I had digestive symptoms for fifteen years before anything really worked.
It started in my early twenties. Bloating that made my clothes uncomfortable by lunchtime. Constipation so severe I sometimes wouldn’t go for up to two weeks. Sharp pains and cramps after eating certain foods, although for a long time I couldn’t work out which foods, because it didn’t seem consistent. And being sick. A couple of times a week.
I went to GP after GP. Most were doing their best in ten-minute slots that weren’t designed to unpick anything complicated. Some were kind. One or two were dismissive. All of them, in the end, could only offer me the same thing: a medication for the constipation, a medication for the reflux, a medication for the nausea. Different GP, different prescription, nobody looking at the whole picture.
I had to really push to get any testing done. And when the tests came back, they showed nothing wrong.
This is the strange limbo a lot of you will recognise. Being told there’s nothing wrong while clearly something is wrong. Being handed a label of exclusion “we’ve ruled the serious things out” and then being left to live with the rest.
So I started trying to work it out myself.
For years that looked like a series of well-intentioned experiments. Gluten-free for a while, whole foods, cutting out the ultra-processed stuff, long-distance trail running as a form of exercise, and four and a half years plant-based. Some of it helped at first, but none of it was the whole answer. Looking back, I think I was working with the right instincts and the wrong information, convinced that the next single intervention was going to be the one.
What actually shifted things, eventually, was much less glamorous.
In my late thirties I started doing the boring fundamentals properly. Morning sunlight, every day - outside within half an hour of sunrise, sunlight in my eyes and on my face. Eating breakfast earlier, with more protein. Sitting down to my meals instead of eating at my laptop. Shorter, less punishing exercise, with strength training added in. Paying attention to how I was eating, not just what.
The change wasn’t dramatic, but things just slowly, week by week, eased.
The bloating stopped being a daily thing. The cramps stopped. The vomiting was long gone by then. And eventually my digestion settled into a rhythm I genuinely didn’t know was possible - first thing in the morning, around sunrise, every day. Like clockwork. After fifteen years of sometimes 1-2 week stretches without going.
If you’re somewhere in the middle of your own version of this story, four things I’d want you to know:
Your symptoms are real, even when nothing’s been found. The absence of a diagnosis isn’t the absence of a problem
The answer is almost never one thing. Anyone selling you a single magic intervention is oversimplifying
The fundamentals are not boring once they start working
Please don’t go on alone for fifteen years. A good practitioner can save you years
If anything in this resonated, feel free to book one of my free 30-minute Blood Sugar Audits. Despite the name, they’re for anyone wanting a proper conversation about digestive symptoms, energy, or anything in between. No obligation, no pitch, just answers. Book at francesnorgate.com/blood-sugar-audit.
And if you’d like to talk about working together more deeply, my free discovery call is at francesnorgate.com/work-with-me.
Frances x
