Gas Laws and Your Diet

Gases can become trapped in any part of your body. When we learn about scuba diving we focus on the air in your mask, sinuses, ears, and lungs but what about the air in your gut? It doesn't simply go away, it instead stays inside your body and can cause discomfort while diving if a diver is not careful to minimize the amount of extra gas they have in their body. Like the air in the sinuses, the pressure causes the volume of air to increase and decrease, especially when the diver is near the surface and the pressure changes occur the most rapidly.
Air gets into our bodies in a variety of ways, if we eat quickly, chew gum, and drink carbonated beverages we swallow air and it can become trapped inside. It can also result as a byproduct of digestion. A change in diet, such as many people make this time of year, can lead to a diver not knowing how their body will digest some of the new foods they are eating. There are also certain foods that are more difficult to digest and create more gas, even though they are healthy for you.
To keep gas from becoming an uncomfortable roadblock during your next dive, try a few of the following tips:

• Change the food you are eating to a low gas diet that includes more proteins from meat and eggs rather than beans. 
• Avoid fermented foods and artificial sweetners as these are know to promote gas production.
• Limit high fat foods
• Eat at a slower pace
• Know about any food allergies or sensitivities you have and how they affect your body.
• Use digestive supplements properly rather than simply taking a prebiotic or probiotic which is not proven to reduce gas at all.