DoctorOz: Beat Bloating with Dr. Oz's Expert Remedies

Does your stomach expand? Is it gas? Is it fat? Or is it something else? Well, if this sounds familiar, I've got a belly bloat solution just for you. I asked my Facebook fans to embrace their bloat and send photos of their bellies. These three women are here to claim their bloat. Linnea is going to join us first. Linnea complains that her bloat has gotten worse since having kids. Yes. Is that true? Yes, it is. Before, it was like very minimum, but ever since kids, which I don't remember my life before them, it has gotten out of control, out of control. Love my kids, but it seems like ever since I had them, the bloating is ridiculous. I exercise six days a week. I try to do the right thing, and there's no reason why I should be looking like this. But let me just be clear on this. Did you not have bloating issues before you had the kids? No, not at all. Not that I can remember. And how has your eating changed from before having the kids to now? Oh, I'm horrible. I'm trying to keep the energy up to keep up with them. I have three girls, 12, 4, and 5, and I'm grabbing candy bars. I'm grabbing cookies, cakes, pies. We're baking all the time. I'm eating their scraps, their leftovers, licking the bowl. I'm totally a carnivore. I can't live without my sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel every morning. I can't do it. Pasta, I love it. You're making me hungry. I'm hungry right now. You know, it's just like it's terrible if I'm doing the right thing as far as exercising and doing my protein shakes, and I'm good. But once that bagel, that hero, that turkey with cheese and everything else on it, it's just ridiculous. Well, here's the thing. I hear the kids issue, and you do seem to blame them a little bit in your conversation, but I'm hearing the word carbohydrate a lot. Carbivore, carbivore. Carbivore because you're talking about a lot of carbohydrates. Yes, I love carbs. They're excellent. All right, we'll come back to that. Christina, she was venting on her Facebook that her stomach expands a few inches during the day. Sound familiar, everybody? You hear that a lot, don't you? How does it make your body feel? Pretty horrible, actually. I'll start off in the morning, and I'll feel nice and svelte, and I'll put on a pair of pants thinking like, okay, I'm just going to eat well today, and these will be great. And by midday, I'm like unbuttoning my pants. I'm like, I barely ate anything today, and it's already starting. It's just as the day goes on, it gets worse, and it's pretty horrible. So what do you do about it? I complain a lot. Yes. I hear some of those complaints. No, that's not so helpful. I complain, I wear loose-fitting clothing. I also wear some shapewear that I brought to show you to try and suck it in. So something like, I didn't wear any today, so I couldn't show you, but I have something like this for pants or a skirt when I go to work. I have to wear dresses, and I end up wearing something like this to suck it all in. You gain weight also during the day? I do, yes. I'll put on quite a few inches during the day, and then if I weigh myself in the morning and then again at night, it could be five and up, five and up pounds. So a lot of folks who wrote made those exact observations. It's okay in the morning, gets worse during the day. Shapewear is mandatory. Lots of stuff happening that might be linked to it. But a lot of folks also wrote to me with a complaint that Angela had in her little note, which was that she has painful gas during the day. So what happens to you? Just sort of give me a description of what normally would occur that causes pain. Well, it just builds. I feel it building during the day, and I can hear it. And a person sitting next to me could probably hear it too. It's just building, and it's like a gurgling sound. And it stays right here. And I can't burp. I've never burped. And I see someone burp, and I'm like, wow, that looks like such a relief. I wish I could do that. And I can't. I wish I could. My kids are like, you can't burp, mommy? I'm like, no. And they're like, that's terrible. Listen to me. And I'm like, oh, I wish I could do that, but I can't. It hurts a lot, though. It's just like stuck there. Sometimes it has to go out the other way, but it won't go out that way. So how do you get it to go out the other way? It's got to go somewhere. Right, right. I've tried lots of things, but nothing has really worked. I get that bloating feeling all day and that look, and I just wear loose-fitting clothes. There's not too much I can do. So what happens when, for example, your husband is around when you let the gas go the other way? Well, I've been with my husband for 25 years. Congratulations. Thank you. I don't do that in front of him. Is he here today? No. I'll go into another room, or unfortunately, I know this is bad. I'll hold it. You'll hold it. I will. But yeah, I just can't. I'm not comfortable. We want you to let it go for sure. I'll come back then. You don't have to do it right now. That's why you're over there, and I'm over here. All right. These three women represent three of the biggest bloating complaints that I hear about all the time. I'll go through them again. Worse after having kids like Linnea, even though they become carbivores as well sometimes because they don't make time for themselves. Adding three inches to your waist a day. I hear that a lot, and it actually does happen. Christina, your points are well taken. And painful gas, the kind Angela complains about, is frequently mentioned, and it's a big deal for me because it ruins your quality of life. So the question is, what's triggering all this bloat? How do you get rid of it for good? Cindy's here. She is frustrated with her belly bloat. Am I got it right? Yes. And she wants to beat it like so many of you. So have you been able to identify the triggers that cause the bloating? Yes, Dr. Oz. I find that sometimes when I overeat, when I eat mushrooms or onions or Chinese food, saltiness, and I get really bloated. And what works to get rid of that bloat once you get it? Well, sometimes what I do is I get up and I walk around. I'll have some seltzer water. Maybe I'll take some antacids, but you know what? It doesn't work all the time. And it's a continuous issue for so many folks. So I've got a solution to help you and so many others out there get rid of your bloat for good. Probiotics. You know much about them? No, I don't. We're going to learn a lot today, and you're going to love what you hear about because it is a solution for so many folks for bloating, for irritable bowel, for all kinds of other headaches like that. Come on over here. Okay. Probiotics are bacteria, and they're bacteria that help maintain your body's natural balance of different organisms. They look like this. This is a picture of them, and they promote digestive health. So pretend these are little morsels of food you just had, that Chinese food you just had, okay? Now, your digestive juices, represented by that jug there, go ahead. Pour your digestive juices into there, and notice that the regular digestive juices really don't digest our food all that well. There's a little bit of an impact, but stuff backs up. It bloats you, and it doesn't really break down the morsel of food as well as it's supposed to, so this snowball doesn't get digested into the nutrients it's supposed to have, and because of that, you don't feel so good. That's a lot of effort to digest your food. Now, my bowel, because I'm taking probiotics, does this. I got probiotic juices mixed in with the digestive juices, so when I try to have my food digested, it literally melts away, and as it melts away, I'll quickly get rid of it all, and once those morsels have dissolved, I don't have to bloat anymore. There's no food left behind. That slowly is percolating its way through the system, and as it gets eaten up, if you haven't digested it, it makes gas, which bloats you. In my case, I'm pretty good, and if I've got any problem, whatever little bit is left gets digested quickly, and it's gone, making the gas less bothersome. The big question, of course, is how do you get probiotics into your diet? Any idea? I have no idea. Come join me. Okay. Probiotics come in many different forms, but one of the best ways to get probiotics is in yogurt. It's one of the reasons I adore yogurt in general as a food. Do you have much yogurt in your diet? I don't. I don't like yogurt. You don't like yogurt? I don't. All right. Well, that's a killjoy. For everyone who's out there who likes yogurt, I want it to become a staple of your diet, and I want to give you a couple ideas that might change the way you feel about yogurt, and I'm respectful that some people don't adore dairy foods. Some people are intolerant of dairy foods, but there are three things you ought to know about yogurt if you are going to use yogurt. The first is to keep the bloat away, you've got to eat it every day. The probiotics, those bacteria in your gut, they don't live forever. They have short life expectancies, and they pass on, so if you're going to have the probiotics in your yogurt, you've got to have yogurt in your diet every day for a minimum of two weeks to build up the good bacteria in your gut. I recommend having it at breakfast. That's when I take it. It gets the day started off the right way, and it gives me that power that I showed in that digestion model we had earlier. Second rule of thumb, you want to have a six-ounce container. One of these little cups is roughly about six ounces. I like 2% fat yogurt, but I don't want any sugar added to it at all, which I know is a problem for people who don't like yogurt. They sometimes try to bathe the yogurt in syrupy fruits. If you like some sweetness, add the fruit yourself. Don't tolerate the syrup in the bottom of a prepackaged yogurt. The third rule of thumb is that if you look at the label, it's going to say in a small print, you have to look for the words live active cultures. Here's an example of what it might look like. I'm going to put it up on the full screen so you can all see it. See that little yellowed area there? It says live culture yogurt. You've got to see something like that, or live active culture, some wording like that, so you know that there's a live bacteria in there, because not all yogurt has live bacteria. If the bacteria is not alive, it's not going to be of any value to you, then you're not really getting the right strains of bacteria in your gut. You're not going to do this, are you? I could try. But you know what? If you don't like the yogurt, there's another solution that actually works really well for a lot of folks as well. It's taking a daily probiotic supplement. It's simple. It actually, in many cases, is actually better than yogurt, because it's able to package the probiotics or give you probiotics that survive your stomach acidity. They don't get digested. They don't get killed by that acid, so they get down into the intestines where they have to do their job. So Cindy, would you think of taking a pill every day? Yes, that I could do every day. All right. You complained about your bloat, and now I'm going to show you how to get rid of the pain. The first move to lose the gas for good is called the wind-relieving pose. It's aptly named. I want you all to do this together with me. Everyone at home can do it as well. Sit down where we are, all right, and lie on your back and just sort of relax. Nothing uncomfortable here. Then you lift up, let's say, your left leg and bring your left knee into your chest. Deep breath in, and then hold this pose for about 10 seconds. As you relax your lower back, which this also does, you'll relax the muscles down below. Angela, do you feel this? I do. As those muscles relax, things may start coming out. Cathy, let me know if that happens, since you're closest. I may need an air mask. I'm getting the air masks out here. Now, reverse the legs and do the other leg. I say this because we're asymmetrical, all of us are, and you may find that one side relieves the gas better than the other. Listen, you can do this while you're watching the show. You can do this while you're talking to your friends. No one's ever going to know. Deep breath in, hold it for 10 seconds, wiggle it around a little bit. Linnea, are you okay wiggling it? Okay. All right. Now, if that doesn't work for you, sit up. The next anti-bloat position, and this one always works for me, is called the child's pose. Now, children never have a problem with letting it go, so you put a little V into your legs as you sit on your knees, and then in between that V, you're going to lean forward, put your belly in there, put your hands in front, and put your head towards the mat. Now, this really opens it up. This is anatomically designed to open up that rectal area, and there's no way the gas won't come out now. Angela, are you doing okay over there? Excuse me. Pardon me. Sorry. 30 seconds of this, and believe me, any gas that's in there will get moving down. So, Angela, you think that might help relieve some of the discomfort? Absolutely. I will try it. All right. So, before I go, I want to see if any of you have other questions about bloating in the audience, and in particular, I'm curious about what foods cause bloating in your lives. So, who's got thoughts up there? Bloaters? There you go. All right, bloaters, go ahead. Go stand if you don't mind. What's your name? Danielle. Hi, Danielle. How are you? How are you? Broccoli. Broccoli. Potatoes. Those are the worst ones, soda also. And it starts right after you eat them? Well, some down the line as digestion goes on. That's frustrating because broccoli in particular is pretty good for you, isn't it? Yes, and my favorite. Yeah. I love broccoli too. It turns out broccoli does cause that for a lot of folks, but I got to say, the healthy foods in general, when they cause bloating, if you make those healthy foods a part of your regular diet, your body gets used to it. Fair enough. Go ahead. Hi, Dr. Oz. How are you? I'm fine. You can hold the mic, go ahead. Okay. Soda is the biggest thing for me. After I drink a soda, it just comes right out, and cucumbers also, just regular cucumbers. Cucumbers? Yes. And when you say the soda comes right out, you mean like comes out from below? No, no, no, it just blows out. It doesn't come out that way, no. It doesn't, okay. All right, okay. And again, what do sodas have in them? They have artificial sweeteners, which are found in a lot of other things as well. They're designed to be low calorie, but they can cause a lot of irritation to your gut. And we have one more? Who else is bothered by... Go ahead. Stand up if you don't mind. I try to put cabbage every day of my salad for lunch, and then yeah, about an hour after I start eating. Knocks you down. Yes. Well, here's what I'm going to do. Again, cabbage, same as broccoli, one of those healthy foods, if you make it part of your life day in and day out, your body will be able to cope better. Beans are like that. I put beans in the salad too. Yeah, beans will really knock you down. Beans, if you soak them, that'll help with that as well. Okay, that's a great tip. And there's also, of course, you can take something like vino that will help digest it more rapidly. But let me give you all the major foods that we seem to have in America, thank you, that cause us bloating. So in America, cheese is a big cause of bloating. We have a problem with apples, in part because again, they're good for you, but it's hard for us to digest them sometimes. Beans, we've talked about because the starch and the protein. Potatoes and corn are a big issue for us. And potatoes and corn are problematic for other reasons too sometimes, but in particular for bloating. Broccoli and cabbage I love, and it is a common cause though. But my big beef is with artificially sweetened foods, in particular carbonated beverages. Okay, there she goes. All right, thank you for your stories, ladies. It's been great having you on. Be sure to subscribe to my channel. You won't miss anything. And remember to check back often to see what's next.