Severe Bloating

[adelen123]

Hi I am feeling fed up I suffer from severe abdominal swelling and bloating I look 6 months pregnant by morning it deflates, really losing confidence and tips at all?

[Bebs]

I have the same problem. I am following the FODMAP diet plan and its helping me greatly. I only have problems when eating out as foods are often hidden! So long as you cook from scratch its great. good luck!

[adelen123 in reply to Bebs]

Thank you very much for your reply . I'm glad u have found some success. I'm gonna measure my stomach and measure it later. See what difference us

[Hidden]

It's probabky a food group that is affecting you

A lot of people rely on the FODMAP diet but you could do your own intolerance tests by leaving one food group out at a time like wheat or cabbage and it's relatives which are renowned for giving people wind which could be related to the bloating

[Hidden]

Nothing worse than this dreaded bloat, I know what you mean about confidence, but try finding out what foods are making you bloat, lots of people on here follow the Fodmap diet and it works for some, but sadly not for me. It may take some time, but after you have eaten a certain meal and you feel bloated, try and omit that from your diet for a while and see if it works. Good Luck.x

[deepest]

My husband suffers from bloating which is I think is caused by trapped wind. He drinks a root ginger drink to help which he says it does. 4 or 5 slithers of ginger root covered with water which has just boiled - leave aprox 5 mins - discard ginger and add tsp of honey (this is only to sweeten it up a bit). He finds it helps a lot.

[BarneyB]

Hi, sorry to hear you're going through this, I know how depressing and debilitating it all is. I always dreaded the summer, as summer clothes showed off my large stomach.

I agree with both Bebs, and Cricketqueen about it being food related. I lived (struggled) with this severe bloating for years, but like Bebs says, the low Fodmap diet has helped a lot. My trigger foods include apples, garlic, hummus, wheat. . It really is all individual, so the diet is worth researching if you haven't already.

Try to eat regularly - don't leave big gaps in between meals, as that always sets my bloating off. Try and avoid things like onions and garlic in foods , which can cause bloating.

Also, have you tried any products with peppermint in them? When I was really bad I took peppermint oil in warm water. You could try it in tablet form too. You can buy them in most health shops. It helped in my case. A pharmacist also once advised me to sip peppermint tea throughout the day.

Good luck with it all, - don't despair, as many of us on here have been as fed up as you are right now, but a better quality of life can be found, it's just unfortunate it all takes time. Best wishes, BarneyB.

[adelen123 in reply to BarneyB]

Thank you for all your kind replies. I will certainly take them on board. Nightmare effects how u look getting asked if I'm pregnant X

[Bebs]

Yes I have about four times with some help but to be honest they cost a lot and the money would be better spent on an appointment with a nutritionist locally who can support you. If you have the patience the only way to get to the bottom of it is to exclude things for 6 wks at a time then try a little again if it reacts you know that food is a no no BUT try the onion family first onions, garlic, leeks as I found they reacted badly with me and were in most recipes so we're messing with my results!

Good luck

Bebs

[jennifer1983]

You need to see you gynecologist ASAP - I don't want to scare you but this happened to friend and she ended up having a tumor on her ovary . It was benign so don't worry but please see your gynecologist . Most women and a lot of doctors always seem to think IBS when in fact it could very well be a gynecological issues. Don't waste anymore time. Get to the gynecologist.

[jennifer1983]

Make appointment to see your gynecologist ASAP. I don't want to scare you but bloating can be a sign of an ovarian issue. Most people and even some general practitioner and family doctors right away think IBS when bloating is a symptom but in fact it could very well be your ovaries. Do you have this everyday or just once in a while ? That questions makes a big difference .

[littleitaly]

I am exactly the same . In the morning my tummy is flat and slowly as the progresses i swell up till I end up looking pregnant, I am frustrated as well and do not know what I am doing wrong

[Stuart24]

Hello, I've got a drawer full of medicines and pro-biotics that I have taken over the years, and do you know what I take now? None of them. After 27 years of suffering with IBS-D I have found that the long term solution that actually works is all about vitamins and fasting and both are equally important. You are effectively the manager of a food processing factory, I know that is obvious, but I have found that IBS is not about medicines, but about changing the way you run the factory.

This is based on some excellent publications, and also just observing how healthy people live. First, go to the doctors and get yourself checked for intestinal infections, and whatever other tests they want to do, you can be a carrier of some bugs and only suffer occasional flare-ups. But, if you are all clear then the first thing to sort out is your vitamins and the timing of your eating (fasting periods). An incident of food poisoning or infection can start you on a cycle that you need to make a really concerted effort to break out of. IBS causes vitamin deficiencies which are very difficult to overcome in most people’s diets, especially because you are probably eating selectively to manage your symptoms. Your vitamin levels affect the health of your guts, and the health of your guts affects your vitamin absorption, so it is a vicious circle that you have to break. Get some really good, expensive, multi-vitamins (ideally constituted for your age) and take them without fail every day before your breakfast. Do not get the ones with high calcium and magnesium initially as certainly in large doses these minerals can mess you up as they consume your stomach acid, and you should get enough of these minerals from your diet. If you are on low FODMAPs, go for all lactose free dairy products to boost your calcium. At the same time, sort out your fasting periods straight away. Your small intestine should be practically sterile, and your stomach acid along with bowel cleaning during fasting (called MMC) will usually do this. You need to fast for this to be effective, and by that I mean, ABSOLUTELY NO eating in between meals, only water, or tea with saccharin. Imagine that you never washed your dinner plates and just kept putting food on them all the time!, they would be filthy. You need to give your small intestine plenty of time free of food for cleaning and maintaining the factory. God didn't design us to have cupboards full of rich foods permanently available day and night. Your stomach will sort itself out when you have got control of your small intestine (although if you've got gastritis you'll need to finish a course of omeprazole first), and then your large intestine will improve later as nutrients are more efficiently absorbed from your small intestine. Eat a good breakfast at say 7am (porridge with 50% lactose free milk) or what suits you and then a good lunch at 12 o'clock - absolutely no food in between. After lunch, no food again for at least 5 hours, and eat well again for your evening meal because it has got to get you through the night. No supper or snacks, no food or milk at all until breakfast the next day. In general, do not eat fried or roasted starches, i.e. crisps, chips, roast veg or fried rice. The high temperature that gives the lovely crispy bits, makes complex polymers that are very difficult to digest, they feed the bacteria and make you ill. Starches should only be boiled, and this is enough. Red meats take a long time to digest, only have them once a day, and just a light salad to go with them, not a load of starchy foods, as they have conflicting digest times. You will feel hunger in the fasting periods, but you must not respond to it - only with water or no-sugar drinks. Importantly, when you are feeling better, do not resort to your old ways, you are still recovering, and you need to make a life-style change to have this level of discipline in your eating and continue with it. Start doing some exercise if you don’t already, as this will really help with your gut motility. Your intestines take time to fully recover, it takes a few weeks at least, and you need to persevere. You then need to maintain a healthy and consistent way of eating and always keep the vitamins topped up all the time to prevent you from relapsing. There is a lot of support for L-glutamine to help with nutrition specifically for your intestinal lining, this means buying 500g of the bodybuilder powder type and having a couple of tea-spoons of this a day, one before breakfast and one just before you go to bed, and you can have this in a light cordial drink. A lot of this was taken from this GENIUS paper below, but it does fit exactly with what I have experienced, and for the first time I really feel in control of something that has been a burden for years, but is not longer. Good luck.

Treatment and Management of SIBO — Taking a Dietary Approach Can Control Intestinal Fermentation and Inflammation

By Aglaée Jacob, MS, RD

Today’s Dietitian

December 2012, Vol. 14 No. 12 P. 16