How to Stop Bloating: 5 Things 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 read 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.

The fibre paradox

Fibre is the one piece of bloating advice that can help and hurt, sometimes in the same person. Both halves are true:

• If slow transit is the driver, more fibre — particularly gel-forming soluble fibre such as psyllium — often helps, because it holds water and softens stool. The AGA guidance treats constipation as part of managing bloating for this reason.
• If fermentation is the driver, a large and sudden increase in fermentable fibre can make bloating worse before it makes it better. You have just added more substrate for gut bacteria.

That is why “eat more fibre” is incomplete advice for this symptom specifically. The type, the starting dose and the speed of the increase all matter. Randomised placebo-controlled trials of fibre gels — such as a 2026 trial comparing methylcellulose and psyllium gels against placebo — use defined doses and defined endpoints, which is a reminder that the dose and the form are the variables being tested, not the word “fibre”.

We set out how soluble and insoluble fibre differ separately, including the gradual ramp-up that avoids the adaptation week most people remember as “fibre makes me bloated”. A slow increase with adequate fluid is the version that usually works. Doubling intake on Monday is the version that usually doesn’t.

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.

Common trigger foods, and the order worth testing them

Low-FODMAP lists are long, and most people who try them cut everything at once — which is exactly why they can’t tell afterwards which foods mattered. If you’d rather not run a full elimination, testing one category at a time is slower but produces a usable answer.

One category at a time, one week each, and keep the reintroduction. Phase two is where you find out which of these are your triggers — most people turn out to react to some and tolerate others perfectly well.

A two-week self-trial that produces usable information

The gap between “I tried everything” and “I found the trigger” is usually record-keeping rather than effort. A trial that tells you something looks like this:

1. Baseline week. Change nothing. Note what you ate, when symptoms were worst, and a 0–10 rating. Two days of this feels pointless; seven is what makes the second week interpretable.
2. One change. Remove or change a single thing from the list above. Not five.
3. The same record. Keep the same 0–10 scale so week two can be compared with week one.
4. Reintroduce deliberately. Add the food back and watch. A trigger that doesn’t reproduce on reintroduction probably wasn’t the trigger.

This structure mirrors what the research does — baseline, intervention, reintroduction — and the reintroduction is the step people skip. Skipping it is how a short-term elimination quietly becomes a permanent restricted diet with no evidence behind it.

When the gut is over-signalling rather than over-full

One of the three experiences at the top of this page deserves its own note, because it’s the one most often missed. In visceral hypersensitivity there is no extra gas. Imaging and breath testing can be entirely normal. What has changed is how loudly the gut reports ordinary events.

It matters because the entire dietary toolkit is aimed at a different target. Removing FODMAPs reduces substrate for fermentation, which is useful when gas is the problem and much less useful when it isn’t. The approaches with support in this pattern are instead behavioural and neurological — gut-directed hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioural approaches, and low-dose neuromodulators prescribed by a clinician.

The practical clue is a mismatch between symptoms and findings: severe bloating with normal investigations, or bloating that tracks stress and sleep more closely than it tracks food. If that describes your experience, pushing harder on diet tends to produce a longer restricted list without proportionate relief, and a referral is the more useful next step.

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.

Where gut supplements fit, and the label check that matters

If the free changes and the evidence-backed ones have had a fair trial and you’re still looking at products, the useful question isn’t “which brand” — it’s whether the label lets you compare one product with another at all.

Three checks, in this order:

1. Does it disclose amounts? A proprietary blend listing ten ingredients and one total weight gives you nothing to compare against the research it cites.
2. Does the studied form match the studied ingredient? Peppermint oil without an enteric coating isn’t the intervention the trials used. A probiotic identified only by species isn’t the strain that was tested.
3. Are the purchase terms stated plainly? The refund window, whether billing recurs, and whether the advertised discount depends on a subscription are all part of the decision.

We run those three checks on every gut formula we look at. The Gut Health Supplements Compared hub puts several of them side by side, Best Gut Health and Bloating Supplements ranks them against the same criteria, and our GutSave review shows what the first check looks like on a real label.

None of this changes the order of operations. Supplements are the last step, and they only make sense once the free steps have been given a fortnight.

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 still want to see how a gut formula reads against the evidence: we audited one of the more widely promoted gut products — including the part its own sales page doesn’t disclose.

Which step fits your situation

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.

Related notes

→ Gut Health Supplements Compared: An Evidence-Led Hub

→ GutSave Review

→ How to Stop Bloating After Meals

→ Best Gut Health and Bloating Supplements

→ Soluble vs Insoluble Fiber