I Feel Like My Stomach Bloats No Matter What. Help!

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I feel like my stomach bloats no matter what.

Help.

This is JJ Virgin, four times New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the health expert. Adrienne LoPresti from the JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community Facebook group asks. I take food enzymes when I eat, but I feel like my stomach bloats no matter what.

Help.

Well, help is on the way. Hey, it's J.J. because I've got America's gut doctor and the author of Happy gut, my buddy, Dr. Vincent Pedray with me here to answer this question. He's a longtime meditator and yoga teacher. And this is really funny. He was in medical school and had a fear of needles. Kind of hard to be a medical doctor with fear of needles. And he used those techniques to help him get over it. And he even became certified in medical acupuncture. Plus bonus points for him. He's an amazing salsa dancer. He'll be right back with the answer. Stay with me.

Hey, J.J. virgin here. Okay, real talk.

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Spent what and where?

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If you're taking food enzymes, or digestive enzymes as I like to call them, and you're still feeling like your stomach is bloating no matter what, then there are several things you need to look into. If the bloating starts right after you eat, so within minutes of eating, let's say like 15 minutes after you stop eating, you feel like your stomach is distended and the food just sits there like a brick. And if you have a piece of steak or, you know, something kind of more heavy, fatty, it's just going to sit there like a bomb to your stomach, well, that is a sign that you may have low stomach acid. And a lot of these people, they end up having acid reflux and they think, oh, I'm not producing enough or I'm producing too much acid, so let me take an acid reducing medication or an antacid. And that's the wrong thing to do. What they really need is to be taking an acid pill like betaine HCL to enhance the amount of stomach acid in order to strengthen its ability to break down protein. So that's number one. So a lot of times when the bloating starts, it's very revealing of where the problem is. So early bloating after a meal, between within minutes to 15 to 30 minutes, that could be low stomach acid. And you have to think about that. A lot of people are taking PPI medications, proton pump inhibitors that lower stomach acid and then they can't tolerate eating big meals or they have trouble Digesting certain types of proteins. Well, that's the problem. Now, if the bloating starts later, so let's say past 30 minutes, and now the food is entering the small intestine, and then we have to start thinking that maybe this person has sibo, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or they might have sifo, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, or they might have simo, which is the combination of the two small intestinal microbial overgrowth, which is really the way we should be thinking about it, because most people are not going to be presenting with one simple problem. What I found as a gut health expert is that people tend to present with multiple problems at the same time, and if you're only thinking about one, you're gonna miss the other one. So you can't simplify the matter. Basically, you have to cast a wide net in order to not miss all potential underlying causes. And again, the last thing to think about is how stressed is this person. I found that when patients are super stressed, their ability to digest food break down, food gets diminished. So if they are super stressed and you've got to work on mindfulness, you've got to work on meditation, on relaxation techniques, on doing things that they love so that they can create more of a relaxed environment in their body. Because you have to rest to digest. As they say, you can't digest. When you're running from meeting to meeting and you're basically inhaling your lunch over 15 minutes between your morning meetings and your afternoon, then you're not being mindful of your eating. And it's possible that in these circumstances that you're just not taking enough digestive enzymes. Maybe you're just taking one capsule, but what you really need to help you digest better is 2, 3, or maybe even 4. So again, I'm always looking to find the underlying root cause, but along the way, there are little hacks that we can do to help the person while we institute a lifestyle program to help them heal completely.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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