Before Another Elimination Diet…
April is IBS Awareness Month, and while awareness matters, there’s something about the way we talk about Irritable Bowel Syndrome that deserves a closer look.
For a lot of people, “IBS” ends up being the end of the conversation, instead of just the beginning. But let’s not move on prematurely!
By the time most clients find their way to me, they’ve already been given that label. And to be clear, I’m not diagnosing, criticizing, or replacing medical care – that’s not my role. But what I am paying attention to isn’t just the name people were given. It’s what they’re actually living with day to day.
And that usually looks like trying to function through:
- unpredictable digestion,
- constant gut discomfort, and
- low-level stress of always needing to know where the nearest bathroom is.
Which, let’s be honest, is not how anyone wants to be planning their life. Me and you included.
IBS is often the diagnosis given when everything looks “fine” on paper, but clearly doesn’t feel fine in reality. When tests don’t show anything obvious, and symptoms don’t fit neatly into a box, the takeaway becomes, “your gut is just sensitive, and this is something you’ll need to manage for forever. So sorry.”
A label may feel validating at first. But it also tends to leave people stuck managing their symptoms without understanding why they’re happening in the first place.
To be clear, IBS isn’t a root cause. It’s a description. A shorthand diagnosis for a cluster of symptoms like bloating, constipation or diarrhea – altered gut motility – and abdominal discomfort. But those symptoms are coming from somewhere.
What I’m looking for in my work with clients is what’s underneath that label. I want to get at the root(s).
More often than not, there are patterns like microbiome imbalances, sluggish digestion, mineral depletion, nervous system stress, or – most commonly – some combination of all of the above. These are functional imbalances that don’t always show up clearly on standard testing, but absolutely show up in how someone feels after they eat, how their energy holds up throughout the day, and how much mental space their gut is taking up.
And that’s usually the turning point: realizing that it’s not just about what you’re eating, but how your body is actually handling it.
Most of the people I work with are already doing a lot “right.” They’ve cleaned up their diet. They’ve tried eliminating foods. They’re paying attention. And still, they’re uncomfortable and adjusting their routines around their digestion more than they’d like to admit.
At some point, it makes sense to ask a different question. Not just “how do I manage these bothersome symptoms?” but “why is my gut responding this way??”
That shift opens the door to a much more useful conversation, where we can start to look at digestion, food patterns, the microbiome, mineral status, and the overall internal environment the gut is operating in.
So during IBS Awareness Month, yes, absolutely, bringing light on the suffering and uncomfortable matters. Creating awareness matters. But if you’ve been given that diagnosis and you’re still not feeling like yourself, it might be worth looking a little deeper.
Not to chase a different label, but to actually understand what your body has been trying to communicate.
Because the goal isn’t to get better at managing symptoms or quietly working around them. It’s to get to a place where your gut isn’t running the show and keeping you on a very tight bathroom schedule.
Because the goal isn’t to get better at managing symptoms or quietly working around them. It’s to get to a place where your gut isn’t running the show and keeping you on a very tight bathroom schedule.
Next Steps
If you’re ready to make some concrete changes to your health, here are 3 quick things you can incorporate today that can help your gut start feeling better. I can’t promise these will be your magic solutions, but I see a lot of clients with digestive issues that can be better supported by:
- Taking a deep breath before eating. Then take a moment to look at the colors on your plate, enjoying the colors and the delicious odors wafting from the deliciousness in front of you that you are just about to taste.
- Chewing food well. This means paste-like. If you need water to wash down what’s in your mouth without choking, try smaller bites + more chewing, with only little sips of water. This alone can go a long way in feeling better!
- Eating while sitting at a table. Not at your laptop hunched over on the couch. Not as you dash from one place to the next. And definitely not in the car on a tray strapped to your steering wheel, dipping Chick Fil-A nuggets into Sweet & Spicy Sriracha rigged up to your air vent.
And if you try these and they aren’t enough, but you’re wanting to go deeper, let’s talk.