What Is Burping (Belching)?

Burping (belching) means expelling of the air or other gases from your stomach through your mouth. Many healthy people expel some non-smelling air after eating or drinking. Various health disorders can causes excessive burping. 

What Are Sulphur Burps?

The smell of sulphur or rotten egg burps comes from hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a gas originating from sulphur-containing proteins in certain foods (see below) after they are broken down in the stomach or small intestine by sulphur-reducing microbes.  These microbes may be normal intestinal bacteria or pathogenic bacteria.

continue reading Sulphur or Rotten Eggs Burps (Belching), Foul Smelling Gas

Bloating – stomach distension due to gas built in the stomach or bowel – may be caused by certain foods, intestinal disorders, bacterial overgrowth or food poisoning with bacteria or parasites.

What Causes Bloating Shortly After Eating?

Bloating in the upper abdomen appearing within minutes after starting a meal may be caused by:

• Carbonated drinks, like soda or beer
• Baking soda
• Helycobacter pylori infection of the stomach. Infection with this bacterium is common and may cause nausea, early satiety, bloating and burping shortly after starting a meal 
• Slow stomach emptying, caused by:
  • Fibrous tissue (resulting from chronic infection, ulcer or surgery) obstructing the exit of the stomach (pylorus)
  • Hypothyroidism
  • Atherosclerosis of abdominal vessels or damage of abdominal nerves in long lasting diabetes, or smoking

 
continue reading Bloating After Eating; Foods that Cause Bloating

Hemosiderosis is a chronic iron overload or excess iron levels in body tissues, either throughout the body or only in specific tissues and organs. If this chronic overload begins to cause tissue damage, it is known as hemochromatosis or commonly referred to as iron toxicity.

Iron is an abundant element in the human body and in conjunction with proteins, it forms hemoglobin, an essential compound in red blood cells that is responsible for gas transport (oxygen and carbon dioxide) in the blood. However excess iron intake or abnormal iron deposition can cause an iron overload (hemosiderosis) and eventual iron toxicity (hemochromatosis) if not attended to in the acute stages.

continue reading Excess Iron (Poisoning, Overload, Toxicity) in Blood

FOOD ALLERGY TESTS

How to prepare for allergy testing? Antihistamine and antidepressant drugs should be stopped 3-5 days before testing, but only with doctor’s approval.

Skin Prick Test

A skin prick test can confirm allergies to certain foods. A drop of a dissolved food sample is placed on the forearm, and pricked with a needle and thus pushed beneath the skin; a red bump, appearing in 10-15 minutes (in delayed reaction in several hours) speaks for allergy (1). False positive results are common but false negative results are rare. The size of the skin reaction does not reflects the severity of allergy. Rarely, an anaphylactic reaction (a life threatening immune response) may occur during the test.

continue reading Food Allergy and Food Intolerance Tests

People often ask which foods to add into the diet to stop diarrhea when this has already started. In most cases however, certain foods have to be avoided to stop diarrhea.

Anyway, let’s see in which types of diarrhea, adding certain foods into a diet can help.

1. Toddler’s Diarrhea

Toddlers, fed with excessive amount of fruit juices and lack of dairy products at the same time may develop chronic diarrhea. Limiting fruit juices and adding milk and other dairy products into a diet usually helps.

continue reading Foods to Stop Diarrhea

How Can Healthy Food Cause Diarrhea in a Healthy Person?

Foods that are not problematic as such, may still cause diarrhea (lose bowel movements) even if you don’t have any bowel disease. Why?

1. Overeating

Continuing eating when you already know that you have enough may result in lose bowel movement(s) some hours later. This is especially true in children because their short bowels cannot digest large amounts of food at once. An excessive amount of any food, especially sugary and fatty foods (cakes, ice-cream, etc.) and fibre-rich foods (fruits, vegetables, vegetable broths or cereals) may be the cause.

continue reading Inappropriate Diet and Diarrhea – Foods Causing Diarrhea

Diverticulitis is an inflammation of intestinal diverticles.

In the past it was recommended to avoid foods with hardly digestible peels like pop-corn or beans or those with small seeds like strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers or tomatoes because they could lodge in diverticles and cause its inflammation; to the date, there’s no scientific evidence for this. But if you believe these small food particles may harm you, avoid them anyway.

Related Articles:

• Left Lower Abdominal Pain

References:

• Foods to avoid in diverticulitis  (mayoclinic.com)

Gluten Intolerance

Some people have diarrhea after ingesting gluten-containing food (wheat, rye, barley) but they have no intestinal changes and no characteristic antibodies tTG IgA, EMA igA found in the blood. This condition is called gluten intolerance and it is not an immune disorder (1). The term is often mistakenly used for celiac disease.

Prevention is by gluten-free diet.

continue reading Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Intolerance, Wheat Allergy, Celiac Disease

What Is Celiac Disease (Celiac Sprue)?

Celiac (Greek koiliakos = abdominal) disease is an inherited malabsorption disorder of the small intestine, in which symptoms like diarrhea and bloating are triggered by ingesting gluten – a common name for proteins, present in wheat, barley, rye and possibly oats. 

Celiac disease may be mild or severe, and may affect children or adults. It is considered as a life long disease, and requires permanent gluten-free diet to be controlled.

Other names for celiac disease: celiac sprue, non-tropical sprue and gluten-sensitive entheropathy.

continue reading What Is Celiac Disease (Sprue) – Symptoms, Test, Foods to Avoid

What Is Lactose Intolerance?

Lactose intolerance is inability to digest lactose (milk sugar) because of lactase deficiency. Lactase is an enzyme that breaks down lactose to glucose and galactose, which are normally completely absorbed from the small intestine into the blood. In lactose deficiency, undigested lactose causes bloating and diarrhea, mainly after dairy meals. 

continue reading What Is Lactose Intolerance – Symptoms, Test, Diet, Medicine