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The 5 Questions Your GI Doctor Is Hoping You Never Ask About Your IBS · The IBS Solution with Brooke Kane

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you have IBS, diarrhea, urgency, here are five questions you need to ask your doctor.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these are gonna make your doctor squirm.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I say good, because some of you aren't ready to break up with your GI doctor yet.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you like them, maybe you need them for your next colonoscopy, and that's fine.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you actually want to know whether that person can help you get better, ask these five questions and you'll know right away.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: For each one, I'll give you the exact words to say, why it puts them on the spot, and what a real answer should sound like.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Question number one, and ask it just like this.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is causing my IBS?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: IBS stands for irritable bowel syndrome.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your bowels are irritated.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole definition.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when a doctor hands you that label, ask them what's actually irritating it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: If they can't answer that, then it is not a diagnosis, it's just a description that they gave you.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And those are two completely different things.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Most patients don't realize that.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: They hear IBS and they think, okay, I guess that's that we found it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they never push for more, and the doctor just moves straight into managing the symptoms without ever explaining why this started in the first place.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: A real answer names something specific: bacterial overgrowth, dysbiosis, a damaged gut lining, enzyme deficiency, a pathogen that they actually found on a test.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: If what you get back is your gut's just sensitive or some people are just wired this way, that's not a real answer.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a nicer way of saying that they don't really know.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads straight into the second question, because this one tells you immediately whether they've ever even looked for the actual cause or not.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your second question.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Have you tested me for bacterial overgrowths, yeast, mold, parasites living in my gut?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with hundreds of women who came to me after years stuck in the conventional system.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And these organisms, things like klebsiella, proteus, enterococcus, candida, fusobacterium, are some of the most common reasons I see chronic diarrhea in women that I work with.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it like having a few uninvited guests crashing in your gut who refuse to leave.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just sitting there, they're producing toxins that irritate the lining, and your body's speeding things up to flush them out.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the urgency.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the loose stool.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem: a standard GI stool test isn't built to find any of that.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's built to rule out things like C.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: diff, H.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: pylori, blood, mucus, that's it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't designed to map your whole gut environment.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Comprehensive functional testing isn't part of a standard GI workup, and most doctors have never even ordered one.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So women get told that their gut is normal because that narrow test came back clean while the actual thing causing their diarrhea was never looked for, not once.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Lana is a current client of mine who had every test under the sun done that her doctor was able to do.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: They all came back clean and normal.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite parts to Lana's story is that her doctor actually told her that she had the cleanest colon he'd ever seen in a colonoscopy.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he was really proud to tell her how clean her colon was.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We did the right kind of advanced testing that looks for the right data, things that a colonoscopy camera doesn't pick up, and we found a lot of stuff in there.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually one of the messiest colons I had seen in a while.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Complete disaster.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can see multiple bacteria here that were overgrown.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Her beneficial strains were almost non existent.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a clean colon by any standard.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: A real answer either tells you exactly what they tested for and shows you the panel, or it's honest that this level of testing wasn't done and it gives you a way forward.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: If what you hear is we already ran a stool test and it was fine, ask them which organisms it was actually looking for and see what happens.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Once you know they haven't tested for what's actually living in your gut, question number three uncovers something else they've almost certainly never looked at either.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Question number three is beyond what a colonoscopy can see, what do you actually know about the functional health of my gut lining?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: A colonoscopy is a camera.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's all it is.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: It looks for tumors, polyps, ulcers, structural damage, anything visible to the naked eye.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It tells you nothing about what's happening at a microscopic level.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not the lining's inflamed, whether particles are getting through that shouldn't, the immune function inside the gut, and whether that's working correctly.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: If the gut lining is damaged, toxins from bacteria start leaking into your bloodstream.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And once that's happening, you're not just dealing with gut symptoms anymore.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're dealing with whole body inflammation, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, skin issues.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: None of this is going to show up on a colonoscopy.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: None of it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: But patients hear colonoscopy and they assume that it's thorough.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The word sounds comprehensive, and doctors rarely correct that assumption because in their training, the surface is what they were taught to evaluate.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So women get colonoscopy after colonoscopy, everything looks normal, and they walk away thinking that their gut's been fully checked out, when really the part of the gut that's actually driving their symptoms was never looked at at all.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: A real answer draws that line for you: structural versus functional.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It names actual markers, gut permeability, secretory IgA, beta glucaronidase, barrier integrity, and either tells you those were measured or it admits that they weren't.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: If what you get is your colonoscopy was clean, your gut's fine, that's them telling you that they checked the building's exterior and they called it an inspection.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're sitting there realizing that none of this stuff has ever been checked in you, I get it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I see this every single week.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with hundreds of women who went through exactly what you're going through right now.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Years of colonoscopies that came back clear while the actual problem was never even tested for.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you are done guessing and you want someone to actually map out what's going on in your gut, there's a link below to book a call with me.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go through your history, figure out what's actually driving this.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get into question number four.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Have you tested my short chain fatty acid levels?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically my butyrate.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Butyrate is produced by the beneficial bacteria in your gut and it feeds the cells lining your colon.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: When those cells are well fed, they slow down motility, they help your stool actually form, and they keep inflammation in check.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when butyrate is low and it goes low in the bacteria that make it get depleted, those colon cells are basically running on empty.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your gut gets hyperreactive, motility speeds up, stool just never forms the way it's supposed to.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most consistent things I find in women with chronic diarrhea who have never gotten a straight answer.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it is almost never measured in a standard GI workup.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Short chain fatty acids aren't on any hospital lab panel.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You need a comprehensive functional test to even see them, and most GI practices don't run one.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the question never even comes up because the test that would answer it was never ordered.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: This one marker could explain why your stool has never formed properly your entire life.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a real chance it has never been measured before.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about a lady I saw a few months ago who had chronic loose stools for years.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Blood work, stool tests, CT scans, colonoscopies multiple times.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was normal.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one had ever checked her short chain fatty acids because Western medicine doesn't know what those are and they don't have a way to test for them.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: We did, and we found out that her butyrate level was extremely low.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to have good solid bowel movements without any butyrate in there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: She had some other issues going on as well, but just fixing her low butyrate alone gave her a lot of relief.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So a real answer confirms butyrate's been checked through functional testing, or it admits that it hasn't, and it explains why that matters.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you get a blank stare, or we don't typically test for that, now you know there's an entire category of gut function this person has never once evaluated in you.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Question five is the one most GI practitioners are genuinely not ready for.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever you get back, answer or no answer, it tells you everything.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: In your clinical opinion, why do you think my symptoms keep coming back?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's your theory on why treatment hasn't held?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Every single woman who ends up in my program has already been treated for IBS.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Multiple times, multiple practitioners, Imodium, Zyfaxin, low FODMAP, fiber, acid blockers.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it helped for a minute, none of it held.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: If your practitioner actually understands your case, they should be able to tell you specifically why the improvement didn't stick.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: That takes an actual theory.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't have one, you need a different practitioner.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Full stop.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Appointments are short, nobody ever stops to ask why the last thing didn't work.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: That question feels like a dead end inside a system that's built to prescribe, not investigate.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: A real answer names the actual reason.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The environment was never changed, the pathogen was never cleared, the beneficial bacteria were never rebuilt.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, they should be able to name it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they tell you IBS can just be chronic or some people are just harder to treat, that's not a theory, that's a shrug with a medical degree attached to it.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So now you've got five questions that get you off the managing merry-go-round and actually point you towards the root cause.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you know your doctor can't answer these questions, watch this video next.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It walks you through what the right testing actually looks like and what we find in women who have been told for years that everything's normal.