Hey friends,
Today I want to talk about a very uncomfortable topic for most people. A lot of people, me included, suffer from gas and bloating in there early stages of switching to a plant based diet which can be really annoying, especially in social situations. I remember the time I switched to this diet. It went as far as I sometimes was even too afraid to go out with friends as I feared to embarrass myself. Along with the embarrassing part, it is just very uncomfortable walking or sitting around with a bloated stomach in general. Therefore, I want to share with you where the bloating might come from and what you should have an eye on and what you can practically start doing from today onwards to help you with that issue.
This is no nutritional advice, I am just speaking from experience and my accumulated knowledge. In any case of severe pain or health-threatening issues, seek for a doctor.
The Reasons Why
Bloating can be caused by a lot of different things. I first want to go through the more obvious ones that you might have heard somewhere else and then give you some reasons that I found when discovering my own body and learning on my own journey.
Possible Reason #1 - Allergies and intolerances
Since most people who suffer from an allergy do know about it, there might be some of you who suffer from an allergy and do not know about it. While some allergic reactions can be pretty severe and these are mostly the ones people know about, there might be something your body is not really kean to process. You might have never gotten it checked because the symptoms were not that serious but bloating and gas could be a sign for that. So, just to make sure you are not consuming these types of food in the first places, you might go and get it checked.
Possible Reason #2 - Inapropriate water consumption
To be able to function properly, our intestines need enough water to get the digestive process running. Therefore, consuming enough water is essential for our digestion and helps our digestive track to digest the food you consume. However, you should not consume to much water right before the meal, during the meal or right after the meal since this will have a negative influence on your stomach acid by diluting it and therefore making it less powerful. But why is that important?
Possible Reason #3 - Stomach Acid - PH- Level
This was a huge game changer for me, I really advise you to do more research about it and have a closer look at it!
When it comes to stomach acid, there is a huge misconception about it. Most people think that acid reflux and bloating is caused by too much stomach acid - what they actually mean is that the ph-level is too high - and they, therefore, were described a stomach acid blocking medicine. But in reality, most peoples stomach acid ph is to low, not allowing the stomach acid to break down the food properly for the following digestive process, leading to not properly broken down food will enter the intestines. This will result in further degradation of the colon and the small intestine. For them to break down the food, they use bacteria which „eats up“ the unprocessed food and this process is directly causing gas to build up.
In summary, get your stomach acid level checked, it might actually be not strong enough!
Betaine HCL (Hydrochloride) might help, let me know if you want to know more about that.
Possible Reason #4 - Too much protein
Especially when coming from a standard American diet that includes a lot of animal protein, people search for the high protein alternatives in the plant kingdom. What’s coming now is exactly what happened to me at first by the way. So what I was going for to hit my protein requirements? I chose beans, lentils and ate a lot of greens on top of it. What I didn’t realize at that point was, that I unknowingly was consuming probably 5-10 times the amount of fiber that my body was used to. Don’t get me wrong here - fiber is extremely healthy and we should get as much as possible. But, if you come from a SAD with consuming maybe 10-20g of fiber a day and then suddenly switching to 80-100g of fiber a day, you give your digestion a really hard time. It will not be used to that amount and will be totally overwhelmed by it. So, my advice would be to - if you come from a lower fiber diet - be aware of the fact that your body needs time to adjust to the change and consciously increase the amount of your fiber intake step by step - rushing it won’t help you at all!
Short summary
- Get your allergies checked
- Check your water consumption and water consumption habits, try to minimize water consumption close to your meals
- Get your stomach acid ph level checked
- Watch your fiber intake - don’t go from 0 to 100 in one day, take it slow
I hope there is some useful information that will help you on your journey. If you want to have more specific information or have general questions, just leave them below. I struggled with this topic a lot and I have tried, read and watched so much stuff that I could write a ton of articles like these!
Cheers,
Daniel
Some Reference links and articles I like regarding this topic:
https://www.drdavidwilliams.com/stomach-acid
https://nutritionfacts.org/ -> one of the best resources for general information about nutrition