The Hidden Connection: How Your Workout Might Be Causing Bloating

Exercise and chronic stress

[video transcript] One of the reasons people get and stay bloated is chronic stress. And that, in my opinion, means that you have to look at background stressors. Typically these are sleep, movement, diet, right? Diet's the obvious one. But I want to talk a little bit about movement.

We can get chronic stress from over-exercise. I have lots of people who come see me, and they're exercising high-intensity interval training (HIIT) five, six, sometimes seven days a week, and then layering on more exercise on top of that. So for example, they may do a high-intensity interval training class, a Pilates class, boxing, CrossFit, whatever, and then afterwards they're walking another 30 minutes on the treadmill or they go for a hike or do even more stuff later in the day. And this is all well and good in theory, but when you have symptoms of bloating, you have to stop and say: Is the background stressor, is the stress of exercise causing or keeping that bloating there?

And many times the answer is yes.

The "Less Is More" Approach to Exercise

I will have my patients like, take a break from exercise—not eliminate exercise because the habit in and of itself is good—but shorten it up. If it's a high-intensity interval training class, shorten it up to 30 minutes. If you can, weightlifting: 30 minutes. Do a HIIT class once a week and do other forms of gentler exercise other times in the week.

Usually with weights, I'll have people space the weight sessions out throughout the week. So they might do, when they were doing it every day and then layering on cardio on top of that, I'll say, "Hey, split those up. Do 30 minutes of weights three times a week, and then go for a walk in between, do yoga in between." Active rest or outright rest. The body needs a little bit of time to recover, and usually when we can cut that exercise intensity in half or at least give the body a little bit more opportunity to rest, we also find that the bloating goes down.

The "Fight or Flight" Gut Connection

Well, why? What does exercise do? Exercise in and of itself is a stressor. And when it's high-intensity exercise, you remain in fight or flight mode for some minutes, even hours after you do the exercise. And what does that do? Well, when we're in fight or flight mode, if you've watched some of my other videos, everything stops. We are not in "rest and digest" mode. That means the absorption of sugars, of food, they stop. And when things stop in the gut, what happens? It happens to any other piece of trash: it starts to ferment, right? It can start to ferment, start to off-gas, and that can start to cause some uncomfortable symptoms. So even though we are exercising, when the gut relaxes, then that gut can push out to expand and accommodate all that gas.

The other thing that happens during exercise, and this is functional, our diaphragm is right over our stomach. The esophagus kind of drops down in there, and then the stomach is right underneath it. Well, when we're in that kind of "fight or flight" mode, lifting something heavy, what do we do? It's like we want to hold our breath, but what we really should be doing is breathing through the exercise, expanding that diaphragm out, and putting it back together. But when we're holding the breath, everything is tight, and that means that the abdomen and everything else remains tight, and it sends that "fight or flight" signal out through the rest of the body. And again, instead of being in a digest mode where the body is sending these neat little waves down, it comes to a screeching halt. So that is one main reason.

Adrenaline, Cortisol, and Bloating

One last thing I will say about stress and "fight or flight" mode is that it pumps your adrenaline. This is great; we're trying to get through a session of exercise, and that's fantastic. But after a minute or two, cortisol kicks in. Cortisol raises the blood pressure, it increases your blood sugar, and those things again, can lead to some bloating or exacerbate bloating.

Once it comes back down, those sugars, if somebody's a yeast former, for example, of a yeast-style gut, as we like to say, all those extra sugars from "fight or flight" mode are starting to drip into your system, and what they're doing while they are helping you with exercise, they're also feeding those yeast sugar, and then we get an extra bloat from that extra gas. So all that off-gassing, once we relax, it just pushes the gut out, and now everybody by the end of the day feels like they're six months pregnant.

Adjust Your Routine, Reduce Bloating

So if you are bloated and you are a heavy exerciser, whether that's high-intensity interval training, many sessions of weights, many sessions of long running, things like that, do call time out. And see if spreading those sessions out and reducing the intensity just for a short time reduces the bloating. And oftentimes, my patients say the answer is yes.

For Your Custom Solution to Bloating...

Everybody's different though. And if you need your own custom solution, I hope you'll check out my website. It's drdanwool.com. I'm on all the socials at Dr. Dan Wool, and I would love to hear from you. Please go ahead and put some comments below, ask questions. I'd be happy to answer them here on the YouTube channel. In the meantime, it's Dr. Wool: "Fix Your Gut, Solve Your Health."