If you deal with bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or abdominal pain — and you’ve also noticed your symptoms flare before your period, during PMS, or in perimenopause — you’re not imagining things. Your gut and hormones are more connected than most people realize.

In fact, hormone imbalances are one of the most overlooked drivers of IBS symptoms. Here’s why it happens — and what functional medicine does differently to address it.

When your gut feels inflamed, bloated, or just plain cranky, the last thing you want to do is throw more fuel on the fire. Luckily, there are gentle, nutrient-rich foods that can help calm irritation, restore balance, and support your gut lining.

Here are my top 5 functional medicine–approved foods to soothe an irritated gut:

Your gut isn’t just affected by what you eat — it’s affected by how you live. If your IBS isn’t improving despite dietary changes, stress could be the missing link you’ve been overlooking.

Bloating isn’t always about what you eat — it’s often about how your body is processing food. By looking at the microbiome, digestive capacity, and stress response, we can finally get to the root cause and create a plan that brings relief.

If you’ve been told your labs are normal but you still don’t feel like yourself, it may be time to take a deeper look. Functional medicine labs offer a more complete picture, helping us uncover hidden imbalances that standard labs overlook.

If you’re living with IBS, you know how real and disruptive the digestive symptoms can be—bloating, cramping, diarrhea, constipation. But what many don’t realize is that IBS often involves more than just the gut. Beyond digestion, women with IBS frequently experience brain fog, fatigue, muscle pain, poor sleep, and mood imbalances—symptoms that can feel overwhelming if they’re treated as “all in your head.”

But here’s the truth: bloating is not random. In functional medicine, bloating is seen as a signal—a red flag that something deeper is going on in the digestive system. Instead of masking the symptom with quick fixes, the goal is to find out why it’s happening in the first place.

Digestive symptoms don’t exist in isolation. You may notice your IBS flares right before your period, that bloating is worse in perimenopause, or that mood swings, hot flashes, and irregular cycles seem tangled up with your gut.

This is not a coincidence. In functional medicine, we recognize a powerful gut–hormone connection.

IBS isn’t just about what you eat—it’s about how your body processes food. Certain foods can create extra gas, slow motility, or trigger inflammation, even if they’re perfectly fine for someone else.

In this article, we’ll look at five everyday foods that commonly worsen IBS, why they’re a problem, and what functional medicine suggests as alternatives.