Based on reports from numerous patients in my practice, I have never seen a patient whose flatulence problem was successfully treated with the pharmaceutical approach. In fact, I am not aware of any drugs that can treat flatulence. It might sound funny that with all the medical advances in modern medicine, we still fail to treat flatulence which one might think would be easy to fix. I was telling a patient today that treating most common conditions and/or simple imbalances using drugs is analogous to a Calculus teacher wanting to teach 1st grade math! Most of my patients have basic complaints (such as flatulence, inexplicable fatigue, sadness, or “just not feeling well without a particular cause”) that simply do not respond to conventional medical/pharmaceutical approaches. Going back to our math analogy, the reason for this problem is not that the Calculus instructor does not know any math. The level of math is just beyond the understanding and need of a 1st grader. Some people do need to take Calculus (i.e. drugs or surgery), and when they do, we do need Calculus teachers (i.e. medical doctors or other conventional medical practitioners.)
Natural medical approaches, on the other hand, can ultimately cure the disturbing and often embarrassing condition of flatulence. The quick fix for this condition is to take a high quality digestive enzyme supplement, and in some cases, even hydrochloric acid with your meals. Of course, this process should be monitored by your naturopathic physician. (Note: Many of my patients with a flatulence problem are taking acid blockers or neutralizers for treatment of acid reflux. Such patients will likely have to ultimately go off of their acid reflux medication in order to cure their flatulence problem. This process can be a challenging and long one, and must be undertaken under the supervision of a naturopathic physician.)
A more fundamental solution to the problem of flatulence, however, is to help improve stomach, liver and intestinal function with a gentle detox or cleansing program. There are numerous natural medicines/supplements that can come to our aid in combating this condition. Often, such patients have an imbalance of the microbial life in their intestines, too many unfriendly organisms and not enough of the friendly ones (probiotics). The problem with taking probiotics, however, is that often if you take them when your intestines are still filled with the unfriendly ones, the flatulence (and/or abdominal bloating which is often an accompanying symptom) becomes worse! Therefore, the patient, under the supervision of a natural medicine practitioner, will have to undergo an intestinal cleansing program PRIOR to taking probiotics. Another problem with probiotics is that, to my knowledge, most over-the-counter probiotics supplements are not viable, and even if they were, some are not even human species, they are cow strains! So, I highly recommend using pharmaceutical grade probiotics supplementation rather than the over-the-counter ones.
Doing an intestinal cleanse does not make sense unless the liver is in a good shape, not just based on a blood test, but based on the patients symptoms. Therefore, prior to eliminating the unfriendly organisms in the intestines and replacing them with friendly bacteria, you need to cleanse/detox the liver which may or may not be a challenging process. In my patient population, most of whom have already tried many other approaches on their own, they often need very careful monitoring of the liver detox process. I offer drainage therapies (using UNDA drops) at my office which are a European way of doing detox. Drainage works on a far deeper level (i.e. intracellular level) than detox (i.e. extracellular level), and is a much more gentle, yet deeper cleansing process.
In summary, to ultimately cure the problem of flatulence, patients need to undergo a liver cleansing program, followed by intestinal cleansing. Meanwhile, it is imperative that the patient eats healthy. I find that some individuals must have their constitutional homeopathic remedy for this whole process to be successful. (You can refer to two of the videos on this website, under homeopathic testimonials, by Janet and Judith. These two ladies were suffering from digestive problems even after completing a thorough cleansing program, and it was not until they took their constitutional homeopathic remedy that their digestive system improved greatly. Do a search on this website to learn more about constitutional homeopathy.)