Diastasis: diet

A not insignificant proportion of patients affected by rectus abdominis diastasis do not know they are affected and do not even know the pathology.

Banally, some of them think they are just "a little bit fat during pregnancy" but at the test of the scale in reality the weight is normal. In these cases a diet to lose weight is obviously not decisive and you find yourself with an abdomen of a volume not in keeping with the proportions and body weight.

Sometimes even underweight patients or those suffering from anorexic eating disorders find themselves with a bulky abdomen and not knowing they are suffering from diastasis recti, they are led to undertake further nonsensical and worsening diets.

Generally speaking, if your body weight is normal, you can limit yourself to reducing the amount of food in your diet that can produce bloating.

In fact, the abdominal wall of a patient suffering from rectus abdominis diastasis does not have the normal restraining power it should have, and any reason for gastric or intestinal dilation causes it to expand disproportionately, resulting in abnormal overall swelling of the abdomen.

In cases of overweight, instead, weight loss is indicated.As already explained, in fact, rectus abdominis diastasis and overweight are conditions that can coexist and worsen each other. However one cannot have the However, it is not possible to pretend that slimming is completely resolving the abdominal picture as a whole. Often even by losing weight, overweight patients affected by diastasis recti notice even more the wall defect, since the subcutaneous panniculus adiposus thins and lets the muscular-tendinous component show with more definition. The resolution of the overweight in a complete and stable way is an absolutely necessary presupposition to consider the surgical reconstruction of the abdominal wall.

It is therefore necessary to be wary if a surgical intervention is proposed without convincingly treating the overweight beforehand. A possible liposuction of completion has obviously only a value of refinement to treat localized fatty deposits in the subcutaneous layer and should not have in any way a purpose of pure weight loss.

Even if one does not intend to proceed to any surgery, the reduction of visceral fat is healthy and at the level of the abdominal wall it reduces the stress components that could in the future make the wall defect even worse.

It is a good rule, for all the concepts listed so far, that before embarking on any slimming path on your own or with a "dietician", if you have even the slightest suspicion of a diastasis recti, you should be examined by a doctor who is a true specialist in the field, obtaining a validated diagnosis, even if surgery is not a priority at the moment.