Why Do I Burp So Much?Two Kinds of Belching, and What Helps

Burping is ordinary. The NIDDK says people typically belch up to 30 times a day.¹ But if you burp in long strings, one after another, often when you’re stressed or after you’ve noticed one, there may be a different mechanism at work.

Two kinds of burp

In 2004, Dutch researchers used sensors in the food pipe (esophagus) to watch the belches of 14 people with excessive belching and 14 healthy people.²

	Gastric belch	Supragastric belch
What happens	Air from the stomach comes up and out2	Air is pulled into the esophagus from above and pushed straight back out, never reaching the stomach2
Who had them	Both groups, at similar rates2	Only the people with excessive belching2

So for many frequent burpers, swallowing too much air into the stomach isn’t the problem. The NIDDK describes it the same way: some people belch a lot because they swallow air “and release the air before it enters the stomach.”¹ It behaves more like a habit than a stomach problem, and habits can be retrained.

What has helped

The American Gastroenterological Association’s³ 2023 guidance lists cognitive behavioral therapy, diaphragmatic breathing, speech therapy and certain gut-brain medicines as options for this kind of belching.

• Speech therapy: in the Netherlands, therapy taught people how the habit works, how to notice air entering the esophagus, and exercises to stop it. Of 48 people evaluated, 40 (83%) had a sufficient to major result, after a median of 3 months and 10 sessions.⁴ There was no comparison group, and 25 of the 73 people treated weren’t evaluated.⁴
• Belly breathing: in Singapore, 36 people with reflux and heavy belching either learned diaphragmatic breathing or waited. 9 of 15 (60%) in the breathing group cut their belching score by half or more, compared with none of 21 on the waitlist, and the gains held 4 months later.⁵ It helped most in people with the supragastric kind.⁵

When it’s worth a test

A clinician can usually tell the two kinds apart from your history and an exam, and a pH-impedance test can confirm it.³ The guidance reserves scopes and imaging for people with warning signs, symptoms that are getting worse, or unusual exam findings.³

If burping comes with heartburn, see heartburn and when it’s GERD. For gas at the other end, see why you have so much gas and whether fizzy drinks cause bloating. Stress can set it off too: see can stress upset your stomach?

Try: “I burp in long strings, sometimes dozens in a row, especially when I’m stressed. Could this be supragastric belching, and could I see someone for breathing or speech therapy?”

Bloated by Dinner covers this in Chapter 5, “Ten to Twenty a Day,” in a section called “Two Kinds of Burp.” Its Belly Clock logs what you ate and drank and when your belly acted up, so you can see whether burping strings follow meals, fizzy drinks or stressful moments. See the book.