3 ways to beat bloating
Search
3 ways to beat bloating
While many people suffer from bloating, there are ways to get ahead of the game to prevent bloating before it even happens. Here are three tips ensure you are bloat-free.
PRE-MEAL
Remede Wellness Medicine naturopath Lauren Reid suggests drinking apple cider vinegar or lemon juice in water before eating, which stimulates the production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach before the meal. “Apple cider vinegar helps support digestion after a meal, as does taking digestive enzymes of supplements containing hydrochloric acid. Lemon, garlic, ginger and apple cider vinegar are great additions to salad dressings and stir fries to help digestion too.”
POST-MEAL
After a meal, The Beauty Chef’s Carla Oates suggests including known herbs that aid and stimulate digestion, including artichoke, dandelion, fennel, cardamom and peppermint. Try peppermint and dandelion in herbal tea form post-nosh as their diuretic properties also draw fluid from the body, which further reduces bloating. Fennel can be chewed in its seed form post-meal as it contains oils that smooth the digestive tract muscles and consequently soothes digestion and reduces gas build-up. As an added incentive to chew the seeds, the liquorice flavour also freshens the breath.
ANYTIME
Another way to add a flavour zing to your food while enhancing its digestive properties is to include fermented foods. Oates says fermented foods have a balancing effect on digestion and make nutrients more available for the body to use, meaning they should be on high rotation in meal planning. “Consume lacto-fermented foods such as sauerkraut with your meal, because they’re rich in natural enzymes that help you break down the food, improve the digestion and the absorption of minerals and nutrients, and are rich in probiotics that help balance digestive health,” Oates says. “The bacteria in lacto-fermented foods break down the hard-to-digest proteins and also help neutralise and reduce plant compounds, such as lectins, that compromise digestion.”
Want to learn more about digestion and how to avoid a 'food belly' during the holiday season? Grab the January 2017 edition of nourish magazine.
