Bloating, burping and passing gas are natural processes, but can cause a lot of discomfort. DR MARGA BOYANI advises on how to deal with excess gas in the stomach
Bloating, burping and passing out gas are the body’s way of expelling excess air from the stomach.
This gas is comes from two sources: swallowed air and breakdown of food.
You may swallow excess air if you eat or drink too fast, talk while you eat, chew gum or suck on hard candies, take carbonated drinks or drink through a straw.
Some individuals are ‘air swallowers’, frequently swallowing air then belching it up, sometimes so often that it becomes annoying and embarrassing. Others swallow air as a nervous habit, even when they’re not eating or drinking.
The other source of gas is from undigested food broken down in the large intestines by bacteria.
In a day, we produce about one to three pints of mainly odourless vapours. When we don’t pass this gas out through burping or belching, it can build up in the stomach and intestines and lead to bloating.
Excessive belching may be a sign of a disorder like peptic ulcer disease or delayed emptying of the stomach.
Intestinal gas is passed out as flatulence and we normally pass gas out through the anus 14 to 20 times a day. People who suffer from too much flatulence pass out much more gas and more frequently than normal.
This gas is produced when incompletely digested gluten or sugar in dairy products and fruit is broken down in the large intestine. This can generate as much as 80 to 90 per cent of the gas we pass out.
Its unpleasant odour is due to sulphur-containing gases produced by some of the bacteria.
Intestinal gas may also be due to fermentation of undigested food, such as plant fibre, in the large intestine. Eating a lot of fatty food can delay stomach emptying and cause bloating and discomfort too.
Other people suffer from abdominal bloating due to disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, where there are disorganised movements and spasms of intestinal muscles. Any disease that causes intestinal obstruction, such as colon cancer, may cause bloating. The same is common with people who have had many operations and formed scar tissue in the stomach.
During pregnancy, you may have more gas than usual due to the hormone Progesterone, which relaxes smooth muscle tissue throughout the body including the gut. This relaxation slows your digestive processes, giving bacteria more time to work on the undigested material, so you produce more gas.
In later pregnancy, the growing uterus crowds the abdomen, which slows digestion even more, making you feel bloated after eating.
