Sorry for the long post but I think many people have my problem but
are afraid to admit or talk about it. And since I believe that most
illnesses start in the bowel I think it's an important topic to
discuss and diagnose.

In the past I used to always get regular bloating and flatulence,
almost every day for years, which I thought might be normal until I
got rid of it last year! Last year in June I started eating only raw
large salads for supper, I would get satisfied and full. Then
something amazing happened, I started having bowel movements
twice/day, very emptying and satisfying and non-smelly. After a few
days of this my bowels became very quiet, I never experienced
bloating or flatulence again. I could not believe how good I felt, I
wasn't sure what had happened to me. My digestion seemed to be made
of iron after this: it DIDN'T MATTER what I ate anymore, I would
NEVER get the bloating or gas.
I have again just started getting episodes of bloating and flatulence
after meals that last 4-5 hours! This frustrates me because my diet
is so good, and has not changed since I thought I beat this problem
last year. For the past year or longer my diet consists of the
following:
Breakfast: raw fruit smoothies made of bananas, mangos, peaches,
papayas. Sometimes oranges. I never include milk, yogurt, protein
powder or any of that nonsense, just pure fruit and a bit of water to
thin.
Lunch: Fast food usually, either small amounts of chicken and rice
with peas, or rice, green beans and corn.
Dinner: Salad with a sandwich, or potatoes, soy protein. There was
usually a salad involved though.
Now however, I seem to be getting random bouts of bloating flatulence
again. Sometimes I will eat a large salad on an empty stomach and
nothing will happen, then the next day I'll eat the same salad on an
empty stomach and get tons of bloating and gas again. I ate a stir-
fry one night with lots of bloating and gas, then 2 days later I eat
the exact same thing again with nothing. I eat on an empty stomach,
so I know that the food was not mixing with another food that was
still in my stomach from a previous meal. Besides, it didnt matter
what I ate before I would not get bloated. I do not think that
producing gas is as simple as what you eat, or from being constipated
with 4 days worth of food in your bowels. I'm thinking it can also
have something to do also with bacteria types in your gut with
different levels of it at different times?? Could this be true? Could
I possibly have inadvertently eliminated this bacteria last year, and
now its creeping up again, causing random bouts of bloating and gas?
I tried a detox to mimic what I did last year with only salad for
dinner, eating raw foods for a week with a cleansing supplement. The
herbal laxative of this supplement gave me bad diarrhea so I stopped
using it.
So to a sum things up, my diet has not changed in the past year, yet
the bloating and gas is coming back sporadically, slowly increasing.
Could higher levels of some sort of bacterias that produce bloating
and gas cause it? If so, what could they be and how do I eliminate
them?