How to relieve wind/flatulence

There are a few main causes of Flatulence or wind:

1} Swallowing air whilst eating or drinking. Try and eat slower and chew your food thoroughly to combat this. Swallowing air is known as aerophagia.
2} Food that are difficult to digest; these are known to be carbohydrates that are difficult to absorb. Examples of these are cabbage, beans, pulses, cauliflower and apples.
3} An underlying digestive health problem e.g. IBS, lactose intolerance and constipation.
4} Colonoscopy. Air is pumped into the intestines to make this medical procedure easier to perform. I had huge problems with this: severe pain (my face had gone a mottled grey) and nausea/vomiting. Luckily there was nothing in my stomach to come up. No sympathy was forthcoming from the nursing staff, whatsoever, even though I was in severe pain and couldn't walk.

1. Severe Pain -

I mean, really bad! It can, and will, cause me to double-up in pain and then I can hardly walk.

2. Nausea whilst eating -

This is really awful! Imagine eating your meal and then developing the sudden urge to vomit. When this happens to me, my mouth fills up with saliva and I have to wait for several minutes for the feelings to pass. Luckily (or not so luckily) I have yet to actually vomit. However, it's then really difficult for me to eat the rest of the meal because my stomach is so sore.

3. Nausea/Vomiting -

This can happen when I'm not actually in the middle of eating. I can feel my temperature rise and I get hot/cold sweats. It can also make me very tired. I feel sick and vomiting will occur if I don't do something about the nausea in time.

4. Bloating/Feeling of fullness -

If you have too much air in your stomach, the last thing you're going to want to do is eat. When this happens to me, I can effectively go several days if not longer without a decent meal inside of me. I'm usually only able to tolerate liquid or light foods like jelly, salads etc.

Get down on your hands and knees and stick your bum up in the air. The position you'll be in is as if you were looking under the couch or bed for something.

I don't use this one very much as I'm not often mucking about on the floor! But, if I am crouched down talking to Turner (or giving him some much needed love and attention) then this position comes into its own.

Yes, it does work, too! Just not very much but it all helps :)

Lie on your stomach

Like Method One, this method is good for the initial breaking of wind. I.e. Just the one release of gas.

After that, you tend to need additional manipulation of the trapped air with your fingers (see Method Three)

When you're lying on your stomach, manipulate the pockets of trapped air in your stomach and bowels with your fingers.

Right, what you're going to do with this method is to gently (I have to warn you here that it may hurt!) press down with your fingers in the areas of pain. The pain that you feel is the trapped pockets of air. By manipulating these pockets you're effectively helping to break down these huge pockets into smaller bits.

This in turn will help to relieve the pain and may help you to get rid of the air by farting or burping!

Another thing you can do with your fingers is to constantly press on one area of pain. This does the same thing as the manipulation and it works much better on large areas of trapped air.

Like I said, it will hurt but I promise you, it's worth it!

Take an anti-sickness tablet.

The anti-emetics I'm talking about here are the ones you can buy over the counter at the Chemist. These are travel sickness drugs that work on the nausea centre in your brain.

They are very effective at helping you to bring up some of that trapped air which in turn will relieve the nausea.

There is one problem with travel sickness tablets: they may make you drowsy so here is my advice:

Take only half or even a quarter of a tablet if you're not used to taking these drugs.
Use only at night.
Use only at a time when you don't need to do much else! I.e. if you know you're going to stay at home and can sleep the effects off.

I used to rely heavily on these drugs and would need to sometimes take up to 10 tablets at a time. Yes, an overdose! Not a good idea at all.

I would also need to take these tablets every day and would often feel doped up to the eyeballs the following day.

Use a TENS machine

This works in the same way as your fingers but it uses a lot less energy :)

You can place the two pads on the areas of your stomach or bowels that are causing the most problems. You then set the machine to a time frame and a programme and just lie back and relax.

My only problem with the Tens machine is that it will only run for a period of 15 minutes at a time and once the machine is switched off, the problems come back :(

Lie on your back and manipulate the trapped air pockets in your stomach and your bowels with your fingers.

By lying on your back and doing the same thing as if you were lying on your stomach, it's a lot easier to target the areas that are causing you the most problem.

It still hurts, though!

Another alternative would be to stretch your stomach either by placing a pillow under the small of your back, or lying back on the bed and stretching!

This suggestion was given to me by a member of Twine :)

'When I was in the hospital after Caesarean section surgery, I was told by the staff and doctors to walk up & down the hall to aid getting rid of gas (or wind). Lying on one's back & drawing one's knees up to your chest & then bending the legs to both sides done about 15 times generally shows results, too. Exercise of any kind usually helps.'

Charcoal:

Charcoal works by absorbing the excess air and dispelling it safely out of the body. However, I don't find that charcoal works well for me simply because I would need to consume a hell of a lot of the stuff which in turn will cause diarrhoea.

Wind relief medications:

These are just too weak for me. Again I would have to take far too much of the product to get any relief which is not only expensive but not recommended!