Bloating

Bloating

What is bloating?

When you’re bloated, your stomach or abdomen may feel full and uncomfortable, or even have pain.

This bloating happens when your gastrointestinal tract contains too much gas or air. However, there can be several causes for feeling bloated, so it’s essential to diagnose the causes of your bloating and find out why it’s happening to you.

What are the symptoms of bloating?

There are several symptoms to bloating that you could be experiencing. Sometimes these can be mild, or sometimes they can be more severe bloating symptoms, signs of bloating may include:

  • Feeling very full and uncomfortable
  • A distended or tight abdomen
  • Excess gas – belching and/or flatulence
  • Abdominal rumbling and/or gurgles
  • Abdominal pain

What causes bloating?

Prolonged periods of bloating could indicate an underlying health problem, if so you should see your GP. If you’re wondering why you’re bloated, the possible causes can include:

  • Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS diagnosis)
  • Ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), where the inner lining of the large bowel is inflamed and develops ulcers
  • Crohn’s disease, the other form of IBD, where some parts of your colon are inflamed
  • Too much bacteria in your small intestine (called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO)
  • Gastroesophageal reflux disease
  • Food intolerances, especially lactose or fructose intolerance
  • Producing too much gas (dysbiosis and fermentation)
  • Weight gain
  • Stress or anxiety
  • Delays in your food and drink moving on from your stomach (called gastroparesis)
  • Eating too quickly, so that you swallow too much air (called aerophagia)

How do we diagnose the causes of bloating?

Feeling bloated is no fun, but once you know what’s going on you can start to manage your symptoms and the underlying causes. We can run the following tests to diagnose the causes of bloating:

Possible related symptoms