How to Stop Bloating: What the Guidelines Actually Say to Try First

Bloating is one of the most common reasons adults book a gastroenterology appointment, and one of the most reliably monetised. Search it and you’ll get a wall of supplement pages. What you won’t get, usually, is the order in which clinicians suggest trying things — which starts with the free stuff.

This page is that order. No product until the bottom, and only because it would be odd to leave it out entirely.

First, bloating isn’t one thing

The word covers at least three experiences that get treated as one:

Gas. Actual volume in the gut. Produced when undigested carbohydrate reaches the colon and gets fermented.

Distension. A measurable increase in abdominal girth. You can see it; a tape measure confirms it.

Visceral hypersensitivity. No extra volume at all — the gut is simply signalling more loudly than it should. This is common in disorders of gut–brain interaction, and it’s why some people feel intensely bloated with nothing objective to find.

The distinction matters because the fixes differ. A gut full of gas responds to diet and motility. A gut that’s over-signalling often responds to behavioural therapy or neuromodulators, not to anything you swallow.

The free stuff, in the order worth trying

1. 1

   Check your drinks

   Carbonated water and soft drinks put gas directly into your digestive tract. It's one of the easiest variables to test — stop for a week and see. Sugar alcohols in sugar-free gum and mints (sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol) do something similar and are easy to miss.

2. 2

   Slow down at meals

   Eating quickly, drinking through a straw, and talking while eating all increase swallowed air. Chewing with your mouth closed is unglamorous and genuinely helps some people.

3. 3

   Fix constipation first

   Slower transit means more fermentation time, which means more gas. The AGA guidance explicitly says that when constipation is present, treating it should be part of managing the bloating. Soluble fibre such as psyllium, adequate fluid, and movement are the starting points.

4. 4

   Walk after eating

   Ten to twenty minutes of gentle movement helps gas pass. It won't fix a motility disorder, but it's free and it does something.

What has actual evidence behind it

Low-FODMAP eating

FODMAPs are fermentable carbohydrates that gut bacteria break down readily — the ones in wheat, onions, garlic, beans, apples, pears, milk and honey. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the low-FODMAP approach in functional gut disorders found reductions in bloating and related symptoms across pooled studies.

Two things are worth being precise about, because most pages aren’t:

• It’s a three-phase process, not a diet. Elimination for two to six weeks, then structured reintroduction to identify your triggers, then a personalised long-term pattern. Staying in phase one indefinitely restricts your diet for no benefit.
• It works best with supervision. The AGA guidance says a gastroenterology dietitian should preferably oversee it. Doing it from a food list and never reintroducing is the most common way people get it wrong.

Enteric-coated peppermint oil

This is the supplement with the most trial support for gut symptoms, and the numbers are worth quoting properly. A 2022 systematic review pooled 10 randomised trials covering 1,030 patients. Peppermint oil beat placebo for global IBS symptoms (relative risk of not improving 0.65) and for abdominal pain (0.76), with a number needed to treat of 4 for global symptoms.

The same paper is blunt about the limits: adverse events were significantly more frequent than with placebo (relative risk 1.57), and the authors graded the overall quality of evidence as very low. They called for better trials.

The enteric coating is not a marketing detail. Without it, the oil dissolves in the stomach and tends to cause heartburn rather than reaching the intestine.

Pelvic floor and biofeedback

If bloating comes with difficulty evacuating, the AGA guidance recommends testing for a pelvic floor disorder — and if one is found, biofeedback therapy may help. This is a clinician-led route, but it’s a real one, and it’s the kind of thing that never appears on a supplement page.

What the guidelines say not to bother with

Simethicone (the active ingredient in most over-the-counter anti-gas products) is sold heavily for this. The clinical evidence for it is thin — it’s cheap and low-risk, but it’s not the reliable fix the shelf position implies.

“Detox” products, enzyme blends with no disclosed units, and anything promising to repair your gut lining have no meaningful trial support as bloating treatments. That’s not a controversial statement; it’s the absence of evidence.

When it isn’t a supplement question at all

Most bloating is benign and functional. Some of it isn’t. The AGA guidance flags these as reasons to get evaluated rather than experiment:

• Bloating that persists beyond a few weeks or keeps returning
• Unintentional weight loss
• Blood in the stool, or rectal bleeding
• A change in bowel habit lasting more than a few weeks — particularly in adults over 50
• Feeling full after only a few bites
• Severe or worsening abdominal pain, fever, or vomiting

In women, persistent bloating together with pelvic discomfort, urinary urgency, or early fullness is worth raising with a doctor. It’s rarely anything serious, but it’s the combination most worth ruling out.

None of the above is a reason to buy something. It’s a reason to book an appointment.

The honest summary

If you take one thing from this page: the order of operations matters more than the product. Drinks, pace, constipation, and movement are free and move the needle for a meaningful share of people. Low-FODMAP and peppermint oil are the two interventions with real (if imperfect) trial support. Probiotics are the thing the guidelines specifically advise against for this symptom.

That last point is awkward if you came here looking for a pill. But you’d rather find out here than after three bottles.

If you’ve worked through the free options and the evidence-backed ones and you’re still weighing whether a supplement is worth trying, we reviewed one of the more widely promoted gut formulas — including the part its own sales page doesn’t disclose.