Does your stomach gurgle or growl so loudly that everyone can hear it and you can also feel it? Would you like to know why this happens?  Stay tuned and I’ll explain why, and what you can do about it.

Many, many patients complain of stomach or tummy gurgling and rumbling, technically known as borborygmi, and they wonder what it all means and what they can do about it.

Stomach gurgling may be in your actual stomach, or it may be in your small intestine. Doctors like to call it borborygmi, which is a $20 word, but it still just means that your stomach is gurgling. Gotta love the medical system for creating new words for everything.

Gurgling in your stomach or intestines is caused by the movement of gas bubbles moving through the liquid down there. It’s kind of like the gas bubbles produced when you boil water, only in this case it’s not heat that is producing the gas. It’s the improper digestion of your food that is causing a lot more gas and movement than it would under normal conditions.

So what is normal? A little bit of infrequent gurgling that you rarely notice and that probably isn’t audible to anyone else. Everyone has a bit of that occasionally, and it’s normal and harmless. But loud and frequent gurgling and rumbling, especially when it’s associated with any digestive problems such as diarrhea, bloating, gas, heartburn, or abdominal pain, is not normal. It’s also often a part of irritable bowel syndrome.

This kind of gurgling is not simply due to being hungry. When I get hungry, I don’t get audible gurgling. This rumbling and gurgling is due to an unusually high amount of gas production and fluid movement within your digestive tract. Which by the way, does not necessarily mean that you’ll have a lot of flatulence. Although you might.

There are many, many things that can cause this, from food reactions, to bacterial overgrowths, to a Candida overgrowth, to deficiencies in enzyme or acid production, as well as having inflammation in your digestion tract, to name just a few of the causes.

All of these things can cause rumbling and gurgling, but that’s not all they do. The gurgling is a sign. It’s a sign that your digestion is not working like it should, and that means that it’s likely affecting your entire health and your entire body.

Taking products such as Gas X, simethicone, or acid blockers is only treating the symptom, if they even help at all. They do nothing to address the real cause of the problem. Solving this type of problem requires an IBS specialist. At the IBS Treatment Center, we test for and treat all of these potential causes, and we get to the root cause of the problem so that you can get better and get rid of all of that gurgling.

If you need help solving your gurgling or rumbling tummy, don’t hesitate to give us a call.  Since 2005 we have successfully worked with thousands of people all over the United States and the world via telemedicine, and we would be happy to work with you too.

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