Serious, Major Wind. Help.

[ItsBlowingAGaleInMyPants]

I'm trying to lose weight. I am eating lots of lovely vegetables and pulses.

I have wind.

So badly it hurts. I keep having to leave rooms to let rip. My family now hate me. I stink. I am breaking wind every few minutes. Loudly. Massively.

It has been a few weeks so my bod should have got used to the beans by now. I'm drinking plenty.

My bowel has always tended to the irritable nyway but this is getting beyond a joke.

What the bloody hell can I do about it?

Charcoal tablets. You can't really taste it as you swallow. Work like magic, I think Holland and Barrett stock them.

Eat fewer pulses... alternate with other foods and eat them in smaller portions. Also make sure your vegetables are cooked past the crunchy stage since they'll take a long time to break down if they are too near to raw. Foods in the brassica family (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower) are particularly big wind-generators so choose different vegetables for a while and eat them in smaller quantities. Same goes for eggs.

Another tip... chew your food very thoroughly before swallowing, eat in a relaxed setting and take your time over a meal. Eat very slowly, in other words.

Other foods to avoid... fizzy drinks, artificial sweetners. It's good that you're drinking plenty of fluids. Try peppermint tea as a natural digestif. Finally, try taking a walk after meals. The action of walking massages the gut and aids digestion. Plus, if you're outside for a while you can trump away to your heart's content.

I have complicated problems and I had to cut out pulses virtually entirely for several months. I couldn't even finish off my kids' baked beans!

I'd eaten pulses all my life and spent twenty years as a veggie so it was a shock to me. I'm gradually re-introducing them but keeping them in small portions and only increasing the frequency slowly. Or I eat them with white rice.

I have to cook my veg (another of my annoying complicated problems) and it does reduce the wind you get from them.

Polos are also good.