You plan your day around your gut. You know where every toilet is, you think twice before eating out, and you’re exhausted from trying to work out which food is the problem this week.

I hear the same words in almost every first consultation: I’ve tried everything and my gut has never really improved. Low FODMAP, cutting gluten and dairy, an intolerance test, a cupboard full of probiotics. Some of it helped a little, for a while.

That’s because most gut advice manages symptoms. My job is to find out why they’re happening in the first place, and fix that.

I work with people who have often had digestive issues for years, sometimes with an IBS diagnosis and little else. You might recognise:

• Bloating that builds through the day, or a stomach that looks pregnant by evening
• Constipation, loose stools or swinging between the two
• Urgency, or anxiety about being far from a toilet
• Wind, cramping or pain after eating
• Reflux, heartburn or feeling full after a few bites
• Reacting to more and more foods over time
• Fatigue, skin problems, low mood or hormone issues alongside your gut symptoms

That last point matters. Gut problems rarely stay in the gut. When I connect skin flare-ups to the microbiome, or constipation to hormones, or bloating to anxiety, that’s usually the moment everything starts to make sense.

For most of my clients, the story starts long before the bloating. It often looks like this:

1. You’re stuck in fight-or-flight. Busy, stressed, always on. Your body switches digestion down because it thinks there are more important things to deal with.
2. You eat fast and chew less. Meals happen at a desk, on the go, or while scrolling.
3. Stomach acid and digestive enzymes drop. Food isn’t broken down properly before it moves on.
4. Undigested food ferments in the gut. This feeds the wrong bacteria and lets them overgrow.
5. The microbiome tips out of balance. That imbalance drives the bloating, loose stools, constipation and food reactions you feel every day.

Cutting foods can quieten the symptoms at the end of that chain, but it doesn’t touch the beginning. We work on every link, from your nervous system to your gut lining.

Low FODMAP. It can calm symptoms short term, but staying on it starves your beneficial bacteria along with the problem ones. In my experience, long term it often leaves the gut more fragile, not less.

Cutting gluten and dairy. Sometimes useful, but if your reactions keep spreading to new foods, the food usually isn’t the real problem.

Food intolerance (IgG) tests. A long list of positives usually points to a leaky gut, where the gut lining and mucus layer need repair, rather than dozens of true intolerances. Under-chewing can also leave food particles large enough to trigger an immune response. I rarely recommend these tests; I’d rather fix the reason your immune system is reacting.

1. A deep dive into your story. Symptoms, history, stress, sleep, diet, medications and any past test results.
2. Targeted testing where it helps. Often a comprehensive stool test, sometimes functional blood analysis or a histamine DNA test.
3. A plan for every link in the chain. Calming the nervous system, supporting digestion, clearing overgrowths, repairing the gut lining and rebuilding a diverse microbiome.
4. Support while you change. We adjust as your gut responds, and widen your diet as it settles.

Most of my digestive clients feel a real difference within the first month or two. The goal is a gut you can stop thinking about.