Why Stress Makes You Bloated—and How to Deal With the Uncomfortable Symptoms

When you’re at your breaking point emotionally, feeling physically bad is the last thing you need—but all too often, the two go hand-in-hand. Even though the pairing might seem random, stress can be accompanied by bloating (and even other GI issues), experts tell SELF, even if your diet hasn’t changed at all. Meaning: If you’re having a bad day, you may well start to notice some stomach discomfort on top of everything else.

There’s even a name for this connection, which you may have heard before: the gut-brain axis. “Our gut is like our second brain, and it’s very impacted by our nervous system,” Rebecca Ditkoff, MPH, RD, a certified intuitive-eating counselor and the owner of the New York City-based private practice Nutrition by RD, tells SELF. Your digestive system can mirror your emotional state because the two are closely linked.

While the gut-brain axis can work in your favor when you’re on top of the world, it’s not necessarily on your side in this specific scenario (as your stomach knows all too well). Here’s how stress can trigger bloating via this pathway—and what you can do to make yourself feel better in both body and mind.

Why stress can cause bloating

Your enteric nervous system, a component of the autonomic nervous system, serves the GI tract and regulates digestion, so it’s responsible for the association between the two. “We kind of exist in two [nervous system] states,” Melissa Groves Azzaro, RDN (a.k.a. the Hormone Dietitian), a practitioner who specializes in women’s health, tells SELF. First, there’s fight-or-flight (and we’ll delve into the second state, rest-and-digest, more in the next section): Some source of danger (like a pack of wolves in prehistory, or a missed deadline in 2026) triggers intense emotional distress, releasing a flood of stress hormones—cortisol, epinephrine (better known as adrenaline), and norepinephrine (or noradrenaline)—from the adrenal glands. Way back when, these physiological changes would have prepared you to either run away (flight) or stand your ground (fight).

During this physiological transition, your digestive system essentially shuts down to allow your body to prioritize escape over food breakdown, according to Azzaro. (Because in a classic fight-or-flight situation, the former would obviously be way more important than the latter). Basically, “all the blood is being pulled away from your digestive system and towards your muscles” so that you have the energy to run, Azzaro explains. Digestive muscle contractions dwindle, as does digestive secretion production.

Of course, the primary side effect of this shift is that your digestive system isn’t working normally, resulting in impaired digestion—and all the awkward-to-talk-about symptoms that come with that. “You’re not breaking things down, so they’re sitting in your stomach longer than they should and they’re not being broken down all the way,” Azzaro says. And when food lingers in the GI tract for a long time, “it’s going to be more likely to trap gas,” Ditkoff explains. Presto: bloating.

FWIW, stress can also result in the opposite outcome. Depending on the person, it could potentially trigger cramping and diarrhea, Ditkoff says. (In fact, that’s why people with IBS might experience flares when life takes a bad turn, and even why runners sometimes poop during races, Azzaro says. In that case, they’re literally in flight.)

If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter to finish a paper or received an angry email, you might be familiar with this experience (though you probably didn’t know what to call it or why it happened). Even Azzaro, as an RD, isn’t immune: “If I’m stressed and I try to shove lunch in my face when I’ve got a 15-minute break, it makes me feel worse,” she says.

What you can do to tackle stress-induced bloating

Now that we’ve covered fight-or-flight, you might be wondering about the second nervous system state we referenced earlier (and, yes, this one also has a fun shorthand). Nicknamed rest-and-digest, it’s basically the opposite of fight-or-flight. When you’re in rest-and-digest mode, everything’s peachy: Your stress hormones aren’t spiking, blood is flowing to the digestive system, and everything is functioning as it should (no muscle-contraction disruptions here). “Things are being broken down and then distributed to where they need to be,” Azzaro says.

In other words, “you’re able to digest your food better when you’re in a calm state,” Ditkoff says—and, in turn, “it’s really important to try to be in a calmer state when you’re eating.”

Still, simply not eating when you’re stressed isn’t healthy or advisable either (and, in fact, could only make symptoms worse)—so here are some strategies you can try to either allay that bloating or avoid exacerbating it.

Practice stress-reduction techniques

We know, we know: Relieving stress is easier said than done (and might even feel impossible depending on your situation). But there’s still a chance it’ll help, so it doesn’t hurt to try. Both Ditkoff and Azzaro are fans of deep breathing for stress relief: “It can help return you to that calmer state,” Ditkoff says. Try a classic four-square rhythm: Breathe in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and hold for a count of four. Repeat a total of four times.

Take an actual lunch break

Ditch your sad desk salad and have yourself a real meal—one where you’re enjoying and savoring your food rather than bolting down bites robot-style between responding to emails and taking meetings. Otherwise, you’re just “eating mindlessly while you’re working instead of actually focusing on the eating process,” Azzaro says. “Shoving something in your mouth while you’re typing with the other hand is not ideal. You want to actually take that time to have a meal and digest and absorb it.”

Having what Azzaro calls a “dedicated eating place” helps too: “Put your food on a plate, sit down at a table, don’t eat on the run.” When Azzaro, who is now based in New Hampshire, was working in New York City, she’d try to walk to a nearby park to eat for a more relaxed atmosphere. Whatever your preferred location, she recommends scheduling an hour-long lunch break and taking the first 20 minutes to chill out. While that might not always be possible for you depending on your workload and office culture, sit down and take a few deep breaths before you dig in at a minimum, according to Ditkoff. People are more likely to swallow excess air when they’re stressed, since they eat fast, she explains, “so that can also impact things” (read: amplify existing bloating).

Pass on foods that are naturally harder to digest

While veggies are super healthy on the whole (and we should probably all be trying to level up on them), some types, especially cruciferous varieties like broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, tend to be tough on your stomach—so shoveling down a bunch of greens could only make your situation worse. Take a salad: “It’s going to be really hard for your stomach to break that down on the fly while you’re under stress,” Azzaro says. “Things that are cooked will often fit better.”

Instead of another Sweetgreen bowl, opt for something easily digestible, like a liquid item such as a soup or smoothie. That way, you’re not assigning a lot of work “for your digestive system to have to do when it doesn’t have the energy,” Azzaro says. Besides the digestibility of your food, the temp can matter too: “Warmer foods and warmer drinks tend to help with digestion,” Ditkoff says (another point in favor of soup!). While Ditkoff isn’t certain of the mechanism, she imagines the warmth helps relax your digestive muscles, just as it would if you applied a heating pad to a crampy belly or tense back. In addition to roughage, sugar alcohols—a class of sugar substitutes predominantly found in sweet treats like cookies, baked goods, and ice cream—can also be more difficult to process, so you may want to steer clear of them as well.

Avoid foods, beverages, and utensils that introduce more gas into your system

Fizzy drinks like soda, seltzer, and sparkling water all contain dissolved carbon dioxide that adds to the gas load in your digestive tract. “Diet soda can cause a lot of bloating” in particular, Azzaro says. Chewing gum, sucking on hard candy, and drinking from straws can have a similar effect, since all three behaviors involve you swallowing more air than you would otherwise.

Limit foods that will make you feel worse overall

Emotional eating can be a natural response to stress—and you certainly shouldn’t beat yourself up if it happens on occasion—but many classic comfort foods are made with ingredients that could leave you feeling worse than when you started. Think inflammatory fats and processed carbs that “are going to be absorbed really rapidly and spike your blood sugar,” Azzaro says. If you find yourself snacking as a coping mechanism when you’re going through a tough time, try to offset the impact by leaning on healthy options and drinking plenty of water.

Chew your food thoroughly

No, we’re not about to recommend chewing each bite of food 100 times or something like that (fun fact: There was an entire 20th-century cult centered around that concept). Even 30 or 40 times would be “kind of ridiculous,” Azzaro says. That said, chewing is an important step in digestion, so you don’t want to neglect it. If we’re “not doing a good job at that, it’s going to make it even harder on our stomachs,” Azzaro says. And “especially if you’re stressed, you might kind of be gulping.”