From embarrassing gas to uncomfortable heartburn, everyone has digestive problems from time to time. However, it’s accepted that they do tend to become more common, as well as troublesome, as we age.

The problem is that people will often accept it as a sign of getting older and then try to effectively put up with the discomfort that they experience. But then, it doesn’t have to be like that as you are about to discover.

Simple Ways to Deal with Gastrointestinal Problems and Disorders in the Elderly.

What supplements should you take for gastrointestinal problems? Can stress cause gastrointestinal problems?

We could go on forever with a list of questions people ask as to the causes and cures of this common issue. But what you want are answers, and the good news is that there are several things that you can do as of right now that will make a different to those gastrointestinal problems that you are experiencing.

Check If You Are Lactose Intolerant.

As we age, our body finds it harder to digest lactose and that is going to lead to the development of a number of the issues that you have perhaps been suffering from. Lactose intolerance can lead to nausea, bloating, heartburn, diarrhoea or constipation and a general feeling of discomfort and fullness around your belly.

You can undergo tests to determine if you are indeed lactose intolerant. The good news is that it’s very easy to locate milk-based products that are either lactose free or made from alternative sources. These sources may include Soya, Almonds or other nuts turned into a milk product.

Look At Your Diet As A Whole.

Even though problems with digesting lactose is the main concern, checking out your diet in general will also be a good idea. Our ability to digest various foods will change as we age. It may be a case that you could previously cope with hot and spicy food, but as you get older you notice that you suffer from a significant amount of heartburn or other issues after eating it.

People find themselves switching to approaches such as the Paleo Diet or following advice from the FODMAP diet in order to attempt to rid themselves of that discomfort. It will be trial and error on your part to identify potential causes, and be warned that this may take some time for it to resolve itself. Also, you may never get to the root cause of your gastrointestinal issues as it may not even be connected to your diet.

Look At Your Lifestyle.

Your lifestyle may also play a role in these gastrointestinal problems. Poor sleep, excessive stress over a prolonged period of time, drinking too much alcohol, even medication you are taking can all play their own role.

With this list, you can also add in being overweight, so trying to exercise and lose some of that weight can also prove to be a good idea.

If your lifestyle is not one that is conducive to your health, then those problems with your digestion are going to simply carry on forever.

But How Do You Cure Them?

You may be sitting there thinking about the potential causes of your digestive issues. You may have even visited your doctor due to being concerned about it all. There’s also the chance that you came away from that appointment feeling slightly disillusioned as your doctor gave you some plain advice or written a prescription for more medication.

But what if there was a way to ease those problems and do so without putting your body through a whole lot of new stress in the process? Stress that may even exacerbate things rather than improve them.

Using Probiotic Supplements.

Often, a cause of these problems is actually due to an imbalance in digestive flora. To be more specific, your gut has an incorrect amount of bad bacteria due to a drop in good bacteria that works to break down food and allow it to be digested in the first place.

This good bacteria can diminish in numbers due to a number of reasons. As an example, if you are required to take antibiotics for any reason, then that medication cannot tell the difference between good and bad bacteria. Due to this, everything is wiped out. Also, we only have a fraction of the numbers of bacteria as we age, so even that is working against us.

What you need to do is to get some of that healthy bacteria back into your gut to allow it to get to work like it used to. The easiest way to do this is by using probiotic supplements, but even with that you need to be careful with what you take.

Your local store may have different dairy products that class themselves as being probiotics, but you never know what they really contain or how much. In all honesty, those products may end up doing virtually nothing while you sit there believing that it will have resolved everything.

What you need to do is to take something where it has been clearly identified as to what is going into your body. A probiotic supplement is capable of doing just that.

What you get with these supplements is a product where the healthy bacteria included have been accurately measured out and the strains have been backed by scientific research. In other words, they have been specifically designed to help with this issue, and helping is exactly what they are going to do.

So, no matter what your particular gastrointestinal problems may be, consider giving probiotics a shot to see if they make a difference. There’s no need to worry about them as they only involve putting something back into your body that was already there. Supplements will indeed help your gastrointestinal problems, and we strongly advise you taking them even if you are not currently suffering. After all, they do say prevention is the best medicine, and in this case nothing could be more true.