Stomach bloating is typically the result of too much gas filling up a person’s gastrointestinal tract. People often describe feeling like their belly is about to burst along with painful abdominal cramps. Some people may experience the morning bloat. What causes this and how can it be treated?
According to Shann Jones, a nutritional advisor, gut health expert and founder of Chuckling Goat kefir, the feeling of bloat in the morning is due to the fact that food remains inside a person’s system that should have been processed and expelled.
As Jones explained, people should be having at least one bowel movement per day: “For optimum gut health, this happens in the morning, clearing your system of the previous day’s waste and giving you a fresh start.”
However, “what often happens is that we rush out of the house, and don’t have the first bowel movement until after the first cup of coffee – or sometimes, not at all,” noted Jones.
Then the food waste sits inside the body, stored in the bowel, fermenting and releasing toxins, she added.
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To restore the gut balance and beat the bloat in the morning, Jones recommended the following six tips:
Drink unflavoured goats milk kefir every morning before food.
“A powerful probiotic like kefir helps to put the good bugs back in a person’s system, restoring their digestive power,” said Jones.
Take a complete prebiotic
A person’s gut bugs eat 21 different kinds of fibre, many of which are difficult to work into their daily diet, she explained.
“Kefir puts the ‘fish back into the river’ of your gut system, and a complete prebiotic ‘feeds the fish’,” she explained.
The fibre in the prebiotic will encourage proper bowel action, and allow a person’s system to filter out the toxins, she said.
Getting up earlier
“Set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier, allowing your body to gently wake up and get going,” noted Jones. This gives a person time to expel the previous day’s waste from their system, setting them up for the day.
Hydration
Drink a cup of warm water and lemon first thing, to kickstart the digestive system, advised Jones.
Supplements
“Take digestive enzymes and HCL with pepsin before meals for three weeks, while you take your first course of kefir and prebiotic,” she said.
This will boost a person’s digestive process until the kefir and the prebiotics can kick in and begin to heal their system, she said.
Psyllium husk
Jones advised taking one teaspoon of psyllium husk mixed into warm water, before bedtime. “This will ease the process of waste through your system, helping to get things going in the morning,” she said.
If a person experiences bloating at lunchtime, going for a walk post-lunch is a simple way to soothe the swelling. As Niket Sonpal, M.D., associate program director of the Internal Medicine Residency at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn explained: “Taking a walk after meals helps your abdominal muscles contract and expel the air.”
Find out other ways a person can beat the post-lunch bloat here.