First up, hi to all you new visitors who are coming knocking since I started this blog a week or so ago. Really great to have had so many encouraging comments, and nice to know I’m not alone in being a ‘bloater’!

I presume if you’re here you experience a bloated stomach sometimes? I suffer with it too, in fact I have done for pretty much all my adult life actually. One thing I’ve learned is that if you’re looking for bloating relief it pays to understand the underlying causes.

I’ve personally found most benefit in prevention rather than cure (although sometimes a blessed cure is all you need, I know!)

Stomach bloating is caused by gas. Ok so far. And that gas is caused by undigested food in your gut which has begun to rot and ferment (this is the part I get a bit queasy…!)

For whatever reason, undigested food is reaching your gut. It then sits there, ferments like crazy (without even asking you), thus creating gas, which causes the evil bloating.

Hmmm… So why doesn’t food get digested properly in the first place? Why does the bloating occur?

Well, it could be all kinds of things actually. You might only actually suffer for one or two of these reasons. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but it might give you some ideas of where to begin looking:

• Intestinal gas—caused by good old-fashioned indigestion!
• Trapped wind—caused by wind being unable to find the emergency exit… joke!
• IBS—or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I’m sure you’ve heard of that one before.
• Dysmotility—otherwise known as slow digestion.
• Candidiasis—a fungal yeast infection, usually nothing serious and easily treated.
• Coeliac disease—an over-reacting immune system triggered by gluten-containing food such as wheat-based products like bread and biscuits.
• PMS—Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (now I’m definitely sure, as a man, that this doesn’t apply to me…)
• Food intolerance—your body not taking kindly to some of the things you throw in there, often caused by wheat or dairy.
• Poor diet or eating habits—eating the wrong things in the wrong way (usually too quickly without chewing)
• Bacterial imbalance—where your gut doesn’t have the proper balance of ‘good’ bacteria (they’re not all from the wrong side of town you know!)
• Stress—so stressed that your whole body is thrown out of balance and has other things to worry about than digesting your food properly.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking in more depth at some of these. In the meantime, if you’re urgently looking for bloating relief, think about whether any of these might apply to you.

Take care and see you soon, Pete

In Search of Bloating Relief? Find the Cause. is a post from Bloating Remedies, a popular blog dedicated to helping sufferers of abdominal bloating get rid of the symptoms of bloating for good.

Other related bloating remedies posts:

1. 13 Excellent Bloating Remedies