Health & Everyday
How One Question at a Stranger's Wedding Made Me Deal With My Bloating
The manager stopped me at the door of the function room. Very politely.
"No work gear inside, love. House rule, sorry."
I was holding a box with two spare colours of buttercream in it and nowhere to put it down.
"Of course," I said.
I took the apron off and handed it to a young lad on the staff who had no idea what to do with it.
Underneath I had an ordinary blouse I bought four years ago and trousers that had been fine at eight that morning.
It was twenty past six in the evening.
I walked in and Ciara spotted me from the far end of the room and called my name and came the whole way over through the tables. Twenty seven years of age, in white, the happiest person in the building.
She took my hand and pulled me in beside her in front of the cake.
"She made it. Get her in the photo."
A hundred and twenty people turned around.
And then Ciara's nan got up from her chair at the top table and came over to us.
A lovely woman. Eighty something, round face, with that warmth older women have when they think they are doing you a kindness.
She took my hand in both of hers.
Then she let it go, moved her own hand across, and put it flat on my stomach.
"And how far along are you, pet?"
A hundred and twenty people did not hear all of it.
They heard enough.
I heard my own blood.
Ciara said "Nan, that's the cake lady" louder than she meant to, and then laughed to cover it.
Her nan patted my arm.
"Ah sorry, love."
She smiled, went back to her seat, and thirty seconds later she had forgotten it entirely.
The photographer lifted the camera, because that was his job.
And I did what I have done for years. I turned slightly side on and put my hand across the front of me, as if I were straightening something on the tablecloth.
If you are a woman and you have ever done that with your hand, you know it does not help. You also know you cannot stop doing it.
The next day the photo was up on Facebook.
I was tagged in it.
And I did not untag myself, because untagging yourself means somebody asks you why.
I will tell you the other thing that makes that evening worse than it sounds.
I had not gone in for the cutting of the cake in two years. I told customers I had another delivery on and sent Shauna instead.
For that wedding I made an exception.
It was the best cake I had made in twenty one years.
What I did after
I got to the car and sat into it without starting the engine.
My apron was on the passenger seat, folded into four by that young lad, which annoyed me for no reason at all.
I did not cry straight away.
First I sat there thinking about the sugar rose on the top, which took me three hours on the Friday night and which is only half in the photo.
Then I thought about Ciara.
About the fact that on her own wedding day, in her own dress, she had to explain to her nan who I was.
Here is what actually hurt, and it is not what it should have been.
For twenty one years I have made the cakes for other people's best days. Weddings, christenings, anniversaries, twenty firsts. There is not one photograph anywhere of me at any of them, because I am always gone before the cake is cut.
And the first one I have is that one.
That is when I cried, and it was not quiet, and afterwards I had to sort myself out with my hands because there were no tissues in the car.
The way a stomach starts running your life
I am not going to tell you I stopped living. I did not.
But if I sit down now and write the list, the list frightens me.
Since that wedding I have not gone into a function room once. If the customer insists, I say I have a delivery the other side of town, and Shauna goes. She is twenty two and she does not know what to say to a bride who is crying, but she is learning.
I work in an apron from seven in the morning until nine at night and I do not take it off until I get to the car.
Twenty one years of a legitimate reason to be in a loose garment at any hour of the day. There are women who would envy me that, if they thought about what it actually means.
At my nephew's debs I said I would drive so I would not be drinking.
At the neighbour's christening I went to the church and not to the hotel.
I have never refused anybody anything.
I have just arranged things so that nobody would notice.
Everything I tried between May and February
I will add up the money at the end, because it matters later.
The first thing was the most obvious and the most ridiculous.
I gave up sugar.
Me. A woman who makes cakes. Five months without a spoon of it, while I was weighing out two kilos of icing sugar a day.
I lost about two kilos and I bloated exactly the same, which confused me more than anything else that happened that year.
Then a probiotic I ordered in from Germany because you could not get it here. Fifty five euro a month, six months. I used to look forward to the parcels arriving. Three hundred and thirty euro to look forward to parcels.
Then intermittent fasting, three weeks. I am up at half four to start proving. On the tenth morning the room went grey on me over a bowl of ganache and Shauna took me by the arm and sat me down.
Then a bioresonance test in Dublin. Ninety euro a session and I went twice. They gave me a list of thirty one foods to avoid. Eggs were on it. I work with eggs.
And last a detox tea on subscription that I saw in an ad. Twenty five euro a month. I meant to do three months and I paid for five, because I forgot to cancel and then I was too embarrassed to ring them.
Well over six hundred euro. And that is only what I can remember.
By February I had arrived somewhere that is not dramatic, and that is exactly what makes it worse.
You stop expecting.
One evening Shauna asked me was I doing the Saturday delivery myself, and I said "ah sure, at my age it is what it is."
I heard myself saying it.
I heard that it was not an explanation. It was something else.
Now here is the strange part
Bernie has been a customer of mine for twelve years.
She is sixty three. She owns three hair salons, one in Naas and two in Newbridge, and everybody in the town knows who she is, although you would never get it out of her. She drives a car from 2009 and brings her own coffee in a flask because the price of it in a café is a scandal.
She orders a cake for every occasion in her family. She has four grandchildren, so I see a lot of her.
And at the start of March she came in for a cake and I was watching her getting her purse out and something did not add up.
Bernie was always a big woman. Not heavy, big, and for twelve years she wore her shirts out over her trousers and a cardigan on top of that.
That March she had a plain jumper on, tucked in.
I said nothing. You do not ask a woman that.
She took the box, straightened up, and said:
"What are you looking at me for the last ten minutes?"
The woman who burned three hundred and ninety euro
I did not ask her then. I am not that sort.
It happened three weeks later and it happened over something else entirely.
On a Friday evening Bernie rang me about a cake for the Sunday.
I asked her how she was fixed with the trip, because she had mentioned she was going to Lourdes on the Saturday morning with a group from the parish and back on the Monday.
"I am not going."
I asked was somebody sick.
"No. I have a parcel coming Saturday and there is nobody to take it in."
I told her I would take it in. I live four streets from her.
She said "no, you are grand, thanks" in a way that Bernie does not talk, and she was gone off the phone.
I stood there with the phone in my hand.
That woman has haggled with me over two euro on the price of a cake box. In front of me. Twice.
That woman drives a 2009 car and owns three salons.
And that woman burned three hundred and ninety euro on flights and a hotel she had paid for back in January, to sit in her own house on a Saturday morning and wait for a courier.
I did not know what was in the box.
I only knew that whatever was in it was worth more than three hundred and ninety euro to her.
Six capsules
She came on the Sunday for the cake.
My kitchen is big because it used to be the sitting room, and the table where people pay is by the door.
Bernie left her handbag on the table and went over to look at the cake properly, because she always walks the whole way around it before she takes it.
The bag was open and the bottle was sitting on top.
Dark glass, white label, nothing special to look at.
I am not going to pretend I am better than I am. I knew exactly what I was doing.
For twenty one years people have left envelopes of cash on that table and walked out of the room. For twenty one years I have had keys to houses I do not live in, because I have to get in before the surprise.
I twisted the cap off and tipped six capsules into my hand.
I put them in the pocket of my apron and turned around to tell her about the sugar rose.
I know what I did.
What is this
I read the label after she left.
NoBloat. Underneath in smaller letters, the company. Bioprime Science.
I had never heard of it.
I had never heard of them either, and I buy ingredients from eight different suppliers and I would generally know who sells what in this country.
I took two a day with my dinner, the way it said. Six lasted me three days.
And on the fourth day I felt like a fool.
Here is what I was thinking at that stage.
That woman has spent money on something that does not work, and she burned a trip to Lourdes over it, because people believe in whatever they have paid for. And I went into her handbag like a child.
That was my default setting by then. After six hundred euro, every new thing is "it will not work and then I will feel stupid for having hoped."
The conversation at the table
She came back a fortnight later for the other granddaughter's birthday.
She paid, put her purse away, and did not leave.
She said, without looking at me:
"Why did you take my capsules?"
I put the cloth down on the counter.
Do you know what it is to be forty nine and caught like that. There is no dressing it up and there is no explaining it.
I opened my mouth and she put a hand up.
"I am not asking to make you go red. I am asking because if you need them I will get you a bottle, instead of you rooting in my bag like a young one."
Then she sat down on the chair by the door that nobody ever uses, and she told me the following.
Everything we eat is broken down by enzymes.
Not by sitting there, not by willpower, not by tea.
Every kind of food needs its own one. Protein needs one thing, fat needs a bit of preparation first, complex carbohydrates need something else again.
At twenty that system runs like a new bakery. It comes in, it gets broken down, it goes out, nothing sits.
After forty the production of it starts to fall away. Quietly and gradually and without warning you about it. [SUBSTANTIATION NEEDED: specific figure and source for the decline in digestive enzyme secretion with age]
And from there the simple thing happens.
Food does not get broken down the whole way. Whatever is left keeps going down and it reaches the large intestine. And waiting there are bacteria, and to them undigested food is dinner. They get stuck into it and they produce gas.
So the gas is not the cause.
The gas is the consequence.
The cause is that the thing that does the breaking down is not there any more.
Then Bernie asked me which foods take the most enzyme work.
Beans. Cabbage. Broccoli. Wholegrain. Raw salad.
That was the exact list I had replaced the sugar with.
Five months of salad for my dinner, thinking I was being sensible, and every evening worse than the one before it.
"You did not fail at it, Deirdre. You were solving a different problem."
And I sat on that chair and I started laughing, and she looked at me the way you look at somebody who is not well.
For twenty one years I have told every apprentice the same thing in her first week.
That jelly will not set with fresh pineapple.
That it has to be tinned, because tinned is cooked and cooking stops it.
That there is something in the fresh stuff that breaks it down, and it does not care what your recipe says.
Twenty one years watching an enzyme take protein apart in front of my own eyes, with my whole trade built around keeping it out.
And not once, not one single time, did it occur to me that the thing I was keeping out was the thing I was short of.
What is actually in it
Before I ordered it, I checked it.
And to be straight with you, I was checking it hoping to find filler, so I would be entitled to dismiss it and go back to being resigned, which at least does not hurt.
That is not what I found.
Bromelain, 150mg.
An enzyme from pineapple.
I read that and I put the phone down on the table.
That has been my enemy for twenty one years. That is the reason I have not put fresh pineapple near anything with gelatine in it since I was twenty eight. I know exactly what it does, because I have watched it do it in my own bowl.
It breaks down protein. Which is the part of food that takes the most work and the part most likely to be left unfinished.
Dandelion root, 400mg.
Works on the fat side of things. I learned something here I did not know. Fat is not taken up straight off by an enzyme. It has to be broken into small enough pieces first for the enzyme to have anything to get hold of. If that step is slow, everything after it is slow.
Slippery elm bark, 150mg.
That one surprised me most, because it does not break down anything at all. It coats. It puts a soft layer over the lining and it simply makes the whole process bearable while the others do the work.
Ginger, 250mg and peppermint, 200mg.
Both on the movement side, so that food is not sitting around on the way.
Lemon balm, 300mg.
For the connection between the stomach and the nerves, which every woman over forty knows about even if she has never had a name for it.
The six of them are not thrown together. They do three different jobs.
They break down. The bromelain and the dandelion go at the cause itself.
They move. The ginger and the peppermint make sure it is not sitting there, because sitting there is what gives the bacteria their time.
They settle. The slippery elm and the lemon balm make it bearable while it happens.
Break down. Move. Settle.
And that is where everything that came before it finally made sense to me.
Giving up sugar took out one food and put five in its place that need more work than it did. That is why I was worse and not better.
The probiotic was adding bacteria. But my problem was before the bacteria, not at them. I was feeding them undigested food and then paying fifty five euro a month to send them reinforcements.
The fasting took food out of the equation instead of dealing with why it was not being broken down, and that is why the room went grey on me on the tenth day.
The bioresonance gave me a list. A list does not break down anything.
The tea settled things. And I paid for it two months longer than I wanted to.
Not one of them did the thing that was missing.
And I am the woman who has spent twenty one years explaining to twenty year olds what the enzyme in pineapple does, and I paid six hundred euro to take food off my own plate.
The rest of what I looked at is duller but it mattered to me.
It is made in the EU to EU standards. You take two capsules with your main meal, so it is not another ritual at six in the morning on an empty stomach, and at six in the morning my hands are in dough. And the doses are printed on the label rather than hidden behind the words "proprietary blend".
I ordered it that same evening, sitting on that chair by the door that nobody ever uses.
What actually happened, week by week
Nothing happened for the first few days and I want to say that plainly.
One thing did happen, and it is not a result.
There is no taste and there is no smell.
For me that is not a small thing. I work with taste. That detox tea sat in my mouth until lunchtime and I was judging sweetness through it for a fortnight before I gave up on it.
The second week something turned up that I was not looking for at all.
I started tasting in the afternoons again.
A cake decorator has to taste. Buttercream is judged on the tongue and not on the scales. And somewhere about two years ago I had stopped doing it after lunch because it sat heavy on me, and I had been taking Shauna's word for it, and Shauna is a good girl but she is twenty two and she still cannot tell sharp from fresh.
That second week I realised one evening that I had tasted three times that afternoon and had not thought about my stomach once.
The fourth week was the first real difference and it was not dramatic.
I measured it with the strings of the apron. Twenty one years tying them behind me and I know exactly where they meet.
It was not gone. But it was noticeably and undeniably less. And at seven in the morning and at eight at night, the strings met in the same place, which had not happened in years.
I will say one thing here so there is no confusion about it.
My weight has not changed. It is the same today. My stomach is just my own stomach.
The second month was not a symptom at all. It was something I had stopped doing.
I stopped calculating. Before a delivery I used to work out when I had last eaten and how many hours there were until I left, every single time, automatically, and I never counted it as anything. One day I caught myself halfway to Portlaoise with three cakes in the boot, and I had not calculated.
The third month was when somebody else said it out loud.
Shauna looked at me across the table and asked me had I lost weight.
I had not.
And one evening in June I took my apron off in the kitchen before I went out.
Twenty one years of walking to the car in it and taking it off there.
That evening I hung it on the hook and walked out without it, and I did not notice until I had the engine started.
A few honest things
I am going to tell you what nobody told me, because I spent six hundred euro on promises.
This is not a miracle. It works on the body's time and not on the internet's time.
The quickest bit, the heaviness straight after eating, came within days. The real bit, being the same at night as I am in the morning, took about four weeks. The whole of it, which is that I no longer think about the subject at all, came around the third month.
That is normal. A body does not reorganise itself in a week. Anybody promising you faster is selling you something.
So what I would do is get enough for two or three months at once. One bottle shows you it works. Two or three show you what actually changes.
Bioprime give thirty days, so that risk is neither mine nor yours.
The real risk is a different one. It is buying one bottle, feeling the first few things, and stopping just before the part you bought it for.
It is not just me
I have turned into one of those people who brings it up when nobody asked. I know. I am aware of myself.
But since I started talking about it, things have come back to me. Here are three that stayed with me.
"I have a dress in the wardrobe eleven years and every New Year I take it out and every New Year I put it back. This year I wore it. I do not want to sound like an advertisement so I will tell you the other half of it as well. I have not lost weight, I am the same as I was. The dress just closed, and I stood in front of the mirror holding on to the door frame."
Breda, 60, Co. Mayo
"I did twenty years in a pharmacy wholesaler and thousands of boxes went through my hands. I know what sells, what comes back and what sits on a shelf. Most things for bloating are peppermint and fennel in a nice box and that is the truth of it. This at least tells you how much of what is in it, printed in milligrams, and the six things in it do six different jobs instead of the same job under six names."
Marie, 47, Co. Louth
"I was certain it would not work. I had spent money on all sorts, the ones sitting at eye level on the shelf. A European company I had never heard of was my last hope, which is to say no hope at all. Two months in, my son in law asked me had I changed something. MY SON IN LAW. The man who has called me Mrs Hanley's neighbour for nine years."
Eimear, 44, Co. Cork
Where you get it and who makes it
NoBloat is not in the chemists. It is not in Boots, it is not in the big chains, it is not on Amazon and it is not on the discount sites.
It is sold from the Bioprime Science site and nowhere else.
When I ordered it I knew nothing about the company except the name. Once it worked I got curious and I looked them up.
A small European outfit. They make it to EU standards and they have [CUSTOMER COUNT] customers, with no television advertising and not a single shop.
Which means all of it came from women telling other women. Which, when I think about it, is exactly how I heard about it myself, off a customer, at my own table.
They ship from inside the EU as well, so there is no customs charge on it the way there is with half the things you order from across the water. I found that out the hard way with something else.
And then the price caught me on the hop.
After three hundred and thirty euro on a probiotic from Germany. After a hundred and eighty on two bioresonance sessions and a list with eggs on it. After a hundred and twenty five on a tea I paid for two months longer than I wanted to. After five months without sugar.
A bottle is €39
Thirty nine euro. For a month.
I read it twice because I was certain I was looking at a sample size.
Two bottles are €59 and three are €75, which means the third bottle adds sixteen euro. And since I have just told you honestly that the real change comes around the third month, that is the sum that matters.
Delivery is [FREE SHIPPING THRESHOLD] and it usually comes in [DELIVERY WINDOW] working days.
One thing I will say, because it caught me out the second time. It goes out of stock.
Not in the fake way with "only 3 left" and a number flashing at the side of the screen. Actually out of stock, because they make it in small batches and they do not sit on a warehouse full of it.
The first time mine came in three days. The second time I waited nine, and for those nine days I was very poor company in my own kitchen.
So if you are looking at it in stock now, I would not leave it.
What it does, in short
It breaks down (bromelain 150mg and dandelion 400mg). The enzyme goes at the protein and the dandelion works on the fat side. This is the part that deals with the cause rather than the consequence.
It moves (ginger 250mg and peppermint 200mg). So food is not sitting on the way, because sitting on the way is what gives bacteria their time.
It settles (slippery elm 150mg and lemon balm 300mg). A soft layer over the lining and a quieter connection between the stomach and the nerves while the rest of it does its job.
It asks nothing of you. Two capsules with your main meal. No ritual at six in the morning, and at six in the morning my hands are in dough. That sounds like a small thing, but it is the only reason I take it every day, and everything above only works if you take it every day.
What actually changed
I would love to tell you my stomach settled and leave it at that.
But that is not it.
What changed is the hand I used to put across the front of me in every photograph.
What changed is the calculating before I leave the house.
And one more thing changed, which is the one I find hardest to say.
Since May I go in for the cutting of the cake again.
For twenty one years I have made the best part of other people's days, and for two of them I handed that part to a young one who does not even want it yet, and I told myself it was so she would learn.
I think about what would have happened if Bernie had not left her handbag open on that table. Or if she had gone on to Lourdes, like a normal woman who has already paid for it.
And to be straight with you, I nearly did not order it.
I sat on that chair by the door and I nearly put the phone down. I had hoped so many times and it had come to nothing so many times that hope had started to look like something I could no longer afford.
I think a lot of women are sitting exactly there. You stop trying, because trying and failing again hurts more than not trying at all.
I did not put the phone down.
Oh, and one more thing.
In July I had a wedding in the same hotel.
The same manager stopped me at the door and started to say it.
I had taken my apron off in the car.
I walked in, through the tables, and stood beside the cake before anybody had to pull me over by the hand.
The photographer lifted the camera and I left my hands by my sides.
If you recognised yourself anywhere in this, I think you should try it.
If you are flat in the morning and a balloon by the evening.
If you have stopped eating things you love and it has not helped.
If you turn slightly side on when somebody lifts a camera.
If you have caught yourself saying "sure, that is just my stomach."
That is not just your stomach. Something stopped being produced and nobody told you.
Try it properly, not one bottle and a shrug. Two or three, and enough time for your body to answer you.
The link below goes to the Bioprime Science site. If it is in stock, do not overthink it. If it is not, leave your email for the notification, because it goes quickly when it comes back.
I nearly did not bother.
Bioprime Science · 30 day guarantee · Ships from within the EU
Food supplement. Do not exceed the recommended daily dose. Food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle. Keep out of the reach of young children. Not suitable for pregnant or breastfeeding women. If you are taking medication or under medical supervision, consult your doctor before use. Individual experiences vary.