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IBS
IBS is a gut-brain communication pattern. We look for the infections, imbalances, sensitivities, and nervous system signals behind cramping and changing bowels.
What you may be noticing
Your bowels are unpredictable. Some days you rush to the bathroom, other days nothing moves. Cramping, bloating, and urgency shape where you go and what you eat. Stress makes it louder. You may have been told the tests are normal and to manage it.
Why it is rarely one thing
IBS is a label for a pattern of symptoms, not a cause. It describes how your gut is behaving, not why. Underneath, there is almost always a combination of microbial imbalance, food reactivity, inflammation, and altered communication between the brain and the gut. When urgency leads the picture, I look closely for small intestinal overgrowth.
Your gut has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, with hundreds of millions of neurons, in constant conversation with your brain through the vagus nerve. Signals from an inflamed gut travel upward and change mood, sleep, and pain perception. Signals from a stressed brain travel downward and change motility, digestive juices, and the sensitivity of the gut lining. Antibiotics, hormonal birth control, and long seasons of stress or trauma each leave their mark. Calming the gut alone, or the mind alone, rarely finishes the work.
Patterns we look for
- SIBO and microbiome imbalance in the small and large intestine.
- Post-infectious changes after food poisoning or travel illness.
- Visceral hypersensitivity, in which gut nerves amplify normal sensations.
- Intestinal permeability and low-grade inflammation.
- Food sensitivities and FODMAP intolerance.
- Bile acid malabsorption, an often missed cause of diarrhea.
- Vagal tone, autonomic balance, and the cleansing wave between meals.
- Celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and other conditions that must be ruled out.
- Hormonal shifts across the cycle.
- Limbic and stress circuits that heighten gut sensitivity.
How I evaluate it
A comprehensive functional neurological exam assesses vagal function, autonomic balance, and the brain regions that modulate pain and gut sensation.
Functional testing may include comprehensive stool analysis, breath testing for SIBO, celiac screening, calprotectin to separate IBS from inflammatory bowel disease, food sensitivity evaluation, a thyroid panel, and nutrient markers. Blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss, fever, or new symptoms after age fifty need conventional evaluation first.
How we address it
The gut comes first, and my rule is regulation first, eradication later.
- Restore rhythm with a simple bowel ritual: feet elevated, lean forward, relax the jaw and pelvic floor, and take slow diaphragmatic breaths, without your phone.
- Anchor motility: breakfast soon after waking, a short walk after meals, enough space between meals for the cleansing wave, and gentle clockwise abdominal massage each night.
- Train the vagus nerve and the gut-brain axis with vigorous gargling, humming, breath work, vestibular exercises, and diaphragm release.
- Follow a structured elimination food plan, then reintroduce foods one at a time so your gut tells us what it welcomes.
- Repair the gut lining, restore digestive function and bile flow, and rebalance the microbiome, adding deeper microbial work only when testing points there.
Your gut can become predictable again. Calm, steady, and responsive.
Book your Comprehensive Functional Medicine Eval/Neurological Exam today to discover what the contributing root causes are that are underlying your health concerns.