This is a sentiment many female patients have expressed to me when coming in for their initial visit. Feeling excessively full after eating just an average-sized or even small meal, even without any carbs or greasy foods. Bloated and full, gross or distended! Why does the belly expand so much despite appropriate diet and discipline, and what can we do to resolve it?
Abstinence is one approach, and to some degree and admirable one. Learning one’s triggers, avoiding them, and especially omitting foods such as sugar, gluten, dairy, fried, or raw foods, which can be bloating even for those of us with optimum digestion, is a great intention that will undoubtedly benefit you in the long run.
On the other hand, it is probably more important to understand and treat the underlying root pathology—not to gain permission to go out and eat pizza and ice cream—but so that our metabolic organs can function in a way that maximizes nutritional benefit from all the things we put into our body. If a small sandwich makes us look pregnant (and we don’t have Celiac) it likely means we’re also not getting the most out of our picture-perfect plates of salmon and steamed vegetables. Why?
“Deficiency.” When our “engine” is not firing on all cylinders, food will sit in places it shouldn’t for longer periods than it should. A proverbial traffic jam forms in the gut. Gas and fluids stagnate and the abdomen is forced to expand to contain them.
Chinese medicine was functional medicine thousands of years before “functional medicine,” as it was predicated in response to subjective complaints that at the time we obviously lacked the technology to quantify and assign labels to. Such subjective issues continue in ubiquity today, albeit allegedly less so thanks to Big Pharma-fabricated “syndromes,” with digestive imperfection leading the way. It is of note that our nation’s food quality is arguably the worst the world has ever seen, and we are more heavily medicated than any society has ever been. Search the primary side effects of any medication you are taking. Very good chance most of the list pertains to digestion.
One of the most popular Chinese herbal formulas used for bloating due to weakness of the microbiome is Ju Pi Zhi Shi Sheng Jiang Tang. It contains immature bitter orange peel, sun-dried Mandarin orange peel, and ginger, which might partially explain why many Chinese restaurants offer oranges as complimentary desserts and Japanese include ginger alongside sushi.
If you are unable to see a licensed herbalist to get a properly individualized diagnosis and prescription, I would recommend brewing a daily tea elixir to sip after meals as often as possible: 2-3 slices of raw ginger and the peel from one orange simmered together in 4 cups of water for about a half hour. If you are a woman on your menses maybe use one less slice of ginger and/or add 1 teaspoon of honey to support fluids. You can also try adding a teaspoon of fennel, or “Xiao Hui Xiang,” an herb that Chinese medicine borrows from Ayurveda.
May everyone’s belly be flat, that is of course if that is your goal, and you are not actually pregnant!
