Guess what? You can also introduce air into your digestive system! This may also be contributing to those stomach sounds and bloated feelings, and it occurs when you eat too quickly, chew gum or drink with a straw.

If they are often accompanied by feeling gassy, it may be helpful to cut down your intake of foods that produce gas, such as beans, fizzy drinks, fruits like apples and peaches, vegetables like broccoli and cabbage and dairy if you’re lactose intolerant. Normal stomach sounds by themselves do not require treatment.

Of course, these rumbles are much quieter because there is now food to absorb some of those vibrations. Their muscled walls contract to mix and propel food, gas and fluids through the stomach and small intestines, which generates those rumbles. These contractions produce vibrations and result in the rumbling noise we all associate with hunger! This grumbling can last for up to 20 minutes and repeat every hour or two until the disgruntled stomach gets what it wants.Īfter you eat, you may still hear grumbling as your stomach and intestines process your meal.

Orexin also likes to make a lot of noise wherever it goes, literally! It triggers the muscled walls of the intestines to contract in a movement known as peristalsis, which squeezes out any remaining food and bacteria within the intestine to make room for the incoming food. In this case, orexin stimulates your stomach to prepare for its ‘guest’ by secreting stomach acids that aid digestion. It’s sort of like how you’d prepare a room for a houseguest – adding a vase of fresh flowers to the bedside table and filling up the toiletries cabinet. In response to ghrelin, your brain will send back a messenger in the form of the hormone orexin that prepares the stomach to receive food. Your childhood cartoons got it right! According to an article by the Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics of North America, when you’re hungry, your stomach dispatches a hunger hormone called ghrelin to your brain to demand it for food right now. It may be unsurprising to learn that the main cause of these stomach sounds is hunger. And much like how noises are much louder in an empty pipe as opposed to a pipe that has been filled with sponges, empty stomachs have a louder roar. The stomach and intestines are essentially hollow tubes made of muscle, so sounds that emanate from them are similar to the sound of water moving through pipes. The Genesis of the Growl Photo by Kristen Paulson on Flickr Known as ‘borborygmi’, pronounced as “baw-buh-rig-my” and sounding like the name of a deep-sea monster, these stomach sounds are produced in the stomach and the small and large intestines. Has your stomach ever tried to do its best impression of a whale mating call? While this can be embarrassing (especially in a silent room), these sounds are a perfectly normal part of digestion. From a Rumble to a Roar: Why does your stomach growl?

Loud stomach growl