For years I could tell you exactly what was going on in everyone else's body but my own.
I knew my kids' patterns down to the hour. I could read an ingredient label in a grocery aisle faster than most people can read a menu. And the whole time, I was bloated by dinner most nights, exhausted in the afternoons, and telling myself that's just what being a mom of three feels like.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to turn the investigation around and point it at myself.
So I'm not writing this from up on some shelf. I'm writing it because I know how easy it is to file something under "normal" when it has been happening long enough. When something has been going on for ten years, it stops feeling like a symptom. It just feels like you.
So here are five things I pay attention to. None of them are diagnoses. They are clues.
1. Bloating that runs on a schedule
Everybody bloats sometimes. Big meal, too much fizzy water, that's life.
What gets my attention is bloating with a pattern. Flat in the morning, six months pregnant by 4pm. Or only after certain meals. Or always worse the week before your period. A pattern means there's a mechanism behind it, and a mechanism is something we can actually chase down.
The question I ask is not "do you bloat." It's "when." Start writing it down for two weeks. Just the time and what you ate. You will probably see it before I do.
2. Your bathroom habits, which nobody wants to talk about
I'm going to talk about it anyway.
Going once a day is not the same as going well. You can technically be regular and still be constipated. You can also go three times a day and have it be a sign that things are moving through too fast to actually absorb anything.
What I want to know: does it take effort, does it feel complete, is it happening at roughly the same time each day, and what does it look like (yes, look). This is one of the cheapest and most useful pieces of data you have about your digestion and it's free, every single day, and almost nobody is reading it.
3. Your skin keeps telling on you
Eczema that comes and goes. Breakouts along the jaw. Random hives. Skin that flushes after certain foods.
The gut and skin are in constant conversation. When I see stubborn skin stuff that hasn't responded to the creams and the washes and the third dermatologist, I stop looking at the skin. Not because skin care is useless, but because you can't topically treat something that is coming from the inside.
My husband's anaphylaxis was my first real education in this. I spent years thinking about skin and reactions as their own separate category before I understood they were downstream of something else.
4. The list of foods you can eat keeps getting shorter
This one worries me the most, honestly.
It usually starts small. Dairy bothers you, so you cut it. Then bread. Then onions and garlic, then beans, then anything raw, and now you have eight foods you feel safe with and you're anxious every time somebody invites you to dinner.
Here's the thing I wish someone had told me sooner: a shrinking food list is a symptom, not a solution. A healthy gut should be able to handle a wide variety of real food. If it can't, the answer usually isn't to keep removing things forever. Elimination is a tool for gathering information, and then we have to actually do something with the information.
If you're eating fewer foods every year, something upstream needs attention.
5. Brain fog, mood, and that low hum of anxiety
I know. This one sounds like a stretch until you look at the research.
About 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut. The vagus nerve runs directly between your gut and your brain and the traffic goes both ways. So when someone tells me they're foggy at 3pm every day, or irritable in a way that doesn't match their life, or anxious for no reason they can point to, digestion is on my list of places to look.
Not the only place. But on the list.
What I'd actually do first
Not a cleanse. Not a supplement you saw on Instagram.
Start with two weeks of writing things down. Food, timing, symptoms, sleep, stress, bathroom. That's it. (See my Food, Mood, Poop document in the “forms” tab). Most people find their own pattern before they ever talk to someone like me, and the ones who don't at least walk in with real evidence instead of a vague feeling that something's off.
Then eat actual food. Fat, fiber, and protein with every meal. Drink enough water (preferably after a meal as to not dilute your stomach acid during). Chew slowly enough that your body knows a meal is happening. It is not exciting advice. It works more often than anything else I could tell you.
And if you've been doing all that and you're still stuck, that's usually when testing is worth it. Not to find a label. To find the mechanism.
One more thing, and I mean this. If any of these five felt uncomfortably familiar, you are not broken and you're not making it up. Your body has been sending the same note for a while now. It's okay to finally open it.
This is for information only and isn't medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about anything new or worsening.
