Many people, especially women, suffer from abdominal distension, bloating and gas, but why does it happen?
These pathologies respond to multiple causes, among the most frequent: food allergies, intolerance, candidiasis, hiatal hernia, gastroesophageal reflux or inadequate diet, Crohn’s disease.
Given the variety and multitude of causes that can give rise to the aforementioned problems, it is advisable to carry out a good examination and clinical examination to determine their origin and define the treatment that best suits the patient’s needs.
Clinical examination and nutrition
After an initial visit to the doctor, a stool and aspirated air gas analysis is performed.
It is very frequent, in these cases, that the cause is an inadequate diet, due to the intake of indigestible vegetable fiber in the diet practically at all hours: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Given the variety of forms that it presents, from salads to fruits or vegetables, it makes that the quantities of easily reabsorbable carbohydrates, fats and animal protein decrease.
When this is prolonged in time, a very distended, tympanic belly is observed in the patient, with borborygmi on palpation and painful in several areas, with very frequent expulsion of gases.
In addition, in the stool analysis it is common to observe exclusively vegetable fibers and abundant undigested starch, a clear evidence of accelerated digestive transit.
The stool has a pasty form and in some cases it is even very hard due to the phytobezoars that the fiber may cause.
As for the gases in exhaled air, it is frequent that high figures of methane appear, which show the presence of a great fermentation in the colon due to a great quantity of vegetable fibers that have not been digested in the small intestine by our digestive enzymes, since these cannot split the bonds of cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, lignin (this last one phenylpropane not carbohydrate) very frequent in the vegetables and in the covers of the legumes.
Neither can they cleave stachyose, raffinose, which are carbohydrates inside legumes.
These hydrates not cleaved in the small intestine, arrive at the large intestine where they are metabolized and, therefore, digested by the bacteria of the colon, which multiply, originating gases like butyrates, acetates, hydrogen or methate, among others.
And this translates clinically into a swollen, prominent belly, which can sometimes almost simulate the belly of a pregnant woman.
The intake of 12 grams of indigestible fiber doubles the bacterial mass of the intestine.
Dr. Tormo Carnicé refers to this pathological state and bloating sensation as ruminant syndrome. After a study of the diet, examination and analysis of stool and gas, it is possible to reverse the abdominal discomfort by following a balanced diet.
The objective should be to reduce the amount of fiber to tolerant, non-ruminant levels for humans.
Ruminants benefit from the continuous intake of fiber, because they have a rumen or fermentation chamber where bacteria break down the plant fiber into smaller, more digestible components, multiply and are subsequently swallowed into the digestive tract similar to ours, extracting the fats and proteins from the bacteria that, we could say, they have cultivated in their rumen.