It’s happening again. You just ate a delicious healthy lunch with your friends, and within five minutes, your stomach feels more than just happy-full. It feels like it’s full of air, pushing against your jeans. The feeling is uncomfortable at best, and unbearably painful at worst.
This happens sometimes, and always at lunch time. Why?
While blogs and health sites would have you believe that it’s the sodium content in your food that’s causing you to bloat, this isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes the true culprit that’s causing your stomach to bloat isn’t as simple as just excess sodium.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at what causes bloating and how you can make it stop, once and for all.
What is bloating?
Stomach bloating feels like your insides are a hot air balloon. Outwardly, you may see your stomach protruding more than usual, but a lot of times, the sensation may be present without seeing it from the outside.
Bloating is caused by a lot of things, but the primary culprit is trapped intestinal gas that gives you that feeling of outward pressure or tightness. The bacteria in your gut digests carbohydrates, essentially fermenting them which creates the gas.
Typically, we are able to belch that gas out while we eat, but other times it gets trapped.
When you bloat, it’s caused by your gut bacteria not being able to process those excess carbohydrates because it wasn’t absorbed properly during the digestive process. This can be caused by eating too fast, eating too much, or eating the wrong things.
It’s not always about sodium.
Despite what the popular food blogs would have you believe, sodium isn’t the only food item that can cause bloating. Humans are unique and all of us have specific food needs. What causes you to bloat makes your friend feel refreshed.
What causes acne for you might be the one ingredient that helps clear your friend’s skin.
Sometimes, your body just can’t digest specific things, but if you don’t know what those things are, you’ll never know that it was one simple thing in the salad dressing that was wreaking havoc on your gut.
Food sensitivities and bloating
Do you know what a food sensitivity is?
Food sensitivities are a reaction that you have to food that you have a hard time digesting. The most common food sensitivities are lactose intolerance and gluten sensitivities, but did you know that food sensitivities go far beyond just milk and bread?
Egg yolks, beer, avocados, citrus fruits, the list goes on. You can be sensitive to almost anything that you eat. This is why it’s so important to ask your doctor about getting a food sensitivity test. Especially if your bloating is chronic.
The reason why food sensitivities go undiagnosed for so long is because the symptoms are often not very severe the way that they would be for a food allergy for example. It’s easy to mistake a symptom for something else because it isn’t that incapacitating.
Take the test
Our motto at Immuno Labs is “the power of knowing”, and we say that for a reason. When you have a food sensitivity test performed, you get the answers to what is causing your chronic bloating and you are finally able to do something about it.
Instead of dreading the post-lunch bloat, you would know that you have to skip the salad dressing because the avocado and soy sauce in it are going cause you to bloat. You would be able to return to work without that uncomfortable feeling getting in the way of important meetings and that company happy hour you’ve been looking forward to.
Are you ready to get your bloat in check? Contact us to learn more about our Bloodprint panel today!
