Hard in the stomach: hard belly in the stomach area

Woman's hard belly

Many women complain of heaviness in the abdominal cavity, as if this part of the body suddenly became large, hard and swollen. But often the cause of trouble is a banal violation of the principles of healthy eating and a passion for heavy fatty foods that are not absorbed by the body. Are you full of buns? Loaded up on yoghurts? In this case, a hard, puffy bottom most likely means there is a lack of enzymes to digest milk and flour products.

In this case, getting rid of a swollen and hard belly is very simple: remove buns and dairy products from your diet, introduce vegetables into your diet and take special enzymes after meals.

We are treated with an enema!
Along with pharmaceutical drugs, an enema is an excellent way to heal a hard stomach. Just fill the pear with water at room temperature: the intestines will quickly clear and you will feel better. And in order not to cause problems for yourself in the future, and not to ask why everything happened, eat all your food slowly, chewing every bite, and do not wash down your meal with large quantities of water.

Diet

If you feel heaviness in your stomach, as if you had swallowed a stone, you must strictly follow the following recommendations:

Count calories, pay attention to the energy value of the foods you eat. Calorie intake is calculated purely individually, but on average this figure is about 2000-2500. It is also important to maintain a balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
Keep in mind that if you have a stomach or gallstone, fatty or fried foods may have the most detrimental effect.
No need to overeat.
Products should not be hot or cold; consume everything warm.
You need to eat small meals six times during the day.
It is necessary to remove fats from the diet, as well as various stimulants. These include: spices, additives, foods high in cholesterol and essential oils.
The main thing in the diet is fruits and vegetables.
You can't eat fried food.
Food should be steamed, boiled and very rarely baked.

You need to eat the following foods:

Fermented milk products (yogurt, kefir, fermented baked milk, cottage cheese, etc.), which contain calcium and protein, improve intestinal microflora.
It is also necessary to introduce fish and lean meat, eggs (white), and vegetable oils, such as olive, into the diet.
Vitamins A, B and C are required.

Hard belly during pregnancy

It’s another matter if a woman’s lower abdomen becomes hard and swollen in the first weeks of pregnancy. This can be a signal of a dangerous pathology - uterine hypertonicity, which can lead to termination of pregnancy and loss of the child.

At later stages - around 25-27 weeks - a tense and hard abdomen often indicates the beginning of “training contractions” - this is how the body prepares to give birth. And in the last trimester - at 38-39 weeks, this part of the body may become tight and hard (and even hurt a little) due to the proximity of childbirth.

"Women's" reasons

Women's stomach sometimes hurts due to factors not related to the gastrointestinal tract. The cause of discomfort may be illnesses such as ectopic pregnancy or ovarian rupture. Such conditions are characterized by pain in the lower abdomen, which gradually intensifies. Bleeding from the vagina also begins.

An ectopic pregnancy requires urgent surgery, otherwise blood poisoning may begin and the patient cannot be saved. Pain can also be caused by a tumor, cyst and other ailments.

If a woman consulted a general practitioner or gastroenterologist about pain, but the doctors were unable to detect its source, it makes sense to undergo an examination by a gynecologist.

Hard tummy in a newborn

The first months of a baby’s life are the most important. During this period, the newborn may suffer from colic, which he tolerates very hard, knocking his legs and crying bitterly. The reason for the baby’s belly to bloat, when it becomes tight and hard to the touch, can be explained simply: the baby’s digestive system is not fully formed and has difficulty digesting food, which is why gases constantly accumulate in the intestines.

Helping your baby cope with the problem is not difficult: just give a light massage of the tummy clockwise, do simple exercises by bending and straightening the legs, and give a special medicine for colic. Regular dill water is also a proven and very effective remedy for bloating in infants.

About the benefits of water.
Water procedures provide invaluable assistance in the fight against intestinal colic. It has been proven that systematic bathing helps a bloated belly get rid of accumulated gases faster, and colic goes away. Bathing in water with decoctions of chamomile flowers, string or potassium permanganate has a particularly beneficial effect.

In what cases is emergency medical care necessary?

When you should not look into the reason why your stomach is hard, but call an ambulance immediately:

attacks of acute pain anywhere in the body;
pain in the right hypochondrium, accompanied by nausea and fever;
pain with changes in skin color in the area of the lesion;
heaviness, discomfort in the lower abdomen, a feeling of hardness in the intestines;
severe pain accompanied by bloody stools or the release of bile;
bloody vomiting, hardness in the abdominal muscles.

If these problems occur, you should not self-medicate. It is advisable not to take painkillers or other medications. The onset of relief is a temporary factor, but it blurs the clinical picture of the disease. It will be more difficult for the doctor to determine why the stomach is tight; the reason may be unclear, which will affect the further course of treatment.

A man has a hard belly

By the age of 40, men very often acquire a large, unsightly belly, which they like to call a “labor callus.” However, work has nothing to do with it. Much more often, the reason for the appearance of a huge bloated belly in a representative of the stronger sex is gluttony, addiction to foamy drinks and a sedentary lifestyle. Diet and exercise in these cases are the best cure for a large “labor blister” that prevents you from leading a full life (including sexual life).

However, it happens that a large, hard abdominal cavity of a person is evidence of pathology and a global malfunction of the body.

Reasons why the stomach becomes stone:

Attack of appendicitis.
Stomach ulcer (and even cancer).
Liver diseases.
Ectopic pregnancy.
Disturbances in the functioning of a blood vessel located on the abdominal wall.
Abcesses.
Cholelithiasis.
Peritonitis.
Oncology.
Abdominal ascites (edema).

If you lead a healthy lifestyle, but notice that the “stoniness” of your stomach is increasing, and even after a diet it is tight and bloated, do not hesitate to consult a doctor. Any disease, as doctors rightly note, can be effectively treated only in the early stages. Health to you, beautiful and toned tummies!

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If a person's stomach is hard and hurts, they should consult a doctor. Something constantly hurts in the human body and we are already accustomed to it. Any pain is a sign of some dysfunction in the body. Sometimes the pain is fleeting, then you should not focus on it. Perhaps you just overate a little. But when the pain becomes prolonged or returns periodically, then this is probably evidence of something more serious and you should consult a doctor.

Most often, patients complain of bloating. This is a rather subjective statement that passes over time. There are complaints about conflicting sensations of a stomach inflated with air and at the same time heaviness in it.

In most cases, such symptoms do not require any medical intervention and go away over time, but in some cases the situation will not be resolved without specific medical measures.

Upon examination, the doctor will immediately point out problems present in the gastrointestinal tract. With proper examination, the doctor will certainly be able to distinguish between them.

If the examination showed the absence of any visible abnormalities in the patient, then the person himself most likely provoked the accumulation of gases in his stomach:

Haste during eating, when a fair amount of air is swallowed along with food.
Abuse of carbonated drinks.
Other similar reasons.

If this is the reason, then the swelling is temporary and passes quickly. Excess gases will leave the stomach in all possible ways:

Frequent belching of air.
Excreted through the anus.
Absorbed by the intestines themselves.

However, a hard stomach is not always the result of these completely harmless points. There are a number of reasons that are worth understanding:

Gases can form when food is digested in the presence of excess soda, which impedes the work of gastric secretions.
Abundance of sweet and rich foods in the diet. This category is oversaturated with fast carbohydrates, which are easily and quickly absorbed, which provokes the fermentation process, which is accompanied by abundant gas formation.
Fiber and starch, which enter the stomach along with potatoes, legumes, black bread, cabbage and other products, also provoke increased formation of gases.

Common reasons

Bloating is a common cause of complaint. Of course, this feeling is often subjective and then passes. Sometimes a person suffers from bloating and at the same time heaviness, the stomach becomes large.

As a rule, these symptoms usually disappear without medical attention. But sometimes situations arise when only a timely visit to a doctor solves the problem. However, if after examination no obvious pathologies were identified, the patient’s condition is most likely caused by the accumulation of gases in the intestines.

This often happens due to eating food too hastily, with air accidentally entering the stomach.

This also happens due to the consumption of carbonated drinks and foods that provoke gas formation.

These products include:

sweets and baked goods - they are rich in simple carbohydrates, which quickly break down and cause fermentation in the intestines;
beans, peas, beans, cabbage, black bread and other food products, they contain a lot of starch and fiber;
Too much baking soda inhibits the secretion of gastric juice and causes gas formation.

Usually the body itself gets rid of excess, so gases come out of the anus or as a result of belching. Some of them are absorbed through the intestines.

Sometimes bloating in adults occurs if the body does not produce the enzymes responsible for processing lactose. In this case, consuming dairy products, sometimes even the most ordinary ice cream, will inevitably cause increased gas formation. If you have such a problem, then it would be best to eliminate milk from your diet.

If, despite the fact that a person has not consumed these foods, the stomach is still hard and hurts, the reasons may be much deeper.

Pathological causes of bloating

Quite often, the human body does not have enough of any enzyme necessary for the high-quality breakdown of food.

As a result, when food that is heavy for a particular person enters the stomach, it is often digested by other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, causing excessive gas formation. The excess gas that appears has a bursting effect on the stomach.

In children, a hard stomach is due to dysbacteriosis. The reason for this is an imbalance in the intestinal microflora.

Beneficial bacteria and opportunistic bacteria cease to compensate for each other, and certain processes begin to prevail, thereby disrupting the normal functioning of the intestines; food is digested much worse, giving way to the primacy of digestive processes to putrefactive bacteria.

The latter are characterized by increased gas formation. By the way, a similar pathology has become increasingly observed in adults.

From time to time, the stomach does not become equally hard everywhere. Practice shows that the cause of this phenomenon can be mechanical blockage of the intestine in a certain place. Such a “plug” could be, for example, a tumor, or maybe something else. In most cases, blockage is a pronounced manifestation of concomitant diseases (intoxication of the intestinal muscles, circulatory problems, etc.). In the current conditions, the stomach is hard and hurts due to a violent emotional experience.

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Peritonitis

With this disease, the peritoneum, the membrane lining the insides, becomes inflamed.
This is due to the fact that with advanced appendicitis, inflammation of the intestines or other organs, their contents penetrate into the peritoneum, because in healthy people the abdominal cavity does not contain any foreign substances. This causes its inflammation. Due to the fact that substances are well absorbed through the peritoneum, infection quickly spreads through the blood throughout the body, and therefore sepsis occurs without urgent medical attention.

This disease is characterized by the following symptoms:

stomach pain, hard stomach; the patient feels sick and vomits, but unlike simple poisoning, such vomiting does not alleviate the condition; heat; thirst, weakness, rapid heartbeat, sweating.

There are no home treatments for peritonitis!

In this condition, urgent surgical intervention is necessary - only it will save the patient, and in this case, every hour counts. Without urgent surgery, a person will not live more than one day. Watch a video about this condition

Diagnosis: why the stomach is hard and hurts

The first thing that always catches your eye is a person who wears clothes that are much larger than necessary and constantly loosens his belt, while feeling discomfort. All these signs are very similar to many similar pathologies.

This is how obese people behave, with asymptomatic ascites and many other similar diseases. Any of the diseases mentioned can smooth out the sensation of pain for a long time, thereby masking itself.

Individual manifestations may be:

Constant tension in the groin area.
Tightness on both sides of the spine.
Painful manifestations, as a rule, arise due to pathologies of any internal organ. There can be a great many such examples.

A hard stomach and pain can result from many pathological processes that provoke an increase in intra-abdominal pressure. Often, increased intra-abdominal pressure complicates the digestion process, literally squeezing food mass back from the intestines into the esophagus.

Heartburn in this case is guaranteed. There are cases when the diaphragm rises unreasonably high, causing shortness of breath and rapid breathing. Such signs should lead to a much more serious examination of the patient by a doctor.

First of all, the specialist will ask the patient about his attitude towards drinking alcohol. In the anamnesis, he should first of all be interested in whether there were hematuria, jaundice, whether pathological intestinal dysfunctions and heart problems were observed.

The indicators obtained as a result of the examination will make it possible to detect liver cirrhosis, colon cancer complicated by metastases to the abdominal region, some kidney diseases and congestive heart failure.

What to do if your stomach is hard and hurts?

In any case, there is no need to try to fight this pathology on your own. Frequent recurrence of such symptoms should definitely lead you to a doctor, and more specifically, to a gastroenterologist. The specialist will conduct a primary diagnosis, examine the medical history and determine the disease present. In order to remove all possible doubts, the following studies will be needed:

Analysis of stool for microflora.
Study of gastric juice.
Analysis of stool for the presence of bacteria.
Bile analysis.
Ultrasound examination of the entire gastrointestinal tract.
Having completed all the required studies, the doctor will be able to say with complete confidence why the stomach is hard and hurts.

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Treatment of the disease

As with any disease of the gastrointestinal tract, the patient’s diet is first adjusted. In this case, all foods associated with increased gas formation must be excluded from the diet. Such products include cabbage, potatoes, rice, milk, and so on.

Their place in the diet is taken by wholemeal bread, fermented milk products and fruits and vegetables, although in very limited quantities.

This should be followed by increased physical activity. Their character is not of fundamental importance.

If there are no diseases, then this should be more than enough to eliminate the feeling of discomfort. You can also approach the elimination of discomfort in another way - medication. Doctors solve the problem of excessive gas formation in a comprehensive manner. Adsorbing agents such as polysorb, activated carbon and smecta begin the treatment process.

Next come enzymatic drugs (mezim, pancreatin, panzinorm and others). Bile replacement drugs (LIV80, allohol, karsil) may be needed. In any case, these drugs will stimulate the production of bile.

The entire process of treating this disease is aimed at combating the source of the problem, and not at eliminating the consequences of its symptoms. If the intestinal microflora is not restored, symptomatic treatment will not have a long-term effect.

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EnterologDoma.ru

This effect - the rigidity of the muscle fibers surrounding the peritoneum, has more than one cause and factors that cause it. So, why do people have a hard stomach?

Gas and indigestion

To eliminate bloating, it is necessary to accurately determine its cause. One of the reasons may be a lack of enzymes in the body, which is why some foods (milk and flour products) are not digested. Another reason may be too rapid absorption of food (during which a significant amount of air enters the digestive tract), which naturally causes bloating.

Methods to combat such inconveniences are quite simple: limit baked goods and pure milk products in your daily diet. It would be more advisable to consume milk in a sour state, or to help the body with pharmaceutical preparations based on animal enzymes.

And remember: there is no need to rush at the dinner table, chew your food thoroughly and do not drink water for one hour.

When the abdomen is bloated, a banal enema often has a positive effect. You just need to: take a heating pad, fill it with water at room temperature, hang it higher (so that the water flows down under its own pressure), insert the end of the hose coming out of the heating pad into the rectum and, at the first urge to defecate, go to the toilet. This method allows you to cleanse the intestines and get rid of gas formation.

In some cases, a hard belly may indicate poisoning or pathology of the body.

Disorders that cause hardening of the abdomen:

Abdominal pain: caused by an attack of appendicitis, perforated gastric ulcer, ectopic pregnancy, defect of a large blood vessel in the abdominal region;

Abscess in the abdominal cavity;

Diseases of the gallbladder and the presence of stones in it;

Some abdominal injuries;

Pyritonite;

Benign and malignant neoplasms.

Hardening of the abdomen during pregnancy

A hard belly in expectant mothers is quite common. This can affect fatigue and stress, which leads to uterine tone. In such cases, it is recommended to relax and relieve emotional stress (for example: relaxing music). If the situation still does not change for the better, you should not put off calling an ambulance for a long time. Indeed, in the early stages of pregnancy, too active uterine tone can lead to an unwanted miscarriage. This is due to the fact that uterine contractions disrupt blood flow in the placenta, thereby causing a threatening oxygen deficiency in the fetus.

If a person observes the effect of a hard belly, then, of course, it would be useful to contact a specialist. This is necessary in order to exclude any hint of a terrible disease.

Pain on palpation

Palpation of the digestive organs is of great diagnostic value. The formation of a symptom is influenced by a number of factors and nuances (infection, structure of the reproductive system).

Features of pain on palpation

The process of palpation of the stomach and intestines is important in terms of diagnostic examination of the human body.

Monitoring of the digestive organs is carried out as follows: at the first stage, a qualified specialist carefully palpates the sigmoid colon - this is the most common landmark and the most accessible organ for palpation.

Next, the doctor proceeds to study the condition of the cecum and transverse colon. The ascending and descending sections of the suction organ are quite problematic to palpate.

In practice, during palpation, fingers must be carefully immersed on the surface of the body area and gently pressed onto the organ being examined (toward the posterior abdominal wall). Using sliding movements, you can clearly determine the contours, density, and the presence of various neoplasms and abnormalities.

When you touch (feel) the sigmoid colon, you get the impression that there is a smooth, dense and mobile cylinder in the human body. The size of such a “geometric figure” does not exceed the thickness of a person’s thumb.

The formation parameters are directly related to the condition of the walls, which are densely filled with gases and decay products (feces/feces).

During the inflammatory process of the infiltrating walls, a significant thickening of the membrane occurs. Ulcerative manifestations form a lumpy and uneven surface of the suction organ.

Acute inflammation of the sigmoid colon is accompanied by the formation of a dense consistency of painful manifestation. Due to the dense overflow of gases and liquid contents, motor inhibition occurs. The spasm is felt in the form of a cord and cord.

The patient experiences systematic rumbling + false urge to defecate (false diarrhea).

In normal condition, the cecum is easily palpable. A specialist can detect a cylinder up to 3 cm that is moderately active in movements. Its mobility in a pathological disorder is significantly increased.

The internal consistency becomes significantly thicker during coprostasis and chronic inflammation. The volume and shape of the cecum directly correlates with the contents. In a normal functional state, the intestines do not growl.

The patient should remember that the presence of pain upon palpation in the area of the cecum indicates the development of a pathological process. The digestive organ requires systematic and comprehensive treatment.

In practice, after examining the cecum (+ appendix), it is possible to examine the less accessible parts of the large intestine. Palpation is carried out from the ascending to the transverse colon and descending colon.

The transverse colon part of the suction organ can be qualitatively palpated only in the case of chronic inflammation. Tone, consistency, volume, shape depend on the tone and degree of muscle tension.

For example, an inflammatory process of the ulcerative type forms serious preconditions for the transformation of the transverse colon. At the same time, the muscles of the organ thicken significantly, and its configuration changes.

Today, chronic colitis and percolitis are quite common. With these ailments, the wall of the suction organ begins to painfully contract. Due to the lumpy surface, palpation is accompanied by sharp pain. For example, with pericolitis, respiratory and active mobility is lost.

Palpation of the abdomen allows you to feel an intestinal tumor, which is often confused with the pathology of various organs. Oncology of the cecum and transverse colon is distinguished by already known mobility. The pain is activated during the act of breathing (tumors below the navel are motionless). Palpation of the abdomen during enterocolitis is accompanied by rumbling in the navel area.

The disease has specific signs and symptoms: painful diarrhea (mushy, mucous stools, abdominal pain, hard colon). Palpation of the abdomen is carried out in combination with a digital examination of the rectum (sigmoidoscopy + radiography). These actions make it possible to predict the formation of rectal cancer and the formation of various syphilitic structures.

It will also be possible to clearly determine the presence of inflammatory processes, cracks, fistulas, hemorrhoids and all kinds of tumors. The specialist can get a clear vision of the sphincter tone and the level of filling of the colon ampulla. In some cases, it is rational to palpate adjacent organs (bottom of the bladder, prostate gland, uterus with appendages).

This will reveal an ovarian cyst, a tumor of the genital organs, the degree of constipation, etc.

Mechanism of the procedure

Palpation is the last stage of a full and objective examination of the abdominal area. The patient will need to cough vigorously before the procedure. In practice, a person with developed peritonitis manages to do this only superficially (holding his stomach with his hands).

It is allowed to make a small impact on the couch on which the patient is located in a supine position. The vibration impulse will provoke the manifestation of pain in the gastrointestinal tract. Thus, it is quite easy to establish the diagnosis of peritonitis without touching the hand.

To identify symptoms of peritoneal irritation, it is allowed to gently shake the patient after grasping the crests of the ileum (or jumping on one leg).

The palpation procedure begins with the patient being asked to clearly indicate the area where the first pain formed (the primary localization of the disease).

The specialist needs to closely monitor the actions of the patient himself. This is how you can identify the causes of peritoneal irritation.

Diffuse visceral pain in the abdomen is easily determined using circular movements of the palm. Your hands should be warm.

The procedure begins as far as possible from the main source of pain. This helps to avoid unplanned pain at the very beginning of the study. Children, and sometimes adult patients, sometimes prevent a quality examination due to pain.

First of all, the doctor must perform gentle and careful palpation (superficial). An experienced specialist moves gently, methodically and consistently. The fingers make a minimum number of movements.

It is strictly forbidden to palpate the abdomen randomly! The pressure on the body surface should not be high. Otherwise, protective tension in the abdominal muscles will occur.

Touching the sore spot must be done until the patient says that it really hurts.

A qualified specialist can always determine the degree of tension in the muscles of the anterior abdominal wall. The physician must distinguish between voluntary and involuntary muscle tension. To clearly determine this factor, during palpation a person takes a deep breath and exhales. If muscle activity persists, this indicates the development of peritonitis.

It is rational to carry out deeper palpation if peritonitis was not detected during a superficial examination. This makes it possible to detect various tumor formations, hepatosplenomegaly, and aortic aneurysm. It is very important for a physician to remember the optimal sizes for normal structures so as not to confuse them with malignant ones. Pain on palpation of the abdomen and intestines has two types:

immediate local pain – the patient experiences sharp pain at the test site;
indirect (referred pain) – pain sensations are formed in a different place when palpated. For example, during acute appendicitis, pain accumulates at McBurney's point on the left side of the iliac fossa. This symptom is called “Roving” and is a reliable sign of peritoneal irritation.

It is easy to carry out comparative palpation of a patient with tense abdominal muscles. For this, the patient, who is in a supine position, is asked to gently lift his head above the pillow.

The classic symptom of parietal peritoneal irritation is not difficult to identify.

To do this, at the time of the examination, the doctor must sharply remove his hand from the surface of the body and observe the patient’s reaction. In most cases, patients experience a significant increase in pain.

This classic examination technique is quite crude; some scientists classify it as a barbaric method of study.

With the development of various pathologies in the digestive organs (for example, acute appendicitis), hyperesthesia of the skin in the abdominal area is observed.

It is for this reason that if you pinch or lightly prick a patient, a painful reaction of the body will immediately occur.

This is a fairly common clinical symptom, but its establishment is not enough to firmly diagnose acute appendicitis and other diseases of the abdominal organs.

An integral part of the palpation examination is gentle tapping on the lumbar region (+ sides of the abdomen) to determine the degree of pain in these areas. Quite often, pyelonephritis and urolithiasis correlate with severe pain in the abdomen (costovertebral region).

In doubtful clinical situations, examination alone is not enough. An accurate assessment of the dynamics of the disease is established by repeated palpation of the abdomen by the same doctor.

Causes of pain in women

Today, medicine identifies two types of fundamental causes that affect pain when palpated. Organic factors include:

inflammatory processes in the genitourinary system (cyst, endometritis, fibroids);
using the IUD as a contraceptive;
formation of various pathological formations;
the presence of inflammation in the gall bladder (including appendicitis, pyelonephritis);
sharp pain during pregnancy (placental abruption, miscarriage).

The functional reasons are as follows:

systematic disruptions in cycles during menstruation;
discharge of uterine bleeding;
ovulation + uterine inflection.

Inflammatory processes are the main cause of pain during palpation of the stomach and intestines. The disease begins with classic acute manifestations and is supplemented by various signs of intoxication of the body, namely:

Endometritis is accompanied by aching pain in the abdominal area. Their manifestation can be determined by light palpation. The patient experiences heaviness in the area of the appendages + hardening of the uterus;
Endometriosis is a pathological disorder that affects the uterus and appendages. Severe pain is observed when palpating the middle of the abdomen;
Ovarian apoplexy correlates with ovulation. In this case, some of the blood penetrates into the abdominal cavity due to strong physical exertion;
Uterine fibroids. The pain syndrome is localized in the lower abdomen (compression of neighboring organs);
Appendicitis requires surgical medical intervention. Pain on palpation in the area where the appendix is located;
Cholecystitis is an inflammatory process of the gallbladder. The pain radiates clearly to the lumbar region and back;
Cystitis is a lesion of the bladder. Pain is observed both during palpation and during urination.