19: Why Your Core Affects Your Gut More Than You Think

19: Why Your Core Affects Your Gut More Than You Think

What if your bloating isn’t actually about food?

When your stomach suddenly becomes visibly distended, it’s easy to blame the last thing you ate. But bloating and abdominal distension aren’t always caused by excess gas, food intolerances, or SIBO.

In this episode of Team Gut Girls, Dr. Christina Carew, Dr. Whitney Baxter, and Dr. Dominique Vanier go beyond the food list to explore an often-overlooked part of gut health: how your diaphragm, abdominal wall, and pelvic floor work together to manage pressure inside your abdomen.

We start with the story of a patient experiencing dramatic abdominal distension — sometimes becoming even more pronounced after a bowel movement. Despite elimination diets, SIBO testing, supplement changes, and other attempts to find a digestive trigger, nothing seemed to explain what was happening.

That case led to a different possibility: abdominophrenic dyssynergia (APD), a pattern where the diaphragm and abdominal wall don’t coordinate pressure as expected. The result? Significant visible distension can occur even when excess gas isn’t the primary problem.

We break down the difference between bloating and distension, how constipation and pelvic floor tension may contribute, and why constantly sucking in your stomach, bracing your core, or simply doing more Kegels isn’t necessarily the answer.

We also look at the postpartum picture, including diastasis recti, and how changes to the abdominal wall can affect the way your abdomen looks, feels, and manages pressure.

Most importantly, we give you practical ways to start looking at your symptoms differently — and language you can use when talking to your healthcare practitioner.

What You’ll Learn

• The difference between bloating and visible abdominal distension
• What abdominophrenic dyssynergia (APD) is
• How the diaphragm, abdominal wall, and pelvic floor work together as a pressure-management system
• Why visible distension doesn’t necessarily mean you’re producing too much gas
• How constipation, straining, and pelvic floor tension can enter the picture
• Why constantly “sucking in” or bracing your stomach may be working against you
• Why more Kegels or more core tension doesn’t automatically mean better function
• How postpartum changes and diastasis recti may contribute to abdominal bulging or distension
• Simple strategies including 360-degree breathing, relaxing your abdomen, and changing your toileting posture
• What to ask your practitioner when food doesn’t seem to explain your symptoms
• Red flags that mean bloating or distension should be medically evaluated

Chapters

00:00 Welcome + The Patient Case
00:14 A Case of Extreme Abdominal Distension
01:48 What Is Abdominophrenic Dyssynergia (APD)?
03:23 Your Core as a Pressure-Management System
05:05 Bloating vs. Distension
06:05 Social Media Core Myths: Sucking In & Kegels
07:58 Myth Busting: Is Food Always to Blame?
09:40 The Diaphragm, Breathing & Gut Symptoms
12:45 The Pelvic Floor: Your “Exit Strategy”
17:19 Postpartum Changes & Diastasis Recti
20:23 Practical Strategies You Can Try
22:48 How to Talk to Your Practitioner
24:47 Red Flags: When to Seek Medical Care
26:16 Key Takeaways + Wrap-Up

If you’ve spent months — or years — trying to figure out which food is making you bloated, this episode offers another way to think about the problem.

Sometimes the better question isn’t only “What’s happening inside my gut?” but “How is my body responding to what’s happening inside my gut?”

Because Better Gut Health Changes Everything.

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19 Why Your Core Affects Your Gut More Than You Think

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Team Gut Girls.

Case of Extreme Distension

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Uh, today we’re gonna talk about a patient that I had that was convinced that, that food was the cause of her bloating, and it completely wasn’t, and then this is a whole another area we can explore. So she’s just sending these pictures, and her abdomen was, like, really flat, and then she’d send it to me, and it was, like, enormous.

It really did look like she was extremely pregnant, and it was very dramatically distended. And the craziest part of it was that, um, part of it was maybe related to, like, eating or she thought it was happening around eating, but the most of the bloating would happen when she evacuated. So she would have a poop, and then she would have this enormous belly that distended from it.

Um, and so she was, like, restricting foods and did a SIBO test [00:01:00] and changed her supplements and, like, stopped… Tried all these other crazy diets and, like, she was like, “I am always bloated.” And her, um, physician, one of her physicians, was like, “Oh, you must have endometriosis,” and gave her, like, Diane-Gest. And then that didn’t do anything, and so, like, she just kept trying all these things over and over again, and she seemed like…

It seemed like she was really bloated because it was super visible. Like, it was crazy in the pictures that she would send. Um, but it was, like, super disproportionate to, like, her body and what she was eating and what was going on

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: So what was actually producing all of… Like, was it gas or what was producing that?

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. So this was, like, the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes, right? This is how we learn is that we just keep, like, trying to figure things out.

What Is APD

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And so, um, what we ended up kind of figuring out was we thought that she had abdomino phrenic dyssynergia, or sometimes called, like, APD. It’s basically, [00:02:00] like, the abdominal and, uh, that…

Think about, like, sort of the diaphragm is the lid and the pelvic floor is the base. And so they need to move in coordination for things like breathing and to be able to digest food. And when that coordination becomes, like, reversed or something gets stuck, then that’s sort of, like, when everything started happening for her.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah. Yeah. So instead of the abdomen managing this pressure efficiently and accommodating, the diaphragm was moving down and the abdominal wall moves outward, right?

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So it’s, like, basically, like, pushing everything out.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yes.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Um, so, like, squeezing the top of a balloon and, like, so… And seeing, like, how it, like, pushes out in the side.

And so where the contents go is, like, where the pressure pushes them to go. And so she was, like, super distended, but she actually wasn’t really making gas. It was just that, like, the muscles were contracting in the [00:03:00] sort of wrong way.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And this is so interesting about the pelvic floor and the diaphragm. We kind of…

We don’t think about this when we eat, right? And we’re seeing all this expansion. But it is this, like, contained system, and it’s not work- one isn’t working with the other. It’s a contained box. The diaphragm abdominal wall as well and the pelvic floor are like this pressure management system.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Pressure System Explained

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: I, I, like, I like to think of it kind of like a cylinder. So you’ve got the diaphragm on the top, like Christina said, the pelvic floor at the bottom or underneath. The abdominal wall sits around the sides. And then when you inhale, those structures should respond together. Like, they’re supposed to work in harmony.

Um, and when you have, like, a poor coordination or, like, chronic bracing, constipation, pelvic floor overactivity, other things like postpartum abdominal wall changes, um, or even diastasis recti, which we’re gonna talk a lot more about after. If any of those are layered into this picture, then we can see, like, that pressure is just not managed efficiently, and then that can result in [00:04:00] distension

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And it was, like, super hard to figure out because this isn’t really on our radar always.

Like, we don’t think about our muscles contracting in reverse order, especially because it’s, like, not, it’s not completely obvious, right? We started ruling out all these other things, and so instead of her having, like, another conversation about, like, what other foods do I need to remove or, you know, am I constipated or things like that, now it was, like, more like, well, how is the body managing pressure, and are you breathing, and are you straining, and, you know, when are you relaxed, and how are you eating, and what’s happening with, like, the actual muscle contraction?

And even within that, it was super challenging. At the time, I was working in a clinic that was primarily physiotherapists. I think there was 14 physiotherapists that worked there, and not a single one of them had learned about this in school, and so we were kind of all managing it together, trying to figure out, like, well, how do we help this patient?

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And that’s why we’ll often refer to a pelvic [00:05:00] floor physiotherapist, right? ‘Cause they do have that extra training, and that’s on their radar.

Bloating vs Distension

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Um, and another important distinction with bloating, it can be a sensation or distension. So that distension is that visible, like, pregnant belly at the end of the day or tight, your tight pants, and they don’t always mean excessive gas production.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have talked about that in other episodes, where, like, the bloating is this feeling of a balloon, like a subjective feeling, but distension is an increase in girth, so you can see in the mirror that, like, y- the circumference has increased. Um, and I think that that’s really probably the takeaway of the story.

So sometimes the question isn’t just, like, what’s happening inside my gut, it’s also how, how is my body responding to what’s happening inside my gut. Um, and so today we’re gonna be looking outside the food list. We’re connecting the diaphragm, pelvic floor, abdominal wall, including postpartum diastasis recti, and then also asking whether the body is [00:06:00] coordinating pressure well and how all of that intertwines with each other.

Social Media Core Myths

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: So

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: on our recurring segment, we talk about what’s trending this week on social media. So what’s trending this week? Um, the social media version is, you know, if your postpartum belly sticks out, you just need to engage with your core all day. You know, suck your stomach in, definitely add Kegels. Kegels are the solution to everything.

Um, or do a flat belly core challenge. So let’s talk about that.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And that’s how cool the body is, you guys. It’s so more complex than- Yeah … you know, these quick things that we think about. It has to work in coordination. And the problem is that more tension in these areas doesn’t automatically mean better function.

So if you’re always strengthening, a muscle doesn’t work with just tension. There’s a lot going on. A pelvic floor has to contract, but it also has to [00:07:00] lengthen, so our muscles actually overlap with each other, so they have to lengthen back out to reset. So if it’s not doing this and it’s not coordinating with our breathing, then it’s, it’s not working optimally.

So the abdominal wall has to manage pressure rather than just simply stay rigid, ’cause that would be uncomfortable too.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Mm-hmm. And in postpartum, a persistent abdominal bulge can be all kinds of things. It can be bowel distension, constipation, pelvic floor dysfunction, abdominal wall changes, diastasis recti, posture, scar mechanism, mechanics, you know, body composition changes.

So there’s all these other complexities, as you have learned by listening to all of these reasons for bloating, that a reel isn’t just going to tell you, like, one problem and one solution that’s definitely your issue. But it might give you some ideas of things to check out.

Myth Busting Food Blame

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: All right, so

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: let’s move on to our next segment, some myths. We love a good myth busting, so here’s one. If you’re bloated, you must have eaten the wrong thing, have a food intolerance, or have too much bacteria making that gas.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. And so this is sort of where we started, like food and fermenting certainly matters, and there’s people who are stuck in fear and eating like endless elimination diets or stay on FODMAP diets forever.

And, and even if you’re eating clean, and your gut is friendly, and you’ve done all the supplements, you might still be bloating because the pressure in your abdominal cavity is unbalanced. So it’s like a, sort of like a can of soda, right? The diaphragm is the lid, and the pelvic floor is the bottom, and the out- and the organs live inside.

And if the lid and the bottom don’t move, then the pressure builds up and the gas gets trapped, or the organs get moved, and then that distension happens. And so when we’re thinking about the diaphragm and the pelvic floor, we wanna [00:09:00] think about that as a potential contributor to the distension, or bloating, or constipation, or even incomplete evacuation because remember, the pressure’s changing.

And so instead of things moving in harmony, we’re getting things kinda like pushing together

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So if all those parts, parts aren’t coordinating, uh, the answer is not gonna be another elimination diet, right? Like we talked about, it’s not about the food piece, it’s about more broad, more broad than that.

Um, and so that’s where we want people to be able to zoom out from, from the food.

Diaphragm and Breathing Clues

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Okay, so let’s talk about the top

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: part, so the diaphragm. So the diaphragm partially helps us with breathing for sure, but it also regulates the pressure. So when the… it moves down with the breath, it massages the stomach and the intestines, it stimulates the vagal tone, so this is like the vagus nerve, and it improves gut [00:10:00] motility.

When it doesn’t move well and it’s stuck, we might find more shallow breathing or rib rigidity or intra-abdominal pressure. Um, one of the ways that you can sometimes tell this is happening is if you actually, um, follow down your chest, like down to the, the end of the breastbone, so where the ribs start to splay out.

If you press inside on the edge of the rib and it feels really tender or tight, that’s actually where your diaphragm sits. And so for lots of people, that point is really tender, which tells us, like, that maybe the diaphragm isn’t moving very well. Uh, we check this out a lot of times when people have a lot of anxiety, because you get anxious when you’re only breathing from, like, sort of the top part.

And, um, so if you try not taking a full breath and just, you know, rapidly talking and breathing only, say, from like your, your heart up, um, what you’ll find is that you’ll feel more [00:11:00] anxious than if you’re able to, like, breathe deeply. It’s why, you know, when someone’s anxious you say, “Just take a deep breath,” right?

It’s actually intuitive. So that pressure, instead of moving up and down, has to go somewhere, and so the diaphragm changes its shape every breath and participates in, like, pressure regulation in the trunk. So on an inhale, it actually pushes down, and so the ribcage expands and the pelvic floor responds to that pressure change.

So if you’re kind of shallow breathing, then you’re not gonna get that pressure change. And so it sometimes is hard to diagnose that bloating sensation because the person who’s coming in has all these layers of things on top of each other. But some of the clues that you might start be listening for is, you know, does it have to do with their posture or lying down or bowel movements?

Um, you know, are they bracing? Are they sucking their gut in? Is that part of why everything is not moving? Some- like that Facebook or, or [00:12:00] Instagram reel suggested. Um, and then also, like, are they getting any sensation in that area? And this is a great place to, like, hook in with a osteopath. Um, osteopaths are great at helping to really understand the breathing part and the diaphragm part, so certainly worth a closer investigation

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah, and why, like you said, like why taking a deep belly breath isn’t just telling you to calm down, that it’s just anxiety, but it is like this physical piece we don’t always think about.

So that was the top portion, the diaphragm.

Pelvic Floor Exit Strategy

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Let’s talk about the pelvic floor, so

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: the often forgotten exit strategy, this base that holds us together.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: So it should lengthen and descend slightly with a breath in, so it accommodates as well. But for many people, there’s chronic clenching, there’s guarding, pain, trauma, posture, over-recruitment from core bracing [00:13:00] culture.

Um, so just these mechanics that have been like sunken in. And a tight pelvic floor is poor pressure release, so all that trapped gas, it causes the bloating to worsen throughout the day. So it’s going to go somewhere, right? It’s gonna expand, and you’ll see that distension. The pelvic floor isn’t supposed to be clenched all day.

We talked about this. It needs to support you, but also be able to, to allow that accommodation to be able to relax, and allow that bowel movement to relax, ’cause that needs to happen too. So people can develop guarding or over-recruitment with pain, high stress, postpartum changes, constipation, repeated straining, or the habit of holding the stomach in, and sometimes these are subconscious, you don’t notice that you’re doing it.

The outlet, um, ends up not coordinating well, and coordination may need, um, you may need both at different times. Just like if you injure one ankle, all of a sudden your body totally [00:14:00] accommodates to be able to walk in a different movement pattern, so you don’t bend that ankle maybe, and then your hips might just start to hurt.

So the body is really good at sorting itself out, and we might not even notice this

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: I find Kegels interesting. I, I wanted to maybe talk just like a another point there because, you know, we, we all have a lot of patients that are seeing their pelvic floor physio, so we’re getting the feedback, and it seems like kind of the, the, the recommendations about Kegels has changed somewhat recently, where I have quite a few patients, they have a tight pelvic floor, and they’re told to do a Kegel, but then they’re told to really focus on the relaxation part ’cause we wanna like train the way the brain communicates that muscle to understand what it feels like when it’s like tighter, and then what it feels like when it’s, uh…

when the tone is appropriate, when it’s relaxing. So I thought that that was an interesting point. That’s the feedback I’ve been getting.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: I would say even like some of the clothes people choose to wear, right? It like really sucks in the gut, and it likes really tight or compression. Like, some of that is [00:15:00] even affecting the way the body moves, so hopefully the fashion that’s like more barrel pants and big clothes will actually help people to feel a little more comfortable in relaxing some of those muscles.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And looser bras too.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah. Make me think about the upper- That’s a good point. Yeah. Like, the s- the tight sports bras, yeah, they don’t, they don’t do it for me.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: No.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So this can kind of feel like bloating, so it’s not uncommon for people to feel like they might be bloated ’cause they’re seeing this, you know, visible distension, and they may feel like their waistband is tight, or they feel like they might be full of air, or they’re having incomplete vali- evacuation, or it feels like, you know, it’s better once it’s lying down.

But those don’t necessarily mean that that is a bloating from something that’s internal. That’s really what we want people to, to know of. And so that the pressure is like sort of normal, and it should have, you know, mobility [00:16:00] within it, but that sort of like constant strong sensation that’s like repeated day over day and doesn’t seem to be connected in other ways, this might be something that people need to look into.

I would say the people that I see it in are like more constipated folks, for sure.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Um, people that are postpartum, people that are high stress or high cortisol ’cause there’s like a lot of that sucking in, lots of people with lots of anxiety. Um, anyone that’s like, you know, does something for a living where they’re like really conscious about how they look, so like models and people who are like sucking in their gut so often, or they’ll, they’ll even talk about it, like sucking in their guts.

And some, um, some women even will wear, uh, like corsets. Like, it- Right … and some of those are more costuming, and some of them are maybe to help. Um, so that breathing- Mm … mechanics and that pelvic floor coordination needs to be a part of your GI workup. It’s not just what’s on the inside, but like how are all those muscles recruiting?[00:17:00]

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: So take off those Spanx at the wedding reception, just make sure that’s accommodated.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Okay, so let’s talk about postpartum Um, another piece of the bloating puzzle is postpartum, like how those

Postpartum & Diastasis Recti

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: muscles, uh, recover. So there’s something called diastasis recti. So if you’ve had a baby, you’ve heard of this. Um, and it also often gets missed. So it’s essentially separation or stretching throughout the midline connective tissue of the muscle, the rectus abdominis muscle.

So it’s really common after pregnancy. Even like as you’re pregnant and exercising, we’re taught to, once you can see the bump, if you’re doing any, like core bracing, not to, to avoid the coning of your abdomen because those muscles are and should be getting stretched. So really working with your pelvic floor physio, um, throughout pregnancy and postpartum to keep that strong ’cause [00:18:00] it can really change how the abdominal wall, um, looks and manages this pressure load.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And personally, that’s something I’m still experiencing almost a year after pregnancy, and we end up seeing diastasis recti, uh, the risk of it increase per subsequent pregnancy. But, um, you know, it- pelvic floors are really, really helpful in that area and in terms of diagnosing and supporting basically the closure of those muscles.

But this is important because someone may describe like a bloating or pregnant-looking abdomen when part of what they’re seeing is like an, the abdominal wall distension, or it’s basically like the reduced tension. So like what should feel like a corset through your muscles is no longer strong. Um, and sometimes that’s layered on top of true digestive bloating or constipation.

So the person may say like, it, as the day goes, goes on, I’m finding that I’m more distended or bloated, but we can have a digestive piece happening concurrently with the diastasis recti, and that’s where it can be really [00:19:00] confusing for people.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Um, but there’s also emerging evidence connecting postpartum diastasis recti with, um, these gut and bloating symptoms.

So a recent prospective surgical study reported large improvements in bloating and constipation after this diastasis recti was repaired. Uh, so it’s interesting, but it doesn’t prove that this is the cause of bloating for every postpartum person. Um, we know things can change, pelvic floor can change, um, the hormones on the gut, listen to those episodes, that can all change things too.

So it’s not always surgery that’s the answer, but it does tell us that the abdominal wall belongs in the conversation.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if you’re a listener and you’re postpartum and your abdominal area feels unsupported or even like if you dome or cone when you’re doing like basic exercises, um, or the distension doesn’t behave like the way like a normal food reaction would, you know, you may wanna consider asking for an assessment [00:20:00] rather than assuming that like you need to lose weight or eliminate more foods.

Practical Tips to Try Now

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So what are things that you can try while you’re waiting for an assessment? Um, certainly stopping sucking in your stomach. Chronic abdominal bracing’s gonna increase that

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: pressure and shut down that diaphragm movement, so letting your belly hang out or Buddha belly, um, and be soft, especially after meals.

And so that may mean choosing clothing that feels more comfortable to do that in or, um, being able to sit and relax after eating instead of racing around. So, um, stop sucking in your stomach.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah. And another one we talk about all of- to all of our gut patients, whether it’s, like, bloating from something like this that’s physically or if it’s a nervous system IBS issue, is 360 degree breathing.

So basically deep belly breathing. So placing [00:21:00] your hands on your ribs, um, or your chest, but just making sure that area of your body isn’t expanding sideways and we’re not breathing through our chest. Really feel it through the belly. So practice slow, wide rib breathing, so really getting it into the del- the diaphragm, um, and let your belly relax after meals.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and part of that 360 is also watching where your belly button goes. So when you’re doing it properly, your belly button should actually be coming in and up, like at a 45 degree angle. So actually, like, visually looking at how that pressure is managed. And then another final point would be, like, considering changing somebody’s pooping posture.

Uh, and what we mean by that is, like, feet elevated, leaning forward, exhaling gently. Um, we know that straining can affect pelvic floor, cause pelvic floor gripping, and then we may see more bloating later. So thinking about, like, how, how somebody’s knees are angled according to their hips, and then that can support a better evacuation [00:22:00]

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: If you don’t know- All right, so we- I was like, if you don’t know, go to the Squatty Potty website.

Yeah. There’s great diagrams.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our favorite.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: No affiliation.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: No affiliation. It could be a couple books. You don’t have to buy anything fancy.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: No. Um- But their website has great images on it, which sort of, like, helps you to understand, like, why are we changing things. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah.

Talking to Your Practitioner

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Um, okay,

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: so in every episode, we always like, uh, you to walk away with how, knowing how to talk to your practitioners about this and kind of what to do next.

So we’ve given you some examples here of how to verbalize your symptoms. So one example is saying, “My bloating feels more like pressure

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: or distension rather than a food cause. I can’t line any food triggers up with my bloating. Could we consider a pelvic floor, breathing, or abdominal wall mechanics?” And if you can find a pelvic [00:23:00] floor physio in your area, those

It’s a great addition to your healthcare team. Um, or if you’ve had babies and you’ve noticed more bloating, um, and postpartum and have persistent abdominal bulging or distension, could I be assessed for diastasis recti and pelvic floor coordination? ‘Cause this is not always assessed for postpartum or even during.

Um, my gut tests have been reassuring, but my symptoms change with posture, breathing, or bowel mo- movements. Would pelvic health physio be appropriate to discuss? And checking into if you’re having constipation or you’re feeling you’re straining, it feels incomplete, really using these words with your doctor to be asked for a pelvic floor assessment.

So you can bring this checklist in from the sympt- uh, from this episode to really verbalize these symptoms and ask these questions with your practitioner.

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And depending on where you live, um, you may not actually need to get a referral to [00:24:00] have physiotherapy, so check, um, in your area. So wh- where we live, um, you can see a pelvic floor physio or a physiotherapist without having a physician referral.

So, um, so it can be helpful. Like, you can even explore some of this on your own without having to engage your whole healthcare team.

Red Flags and When to Seek Care

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So, uh,

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: as always, we wanna just think about, like, red flags. Red flags are, like, when things are happening and you’re trying all these things, um, to figure out what might be going on with your health, you wanna make sure that you’re engaging people to help you to figure out if something is going wrong.

And so certainly new, persistent, or progressive distension always

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: should get a medical evaluation, especially if it’s accompanied with things like weight loss or vomiting or blood in the stool or worsening pain or fever or any kind of, like, mass or hardness that you can feel, [00:25:00] um, changes in your appetite, any kind of bleeding, or any change in bowel habits, um, because we wanna make sure that the bloating is a, a functional issue of something that’s going on and, and not something larger and it’s just a, a symptom that’s, um, being missed or not being, uh, investigated thoroughly.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and postpartum concerns like the ones we’ve talked about, such as painful, painful bulge, non-reducible bulge, like a suspected hernia sometimes can happen concurrently with diastasis recti, uh, like significant pelvic pressure or just symptoms that are worsening rather than recovering w- you know, should be assessed rather than self-treated from, uh, TikTok or social media.

Yeah.

Key Takeaways and Wrap Up

Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So hopefully this gave you some starting points between, you know, diaphragm movement, pelvic floor coordination, pressure, gas and [00:26:00] distension, and maybe it’s not that your gut is inflamed, a sort of internal piece, but more compressed.

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. And for postpartum, don’t forget diastasis recti as a possible contributor to the way the abdomen looks, feels, and manages pressure,

Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: um, without assuming that it explains every symptom.

So

Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: we hope you liked this episode of Team Gut Girls. Uh, we hope you took… got some takeaways, because better gut health changes everything