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A viewer asks, now that I've started to eat healthier portions and have increased my intake
of fruits and vegetables, I've been having symptoms of bloating and gas similar to irritable
bowel syndrome. What can I do? How can I handle this? Pretty frustrating isn't it. You start
eating all the right things and you start having symptoms that aren't very pleasant.
So there's a couple of ways that you can approach this. First of all, there may be specific
foods that are triggering the symptoms of gas or bloating so one thing you can do is
to try to cut back on most of your fruits and vegetables and introduce one or two at
a meal or at a time. And you may find that there are just certain fruits or vegetables
that seem to trigger this. For some people it's watermelon for other people it's green
leafy vegetables and sometimes when you're able to isolate which of those it is, you
can go ahead and eat other foods without any apparent effect. Another thing that can be
helpful with these kind of symptoms is light exercise. Any time that we move more and the
muscles of the abdomen are exercised the bowel is stimulated to keep moving things along
in a prompt manner so light exercise may also help. Another thing that can be of assistance
is plenty of water. Hydration. Yes we always think of water a drink, things that we drink
as being processed by the kidneys but they actually obviously go through the bowel as
well and if you increase your water intake that can also help with those symptoms of
bloating and gas. Finally if you've sort of tried and you find that many fruits or vegetables
are triggering this and it's a problem, you might want to consider getting more fiber
from just a fiber supplement. There's some that you take in a pill form or others that
you drink and for some people this turns out to be the best method to get the fiber but
without some of the other symptoms. So try adjusting diet to introduce foods slowly to
see which ones trigger the symptoms. Secondly make sure that you do some light exercise,
third increase your water and fourth, if the other things aren't successful, then consider
a supplement.