Clarissa Berry Health

Clarissa Berry Health Holistic Nutritionist mNANP + Personal Trainer
Gut | energy | skin | hormones
Athletic performance

The connection between stress and IBS is one of those things that everyone acknowledges and almost nobody properly addre...
05/06/2026

The connection between stress and IBS is one of those things that everyone acknowledges and almost nobody properly addresses.

Yes, stress makes symptoms worse in the moment. But chronic, ongoing stress can actually change the architecture of the gut itself. Motility, stomach acid, the gut lining, the microbiome, and how strongly you feel those changes - all of it shifts over time when we’re stressed, and it all feeds back into itself in ways that keep symptoms going long after the original stressor has passed.

Telling someone with IBS to just “manage their stress” is both correct and completely insufficient. It’s right because the nervous system really is central to gut function. But it’s insufficient because unwinding years of chronic stress from the gut requires more than a meditation app. The good news is that it IS reversible, with the right approach.

02/06/2026

The supplement industry has done a very good job of convincing us that the path to a healthy gut microbiome comes in a capsule.

The most evidence-based interventions for your microbiome aren't found in a supplement aisle. Fermented foods, if you can tolerate them, consistently outperform probiotic supplements in the research. And prebiotic fibres - present in most fruits and vegetables - are what actually remodel your microbiome over time and help it produce the beneficial compounds that keep your gut healthy. You don’t have to buy a blended prebiotic powdered supplement to feed your microbiome if you eat a diverse diet, and some of the ingredients may not work for your body anyway.

A well-chosen probiotic or prebiotic supplement, matched to your specific needs and the current state of your gut, can definitely be really valuable. The key words here are well-chosen and matched to you - not picked off a shelf because the brand has great marketing.

Start with food. Build the foundations. And if you want to layer supplements on top of that, I’d recommend doing it with guidance rather than a guess.

If your gut symptoms follow a monthly pattern, there’s a good chance you already know it. What you might not know is why...
29/05/2026

If your gut symptoms follow a monthly pattern, there’s a good chance you already know it. What you might not know is why, or that it can be really useful information. Symptoms are always clues.

The hormonal shifts across your cycle directly affect gut motility, visceral sensitivity, histamine levels, and the bacterial environment in your gut. These aren’t subtle effects. For someone with IBS, they can be the difference between a good week and a week where you’re cancelling plans and wearing your most forgiving trousers.

And yet the connection between hormones and IBS is something that rarely gets made in a standard GP appointment. Symptoms get attributed to stress, or diet, or just the general misfortune of having a uterus.

If you haven’t already, start tracking your symptoms alongside your cycle. Note when they flare, what they look like, and whether you notice anything beyond the gut - headaches, skin reactions, anxiety - at the same time. Patterns that feel random often stop looking random quite quickly when you map them against your hormones.

26/05/2026

The steps I’ve mentioned are in a specific order for a reason, and that order is probably the most important thing I could tell you about recovering from IBS.

The functional medicine principle I work on is that you have to address the most fundamental, upstream problems first. It sounds logical when you say it out loud, and yet it's something that's easily missed.

Most people start with their diet, which is often too far downstream of other issues. You might see some improvement, but if your nervous system is dysregulated, or stomach acid is compromised, or nutritional deficiencies are present, these upstream factors will undermine your valiant efforts and thwart you at every step. The nervous system is arguably the most important piece, because it governs motility, stomach acid production, gut permeability, and the microbial environment, among countless other things. You can eat “perfectly” and still feel terrible if that piece isn't addressed.

The same logic applies all the way down. There's no point investing in complex testing or targeted supplements before the foundations are in place. It's a bit like building windows before you've built the ground floor. The foundations are almost always more impactful than people expect - and a lot cheaper too.

19/05/2026

The low FODMAP diet is not designed to be a permanent way of eating. It's a short term intervention, a way of reducing fermentable load while you work out what's actually going on in your gut. Somewhere along the way that idea got muddled, and a lot of people are now living indefinitely on one of the most restrictive diets out there with no clear plan for what comes next. I was actually one of those people - I spent a good 4 years in varying degrees of restriction.

FODMAP intolerance isn't a permanent condition - it purely indicates that your gut is *currently* struggling to process fermentable carbohydrates, likely because of underlying imbalances that *can* be addressed.

Unfortunately, coming off a low FODMAP diet isn't as simple as reintroducing foods and hoping for the best, sometimes no matter how gradually you go. If you’ve tried it and it hasn’t gone your way, it may be that you’ve gone too fast (I know I got cocky a few times and it backfired on me), or that you haven’t completely addressed underlying imbalances. When symptoms return, it’s easy to assume that you just have to stay restricted forever. But, done carefully, with the right support and the right groundwork in place, most people can significantly expand what they tolerate.

If you're stuck on low FODMAP and don't know how to get off it, DM me and we can chat about what that might look like.

If you’ve treated SIBO and it’s come back, maybe even more than once, you’ll know this particular flavour of exhaustion....
15/05/2026

If you’ve treated SIBO and it’s come back, maybe even more than once, you’ll know this particular flavour of exhaustion. You did the protocol. You restricted your diet. Two, three, four times. And here you are again. I’ve been there myself and it is so disheartening wondering if anything you’ve done has helped, if anything is ever going to really work for good and what on earth to do next.

The fundamental question to ask here is WHAT is allowing it to return? It’s not that you’ve done something wrong, the protocol has just missed something key.

SIBO develops when something shifts in the gut environment - motility has slowed, stomach acid has dropped, the gut lining is irritated and leaky, or maybe the nervous system is running the show in a way that compromises everything else. If those conditions are still in place after treatment, it doesn’t matter how many kill phases you go through - the bacteria have everything they need to come back.

Most SIBO protocols are designed to eradicate. Fewer are designed to change the underlying terrain. And that’s usually the difference between someone who sees real progress and someone who keeps relapsing.

In the post I’ve covered the most common drivers in my experience. It’s not an exhaustive list - there are structural causes, thyroid involvement and more - but it’s a starting point for asking better questions about what’s actually going on, and I hope it helps.

Drop your questions in the comments.

In my experience, people with IBS often have a complicated relationship with food. When eating has been making you feel ...
07/05/2026

In my experience, people with IBS often have a complicated relationship with food. When eating has been making you feel terrible for years, it makes sense that you become cautious, then restrictive, then scared. The list of safe foods gets shorter. Eating starts feeling like a minefield.

If you’re hoping to reintroduce some foods after a long time away from them, one way you can give yourself the best chance of success is by optimising HOW you’re eating. Your digestive system only works properly in a calm state. If you’re eating at your desk, scrolling your phone, or sitting down already anxious about how your body will respond, your gut is not in a good place to receive food, regardless of what that food is.

Sit down, focus on your meal, and chew properly. Digestion starts in the brain, then the mouth. The more you engage your brain and chew your food, the easier it will be for your gut to do the rest.

Drop any questions in the comments!

One of the most common things I hear from clients is something like "I'm doing everything right and I still feel terribl...
01/05/2026

One of the most common things I hear from clients is something like "I'm doing everything right and I still feel terrible".

When we dig into what "everything right" looks like, it usually involves a really clean diet. Fermented foods, lots of plants, maybe a greens powder in the morning, bone broth, off the shelf probiotics and other supplements. All the things the gut health world tells you to do.

The problem is that most gut health advice is written for a gut that just needs a nudge in the right direction, not one that is in need of serious attention. It's designed to optimise something that's already functioning reasonably well. But when your gut is inflamed, imbalanced, or in a reactive state, the same advice can actively work against you.

This is something I see particularly with histamine. A lot of people with IBS have an underlying histamine intolerance that's never been identified, which means fermented foods, bone broth, and even certain vegetables are consistently making them worse while they're dutifully consuming them for their gut health.

The fibre thing is similar. Fermentable fibres feed gut bacteria, which is pouring fuel on the fire if your bacterial environment is already imbalanced. And insoluble fibre can be way too harsh on a sensitive gut.

None of this means that you have to avoid these foods forever. It means the starting point is understanding what's actually going on in your gut first.

30/04/2026

Undo that top button! Or the whole damn zipper. In public, whenever you need to. As an IBS nutritionist, I’m giving you permission. Nobody cares, and your tight waistband may actually be contributing to your bloating.

Restrictive clothing squeezes the digestive organs, increasing intra-abdominal pressure and slowing gut motility. This can lead to more bloating, pain and discomfort after meals, as well as worsening constipation and even acid reflux.

Your gut needs space to do its job, and if it’s feeling like it wants to expand, the best thing you can do is listen to it.

Rocking an elasticated waistband or a flowy dress is not a failure - it’s a totally valid digestive aid.

💃

28/04/2026

Years ago, when I took a probiotic during my own IBS journey and felt significantly worse, I had no idea why. But I understand now that it's far more common than the industry lets on, and it’s not just a random adverse reaction - there are some very specific reasons it happens.

Probiotics introduce live bacteria directly into the gut. In a gut with dysbiosis (an imbalanced microbiome) or bacterial overgrowth, you're adding more bacteria to an environment that's already out of whack and potentially making things worse. This can not only make you feel awful in the short term, but can even exacerbate the underlying issues, making it harder to come back from.

Another issue is that some probiotic supplements also contain inulin or FOS to boost their effects - these are prebiotic fibres that feed gut bacteria. Useful in theory, but if the wrong bacteria are already dominant, or if they’re growing in the wrong place (hello SIBO) you're feeding the problem.

And, setting aside the people who react badly - is your probiotic even doing anything at all? Probiotic research is strain-specific, not generic. A strain that has good evidence for one issue may do absolutely nothing for another.

So even if a probiotic isn't making you worse, it may not be doing anything relevant to what's actually driving your symptoms. The testimonials show that they do work for some people, but there’s no certainty that they’ll work for you, and they could even complicate things further. The causes of gut symptoms are individual, and a probiotic that transformed someone else's gut health isn’t necessarily going to do the same for you.

As much as we’d like to hope there were, there are no magic pills. Not even that influencer’s special probiotic.

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