Turns out, even just a little bit of exercise can indeed help break up that bloated feeling: A post-meal stroll kick-starts digestion. “When you are moving, your GI tract is also moving,” Dr. Ganjhu tells SELF. This helps trigger gut motility, or movement of your intestines, which is essential for properly breaking down food. “There needs to be motion to help move the food along,” she says. “When you’re walking and moving around, you’re basically helping the motility part of the digestive tract.” (That might explain why you often feel so damn bloated after eating on an airplane or a train, where you can’t move around freely.)
And research backs this up: Post-meal activity has been shown to speed stomach emptying and colon transit, and, according to a separate study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, even mild activity after a meal was enough to significantly reduce bloating. What’s more, boosting your gut motility and moving the food out quickly can also help with heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), Dr. Ganjhu says—there’s simply less time for the digestive acids to do their thing.
As for the claim that a fart walk can protect against diabetes? Any type of exercise can help keep your blood sugar in check, Dr. Ganjhu says. And an after-dinner stroll might just be a great way to do it: A study in the journal Nutrients found that a walk after eating can help stabilize your blood sugar levels. That’s important, since repeated spikes over time can make your body less sensitive to insulin, which can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.