I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights

Breaking Free From Bloat: Your Gut Health Guide | Ep. 98

• Bridget Walton, Women's Hormone Coach • Episode 98

Share episode

Send us a text

Get the resource that accompanies this episode! Click here to download.

Bloating isn't a necessary evil that women must endure due to stress, busyness, or menstruation. We break down the real causes and practical solutions so you can finally address this uncomfortable issue and move on with your life.

• Bloating stems from swallowed air, gas in your digestive tract, or fluid retention
• Hormonal fluctuations before your period naturally cause mild bloating, but excessive bloating may indicate imbalance
• Chronic stress impairs digestive function by reducing necessary stomach acid and enzymes
• Common food triggers include gluten, dairy, raw vegetables, sugar, alcohol, and lectin-containing foods
• Tracking your symptoms is essential for identifying your unique bloating triggers
• Sit down and eat slowly to support proper digestion and adequate stomach acid production
• Try incorporating apple cider vinegar before meals to support digestion
• Digestive enzymes can provide relief while you work on addressing root causes
• Reducing processed foods, alcohol and sugar decreases inflammation that contributes to bloating

Adaptogen option for supporting your body through stress: Cymbiotika's Golden Eye

Digestive enzyme option: Pure Encapsulations

Guide to getting to the root cause of your bloating (free resource): Access the guide here


CONNECT WITH BRIDGET

LinkedIn | Instagram | Website

Book your free strategy call here | Sign up for weekly tips via email

Speaker 1:

A lot of gals out there think that bloating is their new normal. This is just what happens when you are stressed, when you're busy or on your period, but that's not actually the full story, or at least I don't think that it has to be. In this episode, I'm breaking down what bloating actually is, why it happens and how you can stay gut, healthy and clear-headed while you're traveling, so you can check this issue off of your to-do list and get back to all the other things that you care about. Let's dive in. Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hello, hello. Welcome to today's episode of iHormonal. I can't wait to talk to you about bloating. This is something that, as unsexy as it is, it impacts a lot of us, right? This certainly is something that impacted me for a lot that I still try to wrangle in, throw a lasso around and get it under control. So if you're in that same boat, you are in good company here. There are a lot of factors that can contribute to bloating. We're going to get into that in just a minute. But my hope for you is that at the end of this episode, you have a couple of good, solid, working ideas of okay, this is what could be contributing to my bloating and that is what I can start doing about it to feel better, because you deserve to feel better. You deserve to feel totally comfy in your body and confident in your body and understand why she's doing what she's doing.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to say a quick welcome to all of you who are listening to the podcast for the first time today. I have been so excited to see how many of you are sharing the podcast. Getting it out, getting the word out, is what I mean about the podcast with your friends and family. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm endlessly grateful for you and, yeah, just welcome if today is your first time.

Speaker 1:

I am a women's hormone coach. I love to share what I know and what we all collectively know about women's hormones, because this is a huge topic that just somehow we skim over in health class in high school. I don't know how that happened, but I'm here to help you understand what's going on with your body as it relates to your hormones and your gut health. They're so closely intertwined. So if you want to understand how you can have better periods, how you can have less bloating, how you can feel more confident and be more confident because you know what to do to support your fertility and your long-term reproductive and hormonal health, then you're in the right place.

Speaker 1:

Two things that I want to mention up top before we start breaking down what bloating actually is. Number one if you are a visual girly, you need to see things or you want a reference to look back on after you listen to this episode. Check out the link in the show notes so you can get access to a downloadable, to free resource that walks you through a lot of the stuff that we're going to be talking today. Talking about today, but also, really, because we're all adults, you're probably multitasking here too, which is great big multitasker, but when I say we're all adults, I mean that to say when we are integrating information that we're learning. Yes, we need to listen to it, but how are you going to actually implement it in your life so that you remember it, but also so that it helps your bloating? So, if you need that extra resource or you want to look back on it, go to the link in the show notes. That is there for you. The other thing I want to mention is just a quick hello and thank you to the handful of you gals who responded to my Instagram story a couple of weeks ago where I asked about what you all are facing, and so I let you know that there was going to be an episode on bloating coming out. Voila, here we are. So thank you for connecting with me. If you aren't connected with me yet on Instagram, then you can find me there at Bridget Walton. Would love to hear your thoughts, any questions that you have.

Speaker 1:

Okay, what is bloating? A lot of times when we think about bloating, we're like I just feel so full, or I feel like, okay, there's a lot of like water retention happening here, or maybe there's a lot of gas going on. All of those are super valid, depending on what is the cause of your bloating. But, yes, let's break it down. So the first thing that can cause bloating is a swallowed air. We're swallowing air all the time. When we're eating bread or you know anything like kind of fluffy like that, or if you're just I don't know chugging your smoothie, then you might be swallowing a little bit more air than you expected. That's all to say, swallowed air absolutely contributes to bloating.

Speaker 1:

Additionally, what contributes to bloating is gas in your gastrointestinal tract. Now, this can be created through a variety of different mechanisms, one of them being through or by the gut microbes that are all up in your digestive system. So we have this microbiome, this family of bacteria that live in your system, and we need them. You need them so that you can properly break down all of your foods and get the nutrients out of them that your body needs. But when things are a little bit off balance, there can be more gas created in that process than well than what's desirable. Also, when it comes to certain types of foods that may be more difficult to break down, that can lead to more gas in your digestive system. You guys don't need me to tell you that when you eat beans, sometimes that will lead to more gas that's in your system.

Speaker 1:

The third and final thing that I want to mention here about what is bloating is fluid retention. Now, fluid retention can be happening for a handful of reasons, right. Could be because of what's going on with your hormones, could be because of inflammation, or stress. Can happen naturally, but if you are retaining way more fluid than what's comfortable for you, that's worth noting. Now that we have a handle on what is bloating, right that air gas or excess fluid let's look at what are the causes of bloating in most cases, right? Hopefully this will help you to identify what is your cause or start to investigate. Okay, let me move some levers, change some dials. I hope you like that metaphor and see how you can see some change. That'll make more sense when I get into some examples Without further ado. Then.

Speaker 1:

One of the first causes of bloating is a shift in estrogen and progesterone levels. If you're somebody who experiences bloating just before your period or during your luteal phase this is something that many, many, many, many menstruators experience that can be because, well, both estrogen, when it's really high, but also progesterone, they both can result in increased fluid retention, either through how they impact what happens with your sodium levels, or just because estrogen, when high, really promotes fluid retention. I say that to say there is a air quotes normal amount of bloating that can happen even though you have balanced hormones. For example, if you have predictable mild bloating that occurs before your period and then it resolves, goes away once your period starts, that would be considered normal. Now explain that to say, on the other side of the coin, if you have a lot of bloating ahead of your period, it could be again due to higher than normal estrogen levels. This happens sometimes because of a lack of ovulation, but also can certainly happen because of stress, because of lack of regular bowel movements, because of high contact with endocrine disrupting chemicals. I'm actually going to get really deep into this specific topic in next week's episode. So if you're somebody who what I just said is like, yeah, okay, maybe that's me, maybe I have high estrogen or excess estrogen, then come back next week for a deeper dive there.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that impacts bloating or can lead to bloating is absolutely stress. Now, if you've listened to the podcast before, you're probably not that surprised that I said stress, because I mean stress is a big deal. We've really normalized it as a society, but when it comes to your health and your hormones, stress is going to make things weird. You might have heard or seen on social media this moon face right. Or when cortisol levels.

Speaker 1:

Cortisol is your stress hormone. When cortisol levels are really high, it can make your face a little bit more puffy and round. Also, for example, if you wake up in the morning and you're like, wow, I'm really puffy right now, one of the reasons that can contribute to that is high, or relatively high, cortisol levels, because this cortisol is supporting fluid retention. Now this stress is also going to be impacting bloating, because high cortisol levels impairs your digestive function. When stress is high, it is not, you know, setting up a good environment for your body to release all of the proper acids and enzymes and juices that your digestive system wants to have in play for the digestion of food. So stress equals impaired digestion, which can lead to more bloating from excess gas in your system. On a similar note, if you have low stomach acid, for another reason, stress can contribute to low stomach acid, but also age. Maybe you're taking a particular medication, maybe you have an infection, maybe you're just multitasking right or not chewing, because those things can all contribute or detract from stomach acid production. That was the longest sentence ever, but that's just to say. Low stomach acid can also lead to more bloating.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk for a second about food triggers. This will be different for everybody, of course, but here are some of the common food triggers that can be either irritating for your system as a whole or which have generally high levels of sensitivities in the population. So you might not be surprised to hear me say that gluten and dairy can be inflammatory for some people out there, especially when it comes to dairy that has the A1 casein protein in contrast, right, like goat cheese or Jersey cow milk doesn't. So not all dairy is exactly the same, but gluten and dairy. Then thinking about raw foods, like raw vegetables, for some people, that those can be harder to digest. Or maybe there's an unknown sensitivity to pollen right, it's not super common, but non-zero chance. And then the last two food triggers that I want to mention again. No surprise here if you've listened before, but sugar and alcohol. Sugar is inflammatory all day, every day. Alcohol is going to be doing the same thing. They're both going to be impacting your stress and not in the direction that you want those to go. So gluten, dairy, raw foods, sugar and alcohols can do a bamboozle on your bloating An honorable mention that I want to bring up here could be lectins.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you haven't heard of lectins, which are normal components of plants, right, it's just like okay, we have this cellular structure, but also part of this plant is a lectin. Lectins are relatively high in foods like legumes, grains, dairy again, and also in night shades. So think of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and peppers. And for some people well, for most people lectins are a little bit harder to break down than other foods, but some people have particular sensitivities to them. So, as I'm saying some of these things, or maybe as you're thinking, oh shoot, that sounds like me If you aren't currently tracking whether that's in just like an app on your phone or through a process that's a little bit more sophisticated I would really encourage you to figure out what works for you in tracking what causes bloating.

Speaker 1:

Do it every day, do it at the end of every day, make it take 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes. There's totally a way that you can make this work for you, but that's going to be the best way to understand what's contributing to your bloating. I've got two categories left that I want to mention, and I'll just recap the first few that we went through, which were estrogen or progesterone, right? So the hormonal situations you're in pre-period or premenstruation those can cause bloating. Also, stress and low stomach acid contribute to bloating, in addition, potentially, to food triggers. Now for these last two, we're going to talk about prebiotics and overall stomach dysbiosis when I'm thinking of prebiotics.

Speaker 1:

While prebiotics are good and essential, they are foods that are nourishing for you and your body, but also particularly nourishing for your gut microbiome, for those microbes that you need to feed to right. So that's all to say. You need prebiotics, but sometimes introducing too many prebiotics all at once, that can result in a little bit of bloating. Foods that are high in prebiotics include onion, garlic, leek, banana, oat beans and lentils Certainly not an exhaustive list, but if you recently were like, all right, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to really focus on my meal planning, really focus on getting a diverse array of food and those things, again, don't get me wrong. Those are good things. I encourage you to do those. But just know that if you are really upping your prebiotics and your digestive system isn't used to that, then there could be a period of time when there's excess bloating until your system gets used to it and it just becomes the normal thing.

Speaker 1:

The last cause of bloating that I want to mention here is dysbiosis. So dysbiosis meaning there's some kind of imbalance in your gut microbiome, as I mentioned before, as you perhaps already know, there are tons and tons of different microbes bacteria, hopefully, like yeast, right, maybe you have somebody in your life or maybe you in the past have experienced a candida overgrowth. Candida is a type of fungus or yeast, and we all have candida in our bodies. But sometimes that candida or whatever it is for you can get overgrown, and so it's just understanding okay, how can I go ahead and address that? That's certainly something that you would do with a practitioner. That's not really something to DIY. It's totally worth getting crystal clear on what is the exact imbalance and then taking steps from there to say, okay, how do we normalize this Then? How do you support the repairing of your digestive system? This is something that I do a lot with my one-on-one clients who are looking to support their digestive health, address their bloating. This can also have a cascading impact and benefit for your hormones. But this is all to say. Stomach dysbiosis or that microbiome dysbiosis, it's not something that you'll be able to really tell at home, although you could have a hunch about it. Absolutely, but this is something to work on with a practitioner who can give you the detailed, specific support that you need to understand what is going on in your body.

Speaker 1:

Now, that being said, let's talk about a couple of things that you can do, that you can implement, where you can start making changes and starting to see, okay, what makes a difference, what doesn't make a difference. Recommendation number one of five would be to start by addressing your stress. If you can't actually cut out specific sources of stress from your life, you can think about how can I better support my body during times of stress, how can I better nourish my body? By giving it the food that it needs, by giving it a variety of types of food and basically just making sure that you're not under eating. Can you incorporate some adaptogens, anything like that, to A mitigate stress or, b just support your body during that time of stress?

Speaker 1:

The second thing that you can do or change would be to, during mealtime, actually sit down, relax, set the table and eat at the table and put your fork down between meals. So basic, right, but also so easy. I mean even my me myself. I'm like oh my gosh, bridget, you're just standing over your counter and eating dinner in your kitchen. Just go ahead and sit down. It's so easy to skip doing, especially when we're so used to eating in front of screens. But by actually setting the table for yourself, sitting down, slowing down for that meal, sitting down, slowing down for that meal, you are allowing your digestive system, you're allowing your stomach to produce an adequate amount of stomach acid, which kicks off the whole digestive process. By chewing your food enough times, by eating slowly like that, you are allowing the enzymes that are produced in your saliva to really get in there and mix up with the food that you're chewing in order to again support the digestive process.

Speaker 1:

So put this up high on your priority list. If not for three meals a day, then start off with one meal a day. You know some progress is better than no progress. Off with one meal a day, you know some progress is better than no progress. That reminds me. Just a quick note on all or nothing personalities and I totally get tripped up in this sometimes, right, where I'm like, oh my gosh, all right, I wanted to go to the gym every day this week and I missed one day. I guess it's over now. Well, don't do that with any of the things that I'm saying. Don't do that with eating meals at your table sitting down. If you miss a day, all good, just don't miss two days in a row.

Speaker 1:

The third of five suggestions that I have for you would be to start cutting out highly processed foods, cutting out alcohol and cutting out excess sugars. The reason for this is because all of these foods, or foods or liquids, are inflammatory for your digestive system, inflammatory for your body. That increased stress is not going to be well lowering your stress. I couldn't have said something more obvious there, but that's all to say. By eliminating some of these items and replacing them with more nutrient dense foods, that's going to, overall, do your health a favor and help your digestive system to start maybe better repairing itself, if you're giving it the building blocks that it needs, through protein or through other nutrients, in order to do so. So start cutting out highly processed foods, alcohols, sugars. If it's baby steps, I think are a great way to start. You don't have to go cold turkey on it, but start making some progress towards that goal. Progress towards that goal.

Speaker 1:

Numero cuatro try incorporating apple cider vinegar to see how. Incorporating it before a meal, how that helps your digestion during that meal. Right, and let's break down. Why is this a thing? Why are we talking about apple cider vinegar? Well, your stomach has a certain level of acidity, naturally, in order to kill pathogens that might be in your food and to help support the breakdown of your food. For a lot of people who don't have adequately acidic stomachs, adding a little bit of apple cider vinegar can help to kind of kickstart things, not to mention it's good for your blood sugar stability and a number of other things. But incorporating let's call it a teaspoon, let's call it a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into some sparkling water or into the dressing of a salad that you're going to eat at the start of your meal, those are two really easy ways to see if, okay, introducing this source of acid that sounds really intense, but introducing this component that can help to support normal acidity levels in my stomach, how does that help? This also can be a great clue, because if you do this and you're like, oh my gosh, this feels bad, this feels like heartburn, you know that? Okay. Well, maybe my stomach acid levels are actually, in fact, high and not low. This is all about doing some detective work and understanding what works, what doesn't work, what makes something slightly better, slightly worse. You follow me.

Speaker 1:

The fifth suggestion that I have for you on this note is related to digestive enzymes. If you haven't heard of digestive enzymes before, then let's just think back to I don't know two minutes ago, when I was talking about how your saliva, and also your stomach, is producing enzymes that help you to break down your foods. Right, there's all these different types of proteins in your food proteins in plants, proteins in the meats or dairy, whatever it is that you're eating, as well as sugars and fats, and all of those components require enzymes to properly break it down so it can be digestive and flow through your system. So something to consider would be seeing if there is a digestive enzyme that is right for you. You can take it ahead of a meal, and, while this isn't something that is exactly solving the problem, it is a little bit more like I don't even want to say that it's a band-aid solution but it's something that can help you to get some relief now, today, while you work on the overall imbalance or the overall root cause of what's going on. So, digestive enzymes this is something that I'm sure you could find at Whole Foods or Sprouts. I will share a link in the show notes to the digestive enzyme that I take myself, just so you have something to consider, something to just be aware of if digestive enzymes are new to you.

Speaker 1:

Up ahead on Thursday's episode I'm going to be walking through what are the real things that I do in my life that you can do today, that you can do now to support your digestion and hopefully keep bloating at bay. I say that to say that you'll have that recap coming up in just a couple of days, but I know that we went through a lot of information, so I want to just do like a quick recap of it to hopefully help this kind of be ingrained and just make sense to be applicable for what's going on in your life. So, remembering that bloating what is it right? Bloating is some combination of swallowed air or other gas that's in your digestive tract that could be created by microbes that are in your digestive system, or it could be a reaction to something that you ate in that digestive system. So swallowed air gas. It also could be fluid retention, and I'm going to do a deeper dive on fluid retention specifically in next week, next Tuesday's episode. So keep an eye out for that.

Speaker 1:

Now let's take a reminder. Let me remind you of what causes bloating in a lot of cases. So this could be tied to that pre-menstrual time when, just hormonally, you're more prone to have some mild bloating. Now, if your hormones are a bit out of balance, that can certainly exacerbate that water retention. So that's on the hormonal side. But when we're coming back and refocusing on your digestive system, which I mean totally impacts your hormones so they're not. They're certainly not two distinct and separate systems. But what impacts your digestive system is certainly stress. When stress levels are high, cortisol levels are high. That is going to impair your digestive function. Low stomach acid can be a byproduct of high stress, or if you have low stomach acid for any other number of reasons, that can also contribute to bloating, as can food triggers, whether it is gluten, dairy, it's raw vegetables, sugar or alcohol, or it could be another type of plant that just your stomach doesn't fall in love with. It's also worth considering. Have you just made a recent change to your diet? Have you incorporated a lot of probiotics? Something that is good, but when done acutely it can not feel so good until your system just comes back to its new balance.

Speaker 1:

Then, last but not least, thinking of stomach or digestive dysbiosis. Are there microbes in your digestive system that are just off? There's been an overgrowth of some sort of bacteria, yeast or otherwise. Now, if you are dealing with bloating, you should definitely get to the root cause of what that is. Do some investigating so you can make sure that you are targeting the specific thing that applies to you. But in lieu of maybe knowing what that specific root cause is right now, keep in mind that you can try a digestive enzyme or apple cider vinegar that will support your digestive function. You can also just keep in mind like, hey, let me sit down, let me relax during this meal, right, so that you can focus on just eating. You can give your body the opportunity to create all those components needed to support the digestive process.

Speaker 1:

A couple of other thoughts. Cut out highly processed foods, alcohols and sugars, and then again just thinking how can you address stress, how can you mitigate stress or at least support your body during a time of stress so that it has a minimally negative impact? So that it has a minimally negative impact, if all of that sounds really interesting to you. If you want to have a visual of it, or just if you've been dealing with bloating for a while and you are ready to finally address it, you need to check out the link in the show notes so that you can get my downloadable. It's a guide that will help you understand many of the things that I just said here, but also understand what can you do and what order should you do things in. So check that out link in the show notes. Connect with me on Instagram, at Bridget Walton, or on LinkedIn links in show notes, of course.

Speaker 1:

If you have any questions, I would love to hear your thoughts, or if you have any requests for episodes, I am all ears. So thank you, guys, so much for listening. I know this episode was like a little bit longer than normal, but there is so much nuance, there are so many factors, so I think it was worth it, and hopefully you do too. All right, thanks again and I will see you on the next one. If you loved today's episode and got something good out of it, make sure you subscribe so that these episodes show up automatically in your feed. No work needed on your side. Let's put it on autopilot. As always, I need to give you my reminder that the information I share with you here is for educational purposes only, and it should not be used as a replacement for medical advice or diagnosis. Now, if you are, on the other hand, in the market for some one-on-one support, then I would love for you to take me up on my offer for a free strategy call. You can find these links and more in the show notes.