Paige Harris If you’re struggling from bloating and indigestion, you’re not alone. But you can use these 3 tips to help make your gut (and yourself) feel better!
In one of my latest Q&As on Instagram, someone asked me about the best thing I do every day for my gut health. But why stop at one when I could give you three?
If you’re having meals and feeling really bloated afterwards, or find yourself burping up stomach acid, know that you’re not alone. But also know that even though these symptoms are common, they’re not normal!
Use these three (almost) free tips to help your gut back in check and working smoothly again:
Chew your food!
This is the most important thing that you’re probably not doing. Chewing is the first part of our digestive process. You use your teeth and your saliva to mash and break down the food into smaller pieces — or you should be — so that your stomach can continue with the job. But if you’re not chewing your food thoroughly, your stomach has to do a lot more work to break down those big bites.
Next time you have a meal, really focus on chewing your food instead of shoveling down bite after bite. Try chewing each bite 30 times. I know it sounds like a lot, and it will be! But it will also help your gut do its job and leave you feeling more satisfied and less bloated. Give it a try!
Stop drinking liquids during meals.
When you’re eating a meal, do you usually use your drink to help wash down your big bites? That’s not doing anything good for your digestive system. If you’re drinking beer or soda, the carbonation on top of the food could really make you feel bubbly inside, and not in a good way. Even water isn’t a good thing to have during meals because it dilutes your body’s stomach acid. And you need stomach acid to keep your digestion flowing!
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be drinking any liquids while you’re eating food. Instead of having a glass of water next to you while you’re eating, try waiting until after 20 minutes past your meal to really load up on water. There’s plenty of opportunities throughout the day to get your water in — mealtime doesn’t have to be one of them.
Increase your stomach acid.
If you’re still suffering from acid reflux and indigestion after trying those first two tips, give this one a shot; mix 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice into an 8 ounce glass of water and drink it around 20 minutes before your next meal.
I know this sounds crazy, but a lot of the time acid reflux isn’t caused by a lack of stomach acid, it’s caused by too little.
When you eat a bite of food, your stomach is tasked with breaking it down with acid so that it becomes acidic enough to pass through into your small intestine. But if you don’t have enough stomach acid, that food won’t continue on. Instead, it stays in your stomach and ferments, leaving you bloated, gassy, and with that rising-acid-in-your-throat feeling.
So instead of popping a Tums (which makes the symptom go away but really just dilutes that acid even further), try and solve the problem by giving your stomach a little extra acid to help get its job done.
Which of these tips are you going to try today? Let me know in a comment down below!
