While your mom swears by saltines, TikTok influencers insist you need questionable cleanses and supplements. It seems like everyone has their own ideas about what to do if your stomach is feeling a little…off.
But first, it’s important to know that upset stomach is a pretty general term for symptoms with a number of possible underlying causes—and solutions. “Some people will use upset stomach when they have bloating, nausea, cramping, or acid reflux,” says Bimal Ashar, MD, MBA, a primary care doctor at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Others use the phrase to describe abdominal pain, diarrhea, or indigestion. And the reasons someone might feel this way are as varied as the symptoms. For example, acid moving up the esophagus is to blame for reflux, while nausea can stem from a range of sources, including inner ear issues, motion, pregnancy, and food poisoning.
That’s why Carolyn Newberry, MD, a gastroenterologist and associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, likes to get more granular when her patients say they have an upset stomach. It’s also why it’s best to talk to your own doctor for personalized advice if you’re dealing with ongoing or acute tummy issues, including violent or persistent puking, blood in your vomit or stool, sharp abdominal pain, high fever, or other symptoms that last longer than a week.
All that said there are a few general do’s and don’ts that apply pretty much across the board for an upset stomach. Here, Dr. Newberry and Dr. Ashar break them down.
Strategies that may settle an upset stomach
It’s important to note that there’s not a whole lot of research on treatments for an upset stomach, Dr. Ashar says. Part of the reason for this is, as mentioned, there’s no universal definition of what an upset stomach actually is. Second, it’s tricky to recruit people for studies, since they have to be feeling ill at that moment in order to participate and provide accurate results. Still, there are a few ingredients and strategies that the doctors we spoke with say they’ve seen enough scientific backing and anecdotal evidence to endorse. These are the ones they say are worth trying.
Chew on fresh ginger.
“Ginger has known anti-nausea properties and does have a little bit of clinical research behind it,” Dr. Newberry says. Dr. Ashar agrees, adding that chewing on or making tea with the kind you get in the produce section of the grocery store probably has some benefit. (While ginger ale, for the record, does not.)
