Stop chewing gum and ditch mouthwash… 5 ways to get a flat tummy FAST
One in five of us suffers from IBS symptoms and often it's our everyday habits that are making them worse
CONSTANTLY bloated and gassy? Feeling a bit grey inside?
Loads of us live with destressed guts and that's having a serious impact on our day-to-day lives.
With 20 per cent of Brits suffering from IBS, millions of us are struggling with gut health.
GPs can only help so much - they can prescribe you meds to deal with constipation and diarrhoea, but there's only so much they can do for swollen bellies.
But there are a few simple lifestyle hacks you can use to reduce the bloat.
1. Stop chewing gum
Chewing gum is awesome for making your breath smell fresh and for occupying your mouth between meals.
But it's also an absolute demon for gut health, says nutritional director, Rick Hay.
Chowing down on the Wrigley's can lead to an overproduction of stomach acid.
"When you chew it sends a signal to the stomach to expect food and the digestive juices get going, but then there’s nothing to digest. It’s like turning on a tap but there’s nothing to switch it off, which has a negative effect on our gut bacteria," Rick said.
And chewing gum can also lead to you swallowing a load of excess air, which also adds to the bloating and IBS symptoms.
2. Ditch the mouthwash
For many of us, mouthwash forms a crucial part of our oral health routine. We brush, floss then gargle.
But many commercial mouthwashes are super-harsh and not only destroy our mouths' sensitive flora and apparently aren't actually that good for our teeth.
When your oral bacteria is off-balance, the chances are that your gut bacteria is also having a tough time.
And when that happens, you get bloating and all kinds of digestive chaos.
says that if you're brushing properly, you shouldn't need to use mouthwash at all.
And unless you've been prescribed one by your dentist, the ones you buy in supermarkets can't actually treat any mouth or teeth problems, or improve bad breath. They just mask the smell.
3. Choose red wine
Ahh, music to our ears.
While some booze can be bad for gut health, red wine may actually help.
It's all down to the polyphenols - anti-oxidants that also exist in some ciders - which feed gut bacteria.
In fact, red wine is actually better for your gut than grape juice.
Make ours a large glass.
4. Eat fruit rather than drinking juice
Fruit juice might seem like the easy way to get one of your five a day but juicing really isn't that great for your gut.
When you juice a fruit, you're getting rid of almost all of its fibre content (which your gut bacteria needs), while eating way more of the sugar than you regulate would.
You might not sit down and eat four apples in one go (because you'd get quite full from the fibre) but a glass of juice probably comes from at least four pieces of fruit. That means that you're getting way more sugar than you would if you simply just ate an apple.
And sugar isn't always that friendly towards gut health either.
Dr Robert Lustig, US obesity expert and author of Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar, told: "Calorie for calorie, fruit juice is worse for you than fizzy drinks".
"When you turn fruit into juice, you are losing the insoluble fibre, which is an essential nutrient and helps delay absorption of the sugar. Take the fibre away and you’re just drinking sugar and calories. There’s some vitamin C, but you would be better off taking a vitamin pill for that."
You're much better off just eating the fruit in its whole form - or making a smoothie which keeps in the pulp.
5. Leave some time between meals
Back in the day, we'd go long periods of time between eating. These days, food tends to be available all the time and many of us graze our way from lunch to dinner.
But actually leaving longer breaks between meals can help our guts.
It takes around 12 hours to properly digest and clear our gut tract. If you finish eating at 10pm and have your breakfast at 7am, you're not giving your gut a break - and that can lead to it becoming stressed and inflamed.
Try to delay your breakfast a few times a week and see if that has any impact on how you feel.
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You may feel hungry initially but that's OK. Just think of those delayed hours as the graveyard shift for your gut bacteria, which will come and tidy up the gut lining - ready for another day of eating.
We revealed yesterday that there may be new hope for IBS sufferers, as scientists have found that CBT is an effective treatment for the condition.
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