Bloating, or sometimes referred to as Endo belly, is one of the most common Endometriosis symptoms I see in my clinic. It is uncomfortable, painful at times, and can make you look like you’re 4 months pregnant (which can expose you to well-meaning, but difficult to deal with comments from people congratulating you on your pregnancy).
So why is bloating such a common symptom? What is causing it? And is there something you can do about it?
Here are 7 things most people don’t know about bloating.
1. What is bloating?
When you are bloated, the organs of the gut are stretched due to gas, liquid or solids in the gut. This is caused by the content in your gut moving too slowly through. Another reason you might feel bloated is that your diaphragm muscles contract, basically ‘squashing’ your organs (think about a blown-up balloon that you twist in the middle: it makes the 2 parts of the balloon larger and the skin much tighter. Your diaphragm muscles can contract when you are under stress or when you’re in pain.
2. Where can you feel bloated?
There are 2 ‘types’ of bloating. You can be bloated in your upper abdomen which is caused by indigestion. Most of you will experience your bloating in your lower abdomen, which is caused by gut issues and hormones.
3. One of the main causes of bloating is food intolerances.
You can be intolerant to all sorts of normally considered healthy foods. For example, I am intolerant to apples! I have clients who are intolerant to mushrooms and corn (both fairly common intolerances), and even to oranges and beef. When you eat foods that you are intolerant to, your gut gets irritated, which can create gas and constipation. I wrote a more detailed post about the gut: Why you should spend more time thinking about your gut. You can read it here.
4. Your gut microbiome is out of balance
We know that women with Endometriosis have dysbiosis, or an imbalance in their gut microbiome. Simply put, you’ve got too many bad bacteria and not enough good bacteria. Bad bacteria use sugars and simple carbohydrates as food. They ferment these in your gut and this process produces gasses. The gasses produced by bad bacteria are more noxious and irritate your gut.
5. The role of stress
Yes, stress contributes to bloating! Our gut and brain are connected via vagus nerve and the brain sends messages down. When stressed, the brain signals that digestion needs to slow down so all energy can go into the fight or flight response. A slower digestion creates a ‘traffic jam’ like situation in your gut.
6. The role of your hormones
Bloating can occur more before your period in the 2 weeks leading up to your period. Higher levels of oestrogen cause you to retain more water. Higher levels of progesterone make your gut more sluggish, causing your digestive system to slow down.
7. You can do something about your bloating
Bloating is one of the symptoms you can see a big improvement on when you change your diet. This is the good news! Start by removing gluten and dairy from your diet: it is very likely that you are intolerant to both. Occasionally I have a client who is not intolerant to gluten, but the majority are. And I have yet to see a client who is okay with dairy.
Then focus on your microbiome: remove all processed foods and sugar containing foods from your diet. This will start to starve the colonies of bad bacteria. Also gently start to increase the amount of fibre (fresh fruit and vegetables, non-wheat wholegrains, beans, lentils) to feed the good bacteria and grow their colonies. Be sure to do this gently, because if your gut is not used to a high-fibre diet, you will experience lots of cramping and flatulence.
If you would like to find out how much of your diet may be contributing to bloating and other Endometriosis symptoms, I have a free diet assessment tool for you. You can take the diet assessment here.