Your body will likely experience a period of adjustment when you convert from an omnivore diet, eating both animal and plant foods, to a vegetarian diet, eating only plant foods. Don’t give up on your new diet. By understanding the cause of increased gas and making a few slight modifications to your eating habits, you can make vegetarianism easier on your intestines. A vegetarian diet is often much higher in fiber since plant-protein foods, such as dried beans, soy, and whole grains, are high in fiber — unlike animal-protein foods, such as meat, fish, and poultry. Fiber is also found in nuts and cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. Fiber is an indigestible carbohydrate made up of large chains and tree-like structures of sugar molecules, commonly called starches, or polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. As these starches pass undigested through the digestive tract, they ferment in the lower gut and produce intestinal gas. On the other hand, fiber has many health benefits, including improving cardiac risk, blood sugar control, and digestion. It’s likely you’ll experience more gas when you first switch to a high-fiber vegetarian diet. During this transition phase, your gut is colonizing the new bacteria it needs to aid in digestion. Over time, your body will adjust to the increase of fiber in your diet, and you’ll have less gas and bloating. To help your gut transition, try adding yogurt with live cultures to your diet. If you are following a vegan diet, which contains no animal foods at all, yogurt may be substituted by probiotics, a supplement containing just the bacterial cultures. These live cultures, or probiotics, are good bacteria that help promote the natural balance of bacteria in your digestive tract. One caution: always start yogurt and probiotics slowly to allow your body time to adjust. Increasing too quickly will likely make your gas problem worse, rather than better. Another option to reduce gas is to try over-the-counter products containing the enzyme alpha galactosidase, made from the fungus Aspergillus niger, which helps digest these starches so less intestinal gas forms. You may only need an enzyme supplement during the transition phase to a vegetarian diet. Finally, you may always be more susceptible to gas from certain plant foods. The goal is to include as large a variety of plant foods as possible, but you may want to limit or even avoid a few personally offending gas-producers. Don’t worry; you will still reap the benefits of a vegetarian diet even if you don’t eat every single plant food available. Q2. I often feel bloated in the afternoon and evening, to the point that my belly protrudes. What can I do to help with this? A: As many as one in four adults, most of whom are women, experience bloating or an increased pressure feeling in the belly as the day progresses. Half of these people also have distention, an actual increase in belly size. Once your primary care practitioner excludes a serious medical condition as the cause, try a systematic approach to managing your discomfort. No single solution works for everyone, but you may find some or all of these tools will help keep your symptoms under control. Dietary: Activity: Additional Therapies:
