Do you wake up feeling like a balloon that will pop any minute? Like you’ve outgrown your favourite pair of pants almost overnight?
You’re not alone. Over 31% of the population worldwide experiences bloating in the morning. The feeling of waking up bloated is usually associated with digestive issues. It might leave you feeling uncomfortable with a large stomach. This is not only painful, but also accompanied by serious symptoms in the long run.
Waking up bloated is often accompanied by other symptoms such as constipation, gassiness or fluid retention. Waking up bloated and gassy can spoil your mood even before you start your day.
Why Am I Feeling Bloated?
Whether it’s the lack of movement or improper nutrition, like many gastrointestinal issues, bloating in the morning is a result of bad lifestyle choices. Most common reasons for the waking up bloated are:
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Not having enough water:
When your body is dehydrated, it tends to retain more water as a preventative measure. This leads to bloatedness.
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Food Habits:
One of the biggest factors affecting you is food habits. Having large meals right before bedtime causes improper digestion and leads to bloating in the morning.
Eating too fast or not chewing food properly has the same effect. These habits are important as they help the food mix with digestive juices to aide digestion and absorption of nutrients. When the food is not processed properly because you ate too fast or swallowed too fast, it leads to you waking up bloated.
Another food habit that is contributing to your symptoms is lying down soon after food. This causes delay in digestion process.
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High consumption of carbonated drinks
Carbonated drinks or aerated drinks have gas which makes them fizzy. When you consume these products you are ingesting gas directly, leading to bloating in the morning. Not to forget these drinks have excessive sugar as well.
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Water Retention
Water retention is one of the most common reasons for bloating. When your diet has excessive salt, your body may confuse the excess sodium for a lack of water and tend to retain more water, making you feel bloated.
High sugar levels have the same effect on your body. If you have too many artificial sweeteners in your diet, your body is unable to absorb them properly. Studies have proved that this makes the gut retain more water and cause bloating in the morning.
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Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol disrupts the natural balance of the body and tends to cause dehydration. As mentioned before, this results in bloating as the body tries to retain more water to tackle scarcity.
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Menstruation
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Side effects of Over-The-Counter Medications (OTC)
Some over the counter medicines tend to cause bloating.
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Consumption of gas causing food
Several foods are known to cause gas and when you suffer from bloating in the morning. Here are some of these foods –
Which food can cause morning bloatedness?
Love for gassy food, leads to the path of morning bloatedness. Such foods are not absorbed well by the human digestive system. The guilty ingredients of morning bloatedness are:
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Alcohol
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Fried Fatty Foods
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Milk and Dairy Products
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Eggs, fish, and meat
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Smoking
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A Sedentary lifestyle
Chronic Issues with Bloating
While these are the causes of temporary bloated feeling, a chronic feeling is much more than a lifestyle issue. Any chronic condition indicates that there is an underlying health issue that is going unnoticed.
Chronic bloating may indicate that your body is unable to properly process the food that is ingested. It also indicates irregular movement of food and waste through your gut. Here are some gastrointestinal diseases that may cause these problems-
- Inflammation inside abdomen or colon
- Infection
- Irritable Bowel syndrome
- Intestinal Obstruction
- Crohn’s Disease
- Intestinal Cancer
- Colon Cancer
- Stomach Cancer
- Food Allergies or Intolerance
- Liver Disease
- Ovarian or Uterine Disease
Most of these diseases affect the ability of the to process the food as it affects the inner lining of the digestive tract or the ability of the organs to perform their functions. Apart from this, they also affect the absorption of nutrients and movement of the bowels. In most instances chronic bloating in the morning is caused by one of these underlying conditions.
How to prevent bloating in the mornings?
The body is like a well oiled machine. With the right fuel and maintenance, it performs all its tasks, makes you feel good and energized as well. This is a healthy body.
Now imagine a petrol engine being fed diesel. Similarly, eating certain foods can slow down digestion, inhibit the normal balance of the digestive tract and cause symptoms such as bloating and stomach pain.
Since meat, processed food, dairy products etc tend to take longer to digest, they worsen the symptoms. Not only this, oily and fried food provides many calories and fats but adds little nutritional value and takes a long time to digest.
When you’re suffering from gastrointestinal issues and related symptoms, the best way to heal is to switch to a whole food plant based diet.
Eating the wrong kind of food before heading to bed is the major cause of waking up bloated and gassy. Follow these dos and don’ts to have a trouble free morning:
DOs:
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Eat before 2-3 hour before sleep
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Regular Exercise
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Drink more water
Don’ts:
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Avoid sugar intake at night
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Avoid lactose and dairy products
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Avoid fruits after dinner
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Avoid other activities while eating
Takeaway
Waking up bloated occasionally is not of much worry, unless it is continuous. The occasional bloating and nauseous feeling can be taken care of with certain modifications in diet and lifestyle. This is why High Carb Health recommends a healthy lifestyle to heal the body deeply.
