Slicing up the IBS Pie to Find Real and Lasting Relief

05/15/25 • 23 min

IBS is frequently referred to as a diagnosis of exclusion: your doctor can’t find anything else wrong; therefore, it must be IBS. But if you slice up the IBS pie and take a good look, you actually find lots of potential explanations for what might be causing your symptoms. In this episode I go through over 30 different causes of IBS symptoms. These are conditions that we see frequently in a gastroenterology practice that should definitely be on the list when somebody is complaining of abdominal pain or a change in their bowel habits. But in order to correctly diagnose these conditions, you have to be thinking beyond an umbrella diagnosis of “IBS”. You have to actually be interested in finding out what is causing the symptoms.

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Dr. Robynne Chutkan

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Previous Episode

Irritable Bowel Syndrome - and Pharmaceutical Expediency

Encouraging physicians to make a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome and prescribe medication for it is big business. I'm not saying that medication for IBS is never a good idea or never effective, but I am saying that it is often an overly expedient solution that doesn’t usually lead to lasting relief for the simple reason that IBS consists of multiple different conditions. Since there is no one unifying diagnosis of "IBS" there can't be one unifying pharmaceutical solution.

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Next Episode

9 Things You Need to Know About Your Gut

On today's show I've curated a list of 9 important things about your digestive system that I want you to know about. From cognitive function, to immune balance, to sleep hygiene, to trapping viruses - your GI tract plays an integral role in all of it. Once you understand how that works, you're able to not only improve your gut health, but optimize how your entire body feels and functions.

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The Gutbliss Podcast - Slicing up the IBS Pie to Find Real and Lasting Relief

Transcript

In last week’s episode I talked about the pharmaceutical expediency of diagnosing as many people as possible with IBS – and putting them on prescription drugs. Almost all IBS research is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad research, but it makes it a lot harder