What Causes Bloating & How to Reduce It

We all feel a little bloated from time to time, and that’s normal. I have had my own struggles with occasional bloating. However, there could be a bigger problem if your bouts with bloating become more frequent than the occasional full feeling. As a functional medicine doctor, I know that you need to find the root cause to resolve any issue. 

The cause of your bloating could be something as simple as eating the wrong foods. Or it could be something more significant such as leaky gut or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). Regardless of what causes your bloating, there is a solution to reduce it! I am about to tell you how to stop your bloating and the differences between bloating and gas. First, let’s talk about what exactly bloating is.

What is Bloating?

Bloating is a protrusion of the abdomen. Have you ever felt like your stomach was full and bigger than usual? That feeling is known as bloating, and the truth lies in your jeans. Pants that zip up quickly in the morning yet feel like a straight jacket by the end of the day are often the result of bloating.

What causes your bloating is not excessive belly fat.¹ Instead, bloating is often caused by eating a large meal or excessive gas. However, it’s also a symptom of gluten intolerance or sensitivity, lactose intolerance, or fluid buildup because of your menstrual period. Getting rid of your bloating mainly depends on what causes your bloating. Let’s talk about those common causes of bloating. 

What Causes Bloating?

As I mentioned earlier, what causes bloating could be as simple as the food you eat or something more serious such as a gut infection. There are three primary causes of bloating, and all have similar symptoms. 

Fluid Retention

Fluid retention causes bloating in a few distinct ways. You can retain fluid from certain foods you eat, such as water, alcohol, caffeine, and salt, your hormones, or even from an illness such as heart or liver disease. 

Retaining fluid feels as if there’s a full bathtub in your stomach that takes several hours to drain. Some common predecessors of fluid retention include:

• Eating too many carbohydrates at once
• Salty foods, especially when consumed with excess liquid
• Hormonal imbalance during early pregnancy or your menstrual cycle 
• Late-stage heart or liver disease

Limiting your salt intake and ensuring you’re hydrated are great ways to reduce bloating from fluid retention. That may seem counterintuitive because drinking a lot of water can make fluid retention worse.² As with most things in life, it’s about balance. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is 124 ounces for men and 92 ounces for women.³

Air

It’s not only the foods you eat that can cause bloating. It’s also the air you eat! You probably believe that’s crazy! You’re not eating air. Let me explain. You can swallow excess air if you eat or drink too fast, drink through a straw, talk while you eat, chew gum, suck on hard candies, drink carbonated beverages, or smoke. Anything that causes excessive air intake while eating can cause bloating.

Eating slowly and chewing your food thoroughly is the key to preventing this bloating. Don’t talk before you have entirely swallowed so that you are not gulping air into your digestive system and your food! Your friends and family will thank you! If you’re prone to this bloating, you’ll also want to cut back on gum, sucking candies, and carbonated beverages. And, of course, you should never smoke.

Gases

Gases are the most common cause of bloating. It’s normal to produce between one to four gallons of gas per day. However, producing more than that or not being able to release the gas through flatulence or belching can lead to discomfort. 

The most common gasses that get into our digestive system include:

• Carbon dioxide
• Oxygen
• Nitrogen
• Hydrogen 
• Methane

Gas forms in your large intestine when bacteria ferment carbohydrates that do not get digested in your small intestine. Bacteria also consume some of that gas, but the remaining gas is released when you pass gas.

Certain high-fiber foods may cause gas, including legumes, vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, and brussels sprouts; fructose found in artichokes, pears, gluten, and soft drinks; and lactose found in dairy products. I will talk about foods that cause excessive gas in more detail later. However, it’s essential not to confuse bloating and gas. Gas causes bloating. However, bloating doesn’t cause gas.

What Are the Causes of Excessive Gas?

Three factors cause excessive gas: gut infections, autoimmune disease, and the foods you eat. Let’s talk about the causes of excessive gas.

SIBO

Most of your gut bacteria are located in your large intestine and colon. When the bacteria typically found in the large intestine and colon begin to colonize the small intestine and overgrow, SIBO occurs. 

Your gut is naturally lined with mucus that lubricates and protects it. However, an overgrowth of bacteria can damage your gut’s mucosal lining. Damaged mucus allows bacterial biofilms — or groups of microorganisms protected by a layer of protective slime — to attach to your cell wall, making them harder to control.

As the group of bacteria thrives and feeds off of undigested food in your small intestine, the carbohydrates ferment and produce hydrogen. Hydrogen can feed single-celled organisms in your small bowel called archaea, producing methane. With SIBO, excess hydrogen, methane, or both can occur in your digestive system.
The excess gas in your GI tract can lead to SIBO bloating and other SIBO symptoms, such as severe bloating, among others.

Candida Overgrowth 

Candida is a form of yeast that lives in your mouth and intestines in small amounts. Its job is to aid with digestion and nutrient absorption. It is a part of your body’s normal microflora — the microorganisms that live in a delicate balance in your mouth, throat, gut, vagina in women, and on your skin.

Ideally, the good bacteria, bad bacteria, and Candida that make up your gut microbiome exist in a balanced state. In fact, I like to think of your microbiome as a rainforest, with many different species living together in harmony. When one species gets out of balance in your rainforest, everything gets out of control. When this balance gets tipped between Candida and other microorganisms, Candida overgrowth occurs. 

This can lead to uncomfortable Candida bloating. Candidiasis, or yeast overgrowth, is very common and causes symptoms such as bloating, constipation, rashes, fungal infections, fatigue, brain fog, and mood swings. In fact, the excess Candida can begin a fermentation process in your gut that produces its own swelling and belly bloat, just like when bread rises.

Celiac Disease

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that can cause more than 300 symptoms, including diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, gas, and bloating. In people that have Celiac disease, any gluten they eat damages the villi in their gut, causing nutrient deficiencies or even serious illness.⁴

Gluten can cause bloating because of the inflammation it can create in your digestive tract, which interferes with digestion. I recommend everyone avoid gluten, even if you don’t have Celiac disease, because it triggers the release of a substance called zonulin that causes a leaky gut. In turn, leaky gut leads to inflammation that can cause many symptoms, including bloating.

Food

While gut infections are the primary cause of gas and bloating, certain foods also trigger excessive gas and bloating. 

Dairy is one of the leading causes of bloating in people who don’t produce the lactase enzyme, the digestive enzyme which allows you to break down lactose found in milk into simple sugars. The lactose travels undigested into your colon, where bacteria may begin to ferment it, creating gas. In a similar way to gluten, this leads to inflammation and poor digestion of lactose and the foods you eat while your gut is inflamed. 

If you aren’t lactose intolerant, you might still react to the two proteins found in milk, casein, and whey. Casein is a protein with a very similar molecular structure to gluten, and 50% of people who are gluten intolerant are also casein intolerant. As with gluten, I recommend that everyone avoid dairy, especially if they are concerned about bloating. 

As mentioned, beans and cruciferous vegetables such as brussels sprouts and broccoli cause gas because they contain raffinose. This trisaccharide is challenging to digest and leads to fermentation and the production of intestinal gas. 

Additionally, certain sweeteners such as sorbitol and fructose produce bloating and digestive distress in some people, as does too much fat. A low-FODMAP diet can be helpful for people who struggle with SIBO, IBS, and other gastrointestinal disorders and symptoms, such as bloating, while they get to the root cause of the problem. Try an elimination diet to determine which foods are causing your bloating and gas. 

Now I am about to tell you my proven methods from my decades of experience as a medical doctor that I used to help people reduce their gas and bloating.  

5 Steps To Get Rid of Bloating and Gas

When a patient came to me with bloating and gas, I approached every case the same. Here are five steps I used with patients to reduce bloating and gas and get to the root cause of it.  

1. The 4Rs

As a functional medicine doctor, I used the 4R approach to treating gut infections in my patients. This proven approach begins by removing all inflammatory foods from your diet, such as corn, gluten, dairy, and eggs. Then you replace the bad with good bacteria. Supplements like digestive enzymes support optimal digestion and promote intestinal repair and a healthy inflammatory response. 

The next step is to reinoculate the beneficial bacteria in your gut with high-potency probiotics to re-establish a healthy microbiome. If you do have SIBO, I recommend taking a soil-based probiotic free from lactic acid, which can worsen your SIBO symptoms. 
The final step in the 4R approach is to repair your gut by providing your gut with the essential nutrients it needs to repair itself. My most comprehensive supplement for this is Leaky Gut Revive®.

2. Relieve Stress

When you have constant stressors in your life, your immune system never really gets to turn off. Your inflammatory response is activated for too long and eventually goes rogue, attacking your own bodily tissues. Soon, your stress hormones try to suppress the response but go overboard, leaving you with a weakened immune system. 

Under stress, many people take shorter breaths and swallow more air which can cause bloating. Deep breathing not only helps keep you from swallowing excess air, yet it also helps manage your stress levels. Under stress, your body is busy sending resources to fuel the fight-or-flight response. 

It essentially turns off digestion, which is a recipe for poorly digested food and the creation of excess gas. Relieving your stress is essential for proper digestion and optimal health. One of my favorite ways to relieve stress is by listening to music and dancing it out with my daughter Elle. Just a half-hour of listening to music can reduce your stress levels! 

3. Ditch These Foods

I talked earlier about the foods that cause bloating. Remember, I recommend that everyone remove gluten and dairy products from their diet. You should also remove gas-causing foods such as legumes and cruciferous vegetables. 

You’ll also want to limit the fats you consume. Fats take longer to digest than protein or carbs, so they stay in your stomach longer and cause bloating. While they keep you satiated because they hang around, that’s the very same reason that rich and fatty food can cause your bloating.

4. Look at Your Fiber Intake

Fiber is essential for proper digestion, yet too much of a good thing can be bad. Too much fiber can cause bloating because it remains in the body for a long time. Because your body cannot completely break down the fiber found in foods such as apples, garlic, and bananas, these compounds pass through the upper part of your gastrointestinal tract undigested. 

Bacteria can feed on this undigested fiber and cause gas. However, too little fiber can also cause bloating and constipation because this can slow down your digestion and give your food more time to ferment while in your digestive tract. Finding the perfect balance of fiber in your everyday diet can make a big difference in your gut health and help you find the answer to what causes your bloating. Keeping a food diary can help you find just the right balance to keep everything moving along as it should.

5. Increase Magnesium Citrate Intake

A great natural option for supporting healthy bowel function and avoiding constipation is by increasing your intake of Magnesium citrate. When I had my colonoscopy a few months ago, I had to take high doses of Magnesium citrate the day before because it promotes healthy bowel patterns by attracting water to the bowels. Since magnesium citrate is one of the most bioavailable forms of magnesium, I incorporated it into my Colon Comfort formula. I combined magnesium citrate with botanicals such as apple cider vinegar, ginger, and artichoke to support digestive health and promote a healthy metabolism. 

Magnesium citrate is a form of magnesium that’s mixed with citric acid. Citric acid is in citrus fruits such as oranges, grapefruit, or lemon. If you are sensitive to citrus, you should talk with your functional healthcare provider before using Magnesium citrate.⁵ To find out if you have a citrus sensitivity, I recommend an elimination diet. 

6. Eat Foods That Reduce Bloating

You can do more with your eating habits than just avoiding foods that cause bloating. You can also eat with purpose! Make it a point to include bloat-reducing foods in your diet, such as ginger, lemons, avocado, pumpkin, coconut, leafy green vegetables, berries (raspberries & blueberries), sweet potatoes, dark chocolate, and cucumbers.

These foods offer various benefits that help regulate fluid retention and banish bloating. Berries are a great source of fiber, which enhances your gut health and help to soften your poop.⁵ Cucumbers are about 95% water, which also helps your body stay hydrated and keeps the digestive system moving.⁶

Bloating is common. However, it doesn’t have to be your reality. Treating the root cause of your bloating can get you on the path to optimal digestive health. It could be as easy as changing your diet, or you may have to work to heal your gut infections. My No. 1 tool to support gut health is Leaky Gut Revive®. Regardless of the cause of bloating, you can take steps to reduce it.