The Real Reason You’re Bloated After Eating

Why am I bloated after eating? Bloating after eating is often linked to poor digestive health, not just the food you ate. Learn how to relieve stomach bloating and improve digestion naturally by addressing the root cause.

The real reason why you’re bloated after eating, and it has nothing to do with the food that you’re eating. But, you ever wonder why some people at the table are eating the same thing and they’re not getting bloated, but you are? And why is it that sometimes when people eat healthy foods, they bloat more than junk foods? What’s up with that? Is it really the food, or is it the machinery?

I’m talking about your digestion, your ability to break down food at different levels, from the acid in your stomach to the bile, which actually is made by your liver, and it helps you break down fats. And then you get help from your pancreas that makes enzymes for various things like proteins and fats and carbohydrates. And of course, your stomach tends to mix everything together, and it empties it out in the small intestine, where 90% of all your digestion occurs. But, roughly after about 25 ft of this small intestine tubing, you enter the large intestine. And this is where you have the majority of your microbes that help to break down the things that you can’t break down, like fiber, for example.

So, today I want to talk about where bloating really comes from, and then I’m going to touch on why people get certain types of pain in different places in their stomach, and what that means, and what you can do about it. Because the worst thing you could do is treat the wrong problem and end up just patching it up and having it never be resolved. So, instead of just assuming your bloating’s coming from food, let’s take a look at some of the other things, including the first thing that happens right here in the stomach, where you actually don’t have enough stomach acid. This is way more common than you might think, and a lot of times people will say that, “Oh, your body should be alkaline. ” Really?

Your entire body, including your stomach? That’s not true. Your stomach should be extremely acid, and there’s a pH scale where seven is neutral, and then when you go up, that’s more alkaline, but the numbers that go down are more acid. So, when you get down to between one and three, which is exactly where that hydrochloric acid needs to be as far as the pH. You’re talking about something that is super acidic that is comparable with battery acid, okay?

So, that is normal because we need the acid for three things: to break down proteins, to also trigger enzymes that break down proteins, to also kill microbes because we don’t want microbes invading the body from the food that we’re eating. And also to help you absorb minerals as well as B12. So, if we don’t have enough stomach acid, then we get incomplete digestion, and then all of that stuff that’s not digested ends up lower in the digestive system, putting a lot more stress on other parts that put that into a situation where now you’re going to get incomplete digestion. And the other thing that’s interesting about this acid is it’s kind of a paradox. When you don’t have enough acid, there’s a little sensor that signals the closing of the valve, but if there’s not enough acid, it’s not going to close.

So, the typical symptom, which is very counterintuitive for not enough acid, is acid reflux because that valve is open, or heartburn, or GERD, and definitely indigestion. So, if you have any of those, that definitely means you don’t have enough acid. As we get older, we lose that acidity in our stomach, and this is why a lot of people have a lot of digestive problems as they get older. And what’s really ironic is that if you have a digestive problem, what do they put you on? An antacid.

I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that would be the opposite thing you want to do. ” Because now we go from bad to even worse because in reality, what would fix that is adding more acid, like something called apple cider vinegar or even betaine hydrochloride. And so, that’s the stomach level, but we also have this thing called the gallbladder. And what does that do? That actually stores and concentrates something called bile.

Bile is a detergent. It’s made by the liver, but it’s stored in the gallbladder. It helps to break down fats and helps you extract nutrients out of fats. So, if we didn’t have a gallbladder, we wouldn’t be able to break down or extract and absorb these really key fats that we need. So, now that forces the pancreas to produce even more digestive enzymes to try to cope with the situation.

And that’s where we have a lot of problems. So, the purpose of the pancreas is twofold. Number one, to control blood sugar through insulin, but the other half of it makes enzymes to break down all the different things that you eat. And then now this mixture of all this stuff ends up in the small intestine. And it’s going to take time to go through all this piping.

And the reason why we have such a long small intestine is because you can’t just break this food down really quick. It’s a slow process of breaking things down and absorbing things because the lining of that small intestine also produces things like enzymes and other things that also help break down the food. And then once everything is broken down here, ideally, it should end up in the large intestine where the microbes then act on the fiber. They ferment it. So, when you think about fermentation, think about like sourdough bread they make it and it rises, right?

It’s rising through this fermentation, through microbes that are growing bigger, making certain gases. Now, a really big problem with bloating is something that occurs in the small intestine and it’s called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It’s called SIBO. The microbes that normally should be down here are up here. And so now you’re getting fermentation in the wrong place.

So you’re going to basically feel like you’re bloated all the time, no matter what you eat, especially if you eat fiber, and especially if you’re having probiotics, right? Because you have too many microbes right here. Now, normally if you have enough stomach acid, that should be killing off these microbes. And normally if you have enough bile, it’s also there to help kill all the microbes down here. So you can see the consequence of not having the right thing, oh my gosh, it puts the small intestine in a huge situation where you’re going to feel bloated all the time.

And I had this problem for literally probably 15 years. I didn’t know what it was. And then not to mention all the antibiotics that people take. Oh my gosh, you’re going to wipe out all these microbes, and that creates all sorts of other additional problems, not just down here, but here and here and here and here, because you don’t just have bacteria in your gut. You have yeast, you have fungus, you have candida, and they’re all kept in check by the bacteria.

So one of the big side effects from antibiotics is an overgrowth of these other things. And sometimes you can even smell it on someone’s breath. They have this ammonia breath. That’s some of the byproducts from the yeast or candida or fungus that’s growing in the small intestine. And a lot of times you’ll also have an imbalance on your skin.

You’ll start getting skin fungus, yeast, or mold because the core internal microbiome is not balanced. Another thing that’ll happen is if the food is undigested right here, it’s going to stagnate. It’s going to kind of stop moving, aka constipation. In practice, I’ve had people come in, and I’m not kidding, they would go to the bathroom once every two or three weeks. I mean, it’s just beyond imagination how uncomfortable they might be.

But yeah, once every two weeks. So again, it’s not just about the food. It’s about the system. It’s about your body’s ability to break down that food. When you eat ultra-processed food, it’s