth of bad bacteria, feed your good bacteria with prebiotics. Resistant starch found in cooked and cooled potatoes, green bananas, lentils, peas and kiwi fruit are other great sources of prebiotics. You may find when you first start eating these foods you get worse before you get better, this is due to the fact your gut bacteria are not used to this kind of fibre!

If you still get bloated after trying these steps, it may be that you need a functional test to get to the route cause of your bloating.