Most chronic gut symptoms come down to five patterns.
A twenty eight page guide to what is actually driving them, for adults and for children. Written for anyone who has been handed "just IBS" and suspects there is more to it.
Where should we send it?
Twenty eight pages, free.
- We work alongside your GP and specialist
- Testing only where it changes the treatment
- Adults and children, the same framework
What is in the guide
Written for two readers at once: the adult with chronic gut symptoms, and the parent of a child with the same.
The five patterns
- Low stomach acid, dysbiosis and SIBO, motility, stress and gut-brain, and food reactivity, each one described in enough detail to recognise
- How the same pattern looks in an adult and how it looks in a child, side by side
- Why reflux is so often treated as too much acid when the picture says too little
- Why the list of foods you avoid keeps growing, and what that usually points to upstream
Investigating it properly
- The bloods worth asking your GP for, with the wording to use, written out for yourself and for your child
- What microbiome mapping, three substrate SIBO breath testing and permeability testing each answer, and when each one is worth running
- The sesame seed transit test, which you can do at home this week for the price of a tablespoon of seeds
- The three phase treatment sequence, and the signs that self-directed work has gone as far as it can
I have tried everything.
The usual path looks the same for adults and for children. Red flags are ruled out. Coeliac serology, stool testing and basic bloods come back normal. Sometimes an endoscopy or colonoscopy follows, and structural findings are ruled out too. IBS is offered as a label, a low FODMAP diet or a probiotic gets suggested, things improve briefly, and then they come back.
Endoscopy and colonoscopy are built to find structural disease and inflammation, and they do that well. What they cannot show is whether stomach acid is low, whether bacteria have overgrown in the small intestine, whether the colonic community has narrowed, whether the intestinal barrier has become permeable, or whether motility is failing. Those are functional questions, and the tests that answer them sit outside the standard workup.
IBS describes the symptom picture. The guide is about what is producing it.
Why we made it
Most people arrive with a long list of foods they have cut out and no answer to why those foods cause trouble. Gluten bloats them, dairy triggers reflux, onions ruin a day. In children it is eggs, or oats. Somewhere along the line someone suggested cutting them, symptoms eased, and the list has quietly grown ever since.
Avoiding a food manages the symptom. It does not answer why the body is reacting to onions in the first place, and for most people the answer is not an onion intolerance. Something upstream has made the gut reactive. Treat that, and the reactions to individual foods usually settle. Coeliac disease and true IgE allergy are the two genuine exceptions, and both need strict avoidance.
This guide is most of the framework we would take someone through in a first appointment. Some readers will use it, work with their GP and get a long way on their own. That is a good outcome, and the guide is written so it is possible.
Send me the guide
Free, twenty eight pages.
General education only. It does not replace individual assessment, diagnosis or treatment by your own practitioner. If you have bleeding, unexplained weight loss, persistent vomiting or a change in bowel habit that is new, see your GP. © The Family Naturopath, The KAN Clinic.