Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Cutting healthy foods out isn't a treatment outcome I'm shooting for.
Someone comes into the clinic with a long history of gut issues and when we go through everything they've trialled (so important to review when we first connect) its often one restrictive diet after the next.
They may have trialled a low FODMAPs diet, low fibre, no fermented foods, low histamine or whatever else seems to trigger symptoms. This approach leads many people to a tiny handful of foods they know they can tolerate.
Sometimes symptoms are better and I wouldn't fault someone for cutting out foods that make them feel worse. Elimination diets can be incredibly useful for buying time by improving symptoms AND helps to point to the root case issues that need addressing. But if every attempt to bring healthy whole foods back into the diet causes the same symptoms to flare that's a pretty good clue that we haven't actually addressed why those foods became difficult to tolerate in the first place.
If your gut can't tolerate a broad range of healthy whole foods, at some point we need to shift the question away from "what else should I remove?" and start asking why the gut has become so reactive to those food in the first place.
Cutting healthy foods out isn't a treatment outcome I'm shooting for.
Someone comes into the clinic with a long history of gut issues and when we go through everything they've trialled (so important to review when we first connect) its often one restrictive diet after the next.
They may have trialled a low FODMAPs diet, low fibre, no fermented foods, low histamine or whatever else seems to trigger symptoms. This approach leads many people to a tiny handful of foods they know they can tolerate.
Sometimes symptoms are better and I wouldn't fault someone for cutting out foods that make them feel worse. Elimination diets can be incredibly useful for buying time by improving symptoms AND helps to point to the root case issues that need addressing. But if every attempt to bring healthy whole foods back into the diet causes the same symptoms to flare that's a pretty good clue that we haven't actually addressed why those foods became difficult to tolerate in the first place.
If your gut can't tolerate a broad range of healthy whole foods, at some point we need to shift the question away from "what else should I remove?" and start asking why the gut has become so reactive to those food in the first place.
