You finish a delicious dinner and sit back, ready to enjoy that post-meal contentment.
Then suddenly it hits.
Your stomach feels like it’s about to burst, even though you didn’t eat too much. And does your belly look bigger, too?
Bloating is incredibly common, affecting between 10% and 25% of healthy adults.1
Luckily, with the right foods, bloating can be alleviated and even avoided.
Let's explore what causes that uncomfortable fullness, which bloat-inducing foods to avoid, and which healthy, nutritious meals will give you that same happy feeling without the bloat.
What Is Bloating?
Bloating is a feeling of uncomfortable or even painful fullness or tightness in and around your stomach. It occurs when there is a build up of excess gas in the GI tract.
When you’re bloated, you may feel as if you’ve eaten a huge meal. In fact, you may even look like you’ve eaten a huge meal, a condition known as abdominal distention.
For the most part, your bloating will go away as your body processes and eliminates the food that caused the issue. However, depending on factors such as your diet, digestive issues, and hormonal changes, bloating can become a recurring issue.
What Causes Bloating?
Feeling bloated? There could be several causes.
If you frequently feel bloated after eating, it is likely due to the foods you are eating or an underlying digestive issue. With food-related bloating, the main causes are overeating or eating too much of certain foods—mainly those high in fat or sugar (or artificial sweeteners) as well as lactose.
Other common causes of bloating include:
- Food intolerances
- Gastrointestinal (GI) issues or other health conditions
- Buildup of digestive content, usually due to constipation or bowel obstructions
- For women, bloating often occurs around or during your menstrual cycle.
One of the most common causes of bloating is an imbalanced gut, a state also referred to as dysbiosis. If your gut microbiome becomes imbalanced, with an overabundance of harmful bacteria (pathogens) compared to beneficial bacteria (probiotics), it leads to an increase in methane and hydrogen gas production. This alteration in your gut environment further promotes the growth and proliferation of bad bacteria, resulting in more frequent episodes of bloating.
Balancing your gut with a high-quality spore probiotic (more on this later) is the best way to stop bloating in its tracks, though you still need to be cognizant of the foods you are eating…
Unfortunately, bloating can impact your day-to-day functioning as well as your overall health and wellness.
Foods That Cause Bloating
As we mentioned earlier, what you eat is one of the main causes of bloating.
Here are some foods you should avoid or minimize if you’re trying to banish bloating.
- Apples, pears, and other fruit high in sugars, especially if you eat them with the peel Artificial sweeteners such sorbitol, mannitol, or xylitol
- Beans and lentils
- Carbonated drinks Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts
- Dairy products
- Garlic
- High-fat foods
- Onions
- Wheat, rye, barley, and other insoluble fibers, especially if you have celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity
- Gluten, a key component of wheat and other grains, but also found in condiments like soy sauce and many processed foods
- Fructose, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup
- Lactose, found in dairy products
Many of these foods are often considered healthy, so the key is moderation.
Reduce Bloating With These 5 Healthy Fall Recipes
And now that you know some foods to avoid, let’s look at some mouth-watering, bloat-free fall recipes you can enjoy, instead.
(As you might notice, many of these recipes include the addition of Just Thrive Probiotic for added gut support. Just Thrive Probiot