Increasing – and unexplained – belly bloat
Can’t quite button your pants? “When patients have weight gain, the most common reason is definitely poor dietary choices and inactivity,” says Dr. Stephanie Romero, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. But if those reasons don’t check out with your belly’s growing girth, you could have an abdominal cancer like ovarian cancer, Romero says. Abdominal swelling, Bove adds, can also be a sign of heart failure, which often causes fluid retention.
