Ep. 71: Still Bloated? 5 Sneaky Causes You Might Be Missing

You’ve cleaned up your diet, tried probiotics, and maybe even done a gut protocol… so why are you still bloated?

In this episode, I’m breaking down 5 sneaky, often-missed causes of bloating that go way beyond food sensitivities. From sluggish bile flow and mineral imbalances to vagus nerve dysfunction and low microbial diversity—we’re digging into the root issues that might be holding back your gut healing.

Plus, I’ll share:
 ✔️ Why daily BMs don’t always mean you’re not constipated
 ✔️ The real reason “just take a probiotic” isn’t a magic fix
 ✔️ What a diverse microbiome actually looks like (and how to get there)
✔️ A rapid-fire list of bloating myths to stop believing today

Don’t miss my free webinar next week:
The Bloat-Free Blueprint – Why You’re Still Bloated (Even After Doing All the Right Things).
Register via the link in the show notes—live attendees get a bonus Bloat-Free Travel Guide!

Transcript

Dr. Heather Finley: 0:03

Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist. I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain. I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues. And now I'm here to guide you. On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort. So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good. My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back. So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief. You are in the right place. Welcome to the love your gut podcast.

0:55

Hello friends, and welcome back to the next episode of the Love Your Gut Podcast. So glad to be here with you today. We are going to dig into bloating, probably the number one thing that I get asked about. So let's just. Reflect back real talk. A few years ago, I felt like I was doing all the things I had cut out, gluten, dairy, packed my lunch, took probiotics, you know, basically lived on leafy greens and lemon water and all the things that I thought that I was supposed to do, and yet I was still so bloated. I remember. Being told that like Kiefer was this like miracle cure for bloat and I drank some and felt like so uncomfortable and bloated after which there's many reasons why that is the case, but I was like, under your jeans by 2:00 PM type of bloated. And I remember just looking in the mirror thinking like, seriously, what is going on? So if this sounds familiar, if you're feeling personally attacked already, don't worry. First of all, you're not alone. And then today's episode really is for those of you who've been eating clean, spending way too much money on the supplement aisle and still feel like you could deflate a balloon by the end of the day, if you go back a couple episodes on episode 67, we talked about when bloating happens and what it tells you. Today we're spilling the tea on four sneaky causes of bloating that aren't usually talked about and that don't require cutting out more foods. I've also got a bonus kind of what not to assume segment at the end. That will just save you from another rabbit hole of food elimination. So let's just jump right into it and we'll start with one of the most overlooked causes of bloating, which is sluggish bile flow. And I know that this is an overlooked cause because whenever we bring this up with clients, they say they've never heard of this before, even though they feel like they've tried all the things. Recently I have posted several reels on sticky poops and hard to white poops and all the things, and they've gone like completely viral, like over a million views on multiple reels. So I know that more people struggle with this than probably are talking about it. Obviously this is not like the most normal girls night talk. Most people. Aren't probably talking about their bowel movements, but I know that this is a big one. So sluggish bile flow is huge. Most people only think about bile when there's a gallbladder issue, but bile is really essential for healthy digestion, for detoxing hormones, and for actually the balance of microbes in your gut. So what is bile and why does it matter? It is a greenish yellow fluid. Made by your liver and stored in your gallbladder, and it is released into your small intestine after meals. So especially when you eat fat, but it's not just about fat digestion. Bile helps emulsify fat so they can be digested and absorbed. It helps support fat soluble vitamin absorption like A, D, E, and K. So if you have chronically low vitamin D vial is something to look into. It actually helps coat and protect the small intestine, and it prevents bacterial overgrowth because bile is a strong antimicrobial. So if you have recurrent sibo, perhaps you need to look at your bile flow. And then lastly, it helps trigger gut motility and helps just move waste through your digestive tract. So when bile is sluggish or sludgy or thick, or when there's not enough of it. Digestion slows down and bloating will ramp up. So some signs that you might have sluggish bile flow would be bloating, especially after high fat meals, sticky, greasy, floating stool, nausea or fullness that lingers. And then hormone symptoms. So like PMS. Estrogen dominance, hormonal acne, bile helps to eliminate excess estrogen, interestingly enough, and it's especially common in postpartum women perimenopause, or anyone with a history of hormonal birth control, gallbladder removal, or someone who's been on a low fat diet. I want to talk about this kind of triangle of like bile, the microbiome and motility Bile is one of the strongest antimicrobials, like I mentioned. It coats the small intestine after meals to prevent bacterial overgrowth. And then it activates cells that release antimicrobial peptides. Peptides are like a hot topic right now, as a second layer of defense. So it's not just health being digest fats, it's actually. Actively regulating your microbiome. Bile flow also affects motility of your gut. Without proper bile signaling, the intestines actually slow down, so that delay will cause fermentation gas. And then of course, what we're talking about today, which is bloating, low stomach acid. Can be a huge trigger for sluggish bile. So that's kind of the kicker here, is you need stomach acid to trigger proper bile release. So if your stomach acid is low, whether that's due to stress or thyroid issues, medications like PPIs and h Pylori infection. Bile may not be released effectively, and this can create a cascade of problems like poor, fat digestion, incomplete absorption, especially fat soluble vitamins, bacteria, bacterial overgrowth. And then more bloating and inflammation. So you're probably thinking, okay, this is all very interesting, but what the heck do I do about this if I actually have this? So you may not need some super fancy protocol. I would recommend starting with some of the tips I'm gonna give you, and then if you need more support, obviously you can continue to do that. But digestive bitters are one of my top tips for bile flow. They help stimulate digestion. They stimulate stomach acid production, which then signals bile flow, so it stimulates natural bile release. Ginger tea or dandelion root tea can gently nudge bile production. You really do need to eat enough fat to signal bile release. So you might have to slowly increase your fat intake, especially if you are sensitive to fats or you find that you're burping a lot after fats. You don't wanna go from zero to a hundred in one day, but slowly adjust. And then support daily bowel movements, bile, caries, toxins and estrogens out of the body. So if you, had your gallbladder removed, you may benefit from ox bile support or just working with a practitioner for deeper bile acid support. There are lots of things that you can do for bile from the lifestyle side as well. So like taking a walk after meals can be really helpful. Castor oil packs can also be really helpful and it's something that we do with a lot of our clients. Then even eating foods like beets and eggs, can help stimulate bile flow as well. So there's lots of different options. You can test out and see. How you do. But bile, if you haven't kind of gotten the gist yet, bile is very important and often very much overlooked. So, cause number two is mineral imbalances. Now I talk about mineral imbalances a lot. I. This can be a huge cause of bloating that is overlooked, especially from a depletion standpoint. I know minerals don't sound like that glamorous, they don't get as much attention as probiotics or food sensitivities. But I'm telling you, for so many of our clients, this is a huge missing piece because their body is just so burnout. It doesn't even have the resources to make digestive enzymes or make bile or make the things that it needs to make. In order to digest and help prevent bloating. So two specific minerals that I wanna hone in on, and there's many more, but two that are really important are sodium and potassium. They're like the spark plugs of your digestive system. They're essential for stomach acid production. Without enough sodium, you can't produce hydrochloric acid, which is needed to break down food and stimulate bile release. Gut motility is really, really important as far as like getting your intestines to actually contract. And potassium helps to move things along in the, the intestines, and most people are just not getting enough potassium in their diet. And this is one of the things that we most often see low on. HT MA testing and then nervous system regulation. This controls the vagus nerve. Which regulates digestion. And we need minerals to help support our nervous system. So if you're low in minerals or just have imbalances in minerals, digestion can be impacted. We even see things like cobalt being really important on. HT MA testing or like when phosphorus is low, this can show us that perhaps you're not absorbing protein the way that you should, which can contribute to lots of bloating. So if you're low or dysregulated in minerals, digestion will be impacted. Food can sit too long and you guess. Bloating can follow. So here's what makes this kind of sneaky. These deficiencies often show up in people who already are trying to be healthy. So postpartum moms, your minerals take a huge hit after, during pregnancy and after birth and during breastfeeding. And so you could be doing all the right things, taking your prenatal. Doing all this stuff. I was actually on a call, on this training that I was doing the other day, and the woman who was hosting the training, it was about minerals and she was saying how the most common pattern she sees in postpartum moms is what we call on HTMA of four lows pattern. And that is where the four main minerals, so calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are all really low. And I would agree with that. Um, I. I, we say, see that a ton with our postpartum moms. I actually just got my HTMA results back. For those of you that don't know, I'm six months postpartum. I did A-H-T-M-A two weeks before I delivered, and then I just retested myself and I was so pleasantly surprised to see how much supporting my minerals, like very intentionally over the last six months has actually helped me to improve my mineral status. That is not something that we see a ton, so I'll have another episode coming out about that specifically. We also see deficiencies show up in people who are already trying to be healthy. Unlike women with burnout, chronic stress, poor sleep, women that are like waking up at 5:00 AM to work out because that's healthy, quote unquote, but they're just not getting enough sleep, and so they're perhaps. Kind of burning the candle at two end at both ends and causing a bigger problem because their body's never getting any rest and they're chronically stressed. We also see this in people who have been on restrictive diets or overexercise for long periods of time or have done extended food eliminations. We get minerals from our food or body, can't make them. And then another one that I always like to mention is anyone who's avoided salt for years. If you were a nineties baby, eighties or nineties, you probably grew up in the culture of, well, salt is bad. I. Salt gives you high blood pressure. And yes, of course we don't wanna be like way, way, way overdoing it on salt, but most people actually need more salt than they think that they do. And we see this a lot on testing as well. So when we have low sodium, we have weak stomach acid and we have low potassium, we'll have sluggish bowels. When we have dysregulated copper and phosphorus, that can show like stomach acid issues and absorption issues. And then when we have low iron. Which is another common one that we see. This can impair thyroid function, which can lead to slow motility and more bloating. So let's not forget that the thyroid and the health of your adrenals are mineral dependent. If your thyroid is sluggish, even if your labs are normal, it could be due to low minerals, not necessarily a lack of thyroid hormone, or that you just need to keep increasing your dose. I've seen this over and over on HCMA results when sodium and potassium and magnesium are depleted. Clients often show slow transit time, constipation with gas or bloating, pretty low resilience to stress, poor detox, poor bile flow, and then a higher chance of harboring things like h pylori or other gut infections. So these imbalances don't just cause symptoms. They set the stage for deeper gut issues to stick around. I had this one client who came to me really bloated. Constipated, tired, just ready to give up. She'd done so many protocols. She'd spent hundreds, thousands on supplements, eliminated every quote, unquote inflammatory trigger food, and nothing really worked. And all we really did to start was support her minerals'cause she was so depleted. Within three weeks, her bloating was like 80% better. No joke. So sometimes it's not about taking more things out, it's about putting the right things back in. So if this is sounding like you, one thing that I was would recommend is just try a mineral rich drink one to two times a day. So this could be like four to six ounces of coconut water, a pinch of sea salt, some cream of tartar for potassium, like a quarter teaspoon. You could put some. Orange juice in there. That's kind of a standard adrenal cocktail. Drink it mid-morning or mid-afternoon when your energy dips or bloat tends to hit. And don't be afraid of salt. You need it to digest your food. Hey, real quick, since we're talking about all the sneaky reasons that you might be bloated, if this episode has you realizing, wait, it might not be the gluten or the broccoli, you need to come to my free webinar happening next week on June 18th. It's called the Bloat Free Blueprint. Why you're still bloated even after doing all the right things. We are digging into the real reasons behind chronic bloating like sluggish motility. Mineral imbalances, bile flow, and the nervous system shut down. Plus what to actually do about them. So if you've tried all the gut protocols, you've cleaned up your diet, but you still feel six months pregnant, by the end of the day, this training is for you. It's totally free. It's a brand new training. I'm super excited to give it. It's my first live training I've done, since having my baby. So there's a live q and a at the end, and if you attend live, I will also give you my bloat free travel guide just in time for your summer trip. So you can register at the link in the show notes, and I absolutely cannot wait to see you there. Okay, so let's get back to cause number three. This one is sneaky because it's not about food at all. It's about your nervous system. So let me introduce you to the vagus nerve, AKA, the super highway between your brain and your gut. It controls digestion from top to bottom, saliva, stomach acid, enzyme release, bile flow, and motil. And it's your body's way of saying, Hey, it's. Safe to rest, digest, and process this meal. But when your vagus nerve isn't firing properly, thanks to chronic stress, trauma, or even just eating while multitasking, your digestion will slow down. Food will sit, it ferments, and then we get bloating. So here's some signs that your vagus nerve might be the problem. Maybe you feel bloated no matter what you eat, you're not sure what hunger or fullness even feels like you eat while driving, working, wrangling to toddlers, or doing 15 other things. Guilty as charged. We all are. You feel wired, tired, or stuck in just this weird like freeze mode even when you're resting. There is a huge nervous system connection with minerals as well, and that's where this gets really interesting. We often see the vagus nerve dysfunction coexist with mineral depletion, especially when you're low in the four main minerals that I mentioned. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. Um, or if you even have high calcium or a calcium shell. And the reason for this is minerals are required to support parasympathetic nervous system, so the rest and digest state. So when you're depleted, your body is always stuck in this fight or flight, or completely shuts down. And this shutdown can look like flat energy, no appetite, stubborn bloating, constipation, feeling numb or frozen even when you're doing all the right things. Things. I see this a lot in burned out moms, postpartum clients, high functioning professionals who are doing everything on paper, eating clean probiotics, meal prep, but really not getting anywhere. And the problem isn't the plan. It's the state your body's in while trying to heal. This is why in Gut, together our six month program, we bring in nervous system experts to help our clients because we know. That without that support, it's really hard to heal if the body is stuck in a chronic fight or flight or a shutdown state. So you can support your vagus nerve by making digestion feel safe again. You can try deep belly breathing before meals humming, singing, gargling. Those all activate your vagus nerve laughing, walking in nature. Even cold splashes, I know cold plunges are really popular right now. Chewing your food. Yes. That signals digestion, and most importantly, you have to give your nervous system credit. Stress isn't just a mental thing. It physically alters digestion, so you cannot supplement your way out of a shutdown. You have to shift your nervous system state. We have a lot of clients, but one in particular that I can think of right now who came to us with daily bloating, constant discomfort, zero appetite. She had tried a lot of different protocols, probiotics, enzymes, elimination diets. I. And her meals were really balanced. Her supplements looked great, but nothing was changing. And when we reviewed her intake and chatted with her, we asked her like, when are you eating your meals? And she usually said, oh, you know, in between meetings or you know, I eat like after my kids eat. And she had a very stressful job. She was on call like twenty four seven. Her nervous system was on call 24 7. She hadn't had a moment of rest and digest in months, so instead of adding more supplements, we really started with some nervous system tools. We gave her access to some nervous system resources. I. Really worked with her on, a minute of deep breathing before meals. And if you don't think you have a minute, then you really need to look at what's going on. How do you not have a minute to support your digestion when really that's gonna support you in so many other ways. We worked on chewing or food, giving yourself permission to sit and eat. She felt like she hadn't had that permission in years, and she noticed a significant difference. It sounds so silly, but for the first time in months, she like. Started feeling hungry because her nervous system was getting out of that constant stress state. So it wasn't about doing more, it was about doing less with more intention. Cause number four is hidden constipation, and I've talked about this so many times. This can be a sneaky one and often missed because you might be thinking, no, I'm not constipated. I go to the bathroom every day. But just because you're going daily doesn't mean you're fully eliminating your bowels. So you can poop in the morning and you can still have slow motility in complete evacuation or a backed up system. And that backup, it often shows up as afternoon bloat, belly distension, or kind of this like, why do I. Look pregnant feeling. So you can think of your digestive system like a bathtub if the drain is clogged even a little. What happens when you turn on the water, that tub fills and eventually overflows. So that is what is happening with your gut. If you're not fully eliminating waste, the system backs up Bacteria, ferment food longer than they should. Toxins and hormones recirculate and things get gassy and stagnant and inflamed. So by three or 4:00 PM you feel like someone inflated you even if you've been going to the bathroom. So really the question that we often ask our clients is like, did you fully empty your bowels? Did you feel relieved after? Do you always feel like you could go more? So this is more common that you think especially in busy moms who barely have time to sit on the toilet, let alone fully relax women with low thyroid function, even if they're on medication, because thyroid definitely regulates gut motility. Clients who are mineral depleted, especially during postpartum or post dieting, and then people who think like one small skinny stool a day is regular. A daily rabbit pellet does not mean you're eliminating. If you're bloated, foggy, hormonal, there is a good chance that you're not clearing out fully. And so we have to fix the constipation first. This step is non-negotiable. If your bowels aren't moving, you need. You will not get rid of your bloating period. You could take enzymes, probiotics, antimicrobials, SIBO protocols, all the things, but if you have stool. Just sitting there, you're feeding the bloat, not fixing it. So when motility slows down, it just opens this door for more bacterial overgrowth, excess fermentation, estrogen dominance, and a list of issues. So motility is really foundational and everything just builds on that. We have clients who all the time are shocked when we tell them that we think they're constipated. you know, we had this one client who said she swore she wasn't constipated. She had had a bowel movement every morning like clockwork, but by lunchtime she was bloated. And when we dug deeper, her stool was small, it was hard to pass, and she never felt complete. And so we had to work on getting her bowels to fully empty. So if you start feeling bloated after a bowel movement or later in the day, progressively throughout the day, you might be dealing with hidden constipation. So you might need to start with the magnesium, some ginger tea to stimulate motility or an abdominal massage like the I love you massage. You might need to look into your thyroid. And might need to look into your minerals to see how things could be connected there. And then you also might just need to take the time to sit on the toilet, elevate your feet, use a squatty potty, try not to rush, and you'll be amazed at what relaxing. Does for a full complete bowel movement. Uh, this is one of those causes where addressing it can completely change your day. No bloating, no pressure, no feeling like you have this like stagnant food baby that you're carrying around all afternoon. Bonus. Cause number five is low food variety. So one of the most underrated causes is low food variety, especially if you think you're already eating healthy. If you're eating the same 10 to 15 foods a week, same smoothie, same safe salads, same three veggies. You could unintentionally be starving your microbiome even if you've cut out all the usual suspects. If your meals are repetitive, your gut bugs are. Bored and under fed. And this matters because your gut thrives on diversity. So different microbes feed different fibers, polyphenols, resistant starches. And so the more plant variety you can eat, the more microbial diversity you cultivate, which is strongly tied to much better digestion, immune function, and then of course less bloating. The American Gut Project, which is one of the largest microbiome studies to date found that people who ate 30 plus different plants a week had significantly more diverse gut microbes than those who ate 10 or fewer. So more diversity equals more resilience and less bloating when something feels off, and this is where people get it wrong. And why probiotics just aren't enough. You cannot just take the best, most expensive probiotic from Whole Foods. If your diet lacks variety. Probiotics alone aren't going to feed your microbes. You need fiber. You need resistant starches. You need polyphenols. So in other words. Prebiotics are often greater than probiotics when it comes to real sustainable gut health. So spore based probiotics can help. They can help rebuild the terrain, but you also need to make sure you're eating enough variety. So here's just some quick tips. Try one new plant food every week. Try herbs. Spices, root veggies, whole grains, sea veggies, and yes, leftovers and frozen veggies do count. This does not have to be complicated or gourmet, and the goal is not perfection. It's diversity over time. So just a couple things not to assume, especially if you've gone dairy-free, gluten-free, everything free, but you are still bloated. So a rapid fire list of what not to assume. It must be the gluten or the dairy maybe, but not always. Food isn't always the villain in every story. If you've thought, I just need a better probiotic. Probably not. If your motility is off, even the best probiotic can make things worse. If you've thought more fiber will fix it, that could be true, but not if your bile isn't flowing or your minerals are depleted. Fiber without function equals more fermentation. You also need enough water. You could also be thinking it's just stress, which yes, as you learn, stress is a huge factor. It is a factor, but it's rarely the only one. So you don't wanna just stop digging there. So the truth is bloating is a symptom, not a root cause. You really wanna look upstream. Minerals, motility, bile nervous system, overall digestion if you want to see real lasting change. So just to recap what we covered today, the five sneaky causes of bloating that go beyond food sensitivities, sluggish bile flow, mineral imbalances, vagus nerve dysfunction, hidden constipation, and then low food variety. So if you want more, I would love to have you on my free webinar next week, the blow free blueprint. We'll dig even deeper how to spot what's actually happening. I'm gonna give some client case studies that are super interesting so you can register. I. At the link in the show notes and I would love to see you there. If you can't come live, you will get the replay. but when you do come live, you will also get the bloat free travel guide just for showing up. So I would love to hear your thoughts about this episode. If you learned anything new, what you found interesting, jump on over to Instagram and send me a message and I'll see you next time on the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.