Stomach Distention? Read This!
Our body is always looking out for us. When experience painful or intolerable symptoms with our health, instead of turning against our body, I encourage you to lean in and use your symptoms as messengers to go deeper within. Think of our symptoms that we experience as humans, as the body’s alarm clock to quite literally “wake us up!” Feeling stomach distention, stomach pain, rumbling in your stomach, or like you have a "balloon" in your stomach, can be extremely uncomfortable and weigh down our energy and our mood. Below are some common root causes to these unsettling symptoms. Once we more deeply understand how our symptoms manifested, we can more calmly understand and transition to the path to healing with less stress and more ease.
Common Causes Of Stomach Distention:
1.) HIDDEN GALLBLADDER ISSUES.
The gallbladder is essential for the proper breakdown of the foods we eat, in particular: healthy fats. If the gallbladder is stressed out or irritated in anyway and/or you are missing your gallbladder, this can GREATLY impact your body’s ability to digest foods properly. Any issues with the mechanism of how we breakdown our food, and in particular gallbladder stress, can cause extreme bloating. Supplements and dietary changes can help to relieve gallbladder stress and dysfunction. My absolute favorite gallbladder digestive aide is Advanced TUDCA by Cellcore which you can purchase on my Online Shop under Cellcore. Take 1-2 with two of your daily meals.
2.) FOOD SENSITIVITIES.
If you are eating a food that you are sensitive and or allergic to, the body will produce inflammation in response as that food is seen as a threat, not nourishment. This inflammatory response causes a cascade of events and one of the major symptoms being: feeling bloated. We highly recommend the MRT Food Sensitivity Functional Lab Test on our Online Shop as it is the number one Food Sensitivity test available today and also provides a list of foods that are BEST for you to consume and that do not produce inflammation.
3.) CHRONIC STRESS.
When we are chronically stressed out, our adrenal glands are cranking out stress hormones. This then signals the body to go into “fight or flight" mode. When the body is in this mode, the last thing on the body’s mind is digestion and/or metabolism. Therefore, major gastric juices and digestive enzymes turn off. When we lose the necessary “juice” and enzymes to properly breakdown our food, food ends up partially digested and a slew of events can occur due to the partially broken down food in our stomach, one of them being – feeling bloated! Additionally, our gut is where we metaphorically hold our emotions. Unresolved emotions can harbor in the gut and contribute to feeling bloated and weighed down. For a list of healing modalities and practitioners who help to relieve stress/trauma, please see our Resource page.
4.) PATHOGENS.
Pathogens can be described as bacteria, candida, parasites and viruses. When these bugs are in excess in our body and/or gut, we can experience major bloat in our stomach. SIBO, known as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, is another underlying cause of feeling bloated. The GI Map Functional Lab Test found on our Online Shop is a wonderful testing tool to analyze the health of our gut microbiome and check for any hidden pathogens that are negatively impacting our gut and overall health.
5.) EATING STANDING UP.
Eating standing up signals to our body that we are not in a parasympathetic mode, but rather in a sympathetic mode. For proper digestion and metabolism, our body needs to be in a parasympathetic mode. To help improve digestion and lessen that bloated feeling, I highly recommend sitting down while eating and before eating your snack or meal, take three to five long inhales and exhales. This will further signal to your body to go into a parasympathetic mode which will help to increase digestive juices and enzymes for proper and efficient digestion.
6.) EATING TOO FAST.
This is so common and overlooked, yet so important! We cannot properly breakdown our meal or snack if we are inhaling our food too quickly. Undigested food particles that hang out in our gut make us tired, bloated and can breed pathogens like candida and bacteria overgrowth. Our grandmother’s and mother’s were right (as they usually are) to chew, chew, chew your foods from solids to liquids.
7.) ENZYMES + HCL DEFICIENCIES.
In our body, we have digestive enzymes and something called hydrochloric acid (or "HCL") which helps us to properly breakdown our food from solids to liquids. When we are deficient in these enzymes, we can easily become bloated. Our favorite digestive enzyme is CT-Zyme (by Cellcore) and Hydro-zyme by Biotics Research (found on Fullscript). Both of these supplements can be found here on my Online Shop. I recommend 1 CT-Zyme and 1-3 Hydro-zyme per meal to help with the proper digestion of fat, carbs and proteins and to help to naturally reduce feeling bloated.
9.) DIETARY IMBALANCES.
The term “macros” represents the grams of carbs, fat and protein a food or meal contains as well as how many calories. When we are consuming too low or high of any macronutrient on a consistent basis, this can contribute to feeling bloated. Additionally, when our daily macros are consistently off balance, more times than not, so is our blood sugar. Blood sugar dysregulation greatly impacts our hormones and gut health and can be a huge contributing factor to feeling bloated.
We hope this page helps you if you are feeling bloated and sluggish. If you are looking for further assistance in healing any gut health issues and are ready to commit to a program, please see our contact page for more information on becoming a client.
