Glossary
Every symptom, treatment, and test on GutPattern comes with an “explain like I’m twelve” definition. This is the home for all of them — the same definitions you see when you hover a term anywhere on the site.
Symptoms
- Bloating
- A feeling of pressure or fullness in the belly, often from gas building up in the gut.
- Distension
- When your belly visibly swells or gets bigger — bloating you can actually see and measure.
- Constipation
- When it's hard to go, or you go less often than usual, and stools are dry or difficult to pass.
- Diarrhea
- Loose, watery stools, often more frequent and urgent than normal.
- Reflux (GERD)
- When stomach acid comes back up into the throat or chest, causing heartburn or a sour taste.
- Abdominal pain
- Aches, cramps, or sharp feelings anywhere in the belly area.
- Urgency
- The sudden, strong need to get to a bathroom fast.
- Nausea
- The queasy, sick-to-your-stomach feeling that you might throw up.
- Excess gas
- Passing more wind than usual, or a lot of trapped gas that builds up and causes pressure.
- Fatigue & brain fog
- Feeling wiped out and mentally hazy — hard to focus or think clearly. Common when the gut is inflamed or off-balance.
- Histamine intolerance / MCAS
- Trouble breaking down histamine (a chemical in many foods), causing reactions like flushing, hives, headaches, or gut upset. MCAS is a related condition where mast cells over-react.
- Early fullness (satiety)
- Feeling full after only a few bites, before you've eaten much — often linked to slow stomach emptying.
Treatments
- Rifaximin
- An antibiotic that mostly stays in the gut. Often used for SIBO because it targets gut bacteria without spreading through the whole body.
- Neomycin
- Another gut antibiotic, sometimes added to rifaximin when the breath test shows high methane (IMO).
- PHGG (Sunfiber)
- A gentle, prebiotic fiber (partially hydrolyzed guar gum) that feeds good bacteria and can help regulate stool.
- Low-FODMAP diet
- An eating plan that temporarily cuts certain hard-to-digest carbs that commonly trigger gas and bloating, then adds them back to find your triggers.
- Elemental diet
- A short-term liquid diet of pre-broken-down nutrients that gives the gut a rest and starves overgrown bacteria.
- Prokinetics
- Treatments that help the gut move things along, used to keep bacteria from building back up (especially after SIBO treatment).
- Probiotics
- Supplements of live 'good' bacteria. They help some people and make others feel worse — which is why comparing outcomes matters.
- Biofilm disruptors
- Agents meant to break up the protective 'slime' bacteria hide in, so other treatments can reach them.
- Herbal antimicrobials
- Plant-based compounds (like oregano oil or berberine) used as an alternative or addition to antibiotics for reducing gut bacteria.
- Metronidazole (Flagyl)
- A broad antibiotic sometimes used for gut infections and overgrowth. Unlike rifaximin, it's absorbed through the whole body.
- Low-dose naltrexone (LDN)
- A tiny dose of a drug used off-label to calm gut inflammation and, for some, help motility. Very different from its full-dose use.
- Digestive enzymes
- Supplements that help break down food (fats, carbs, proteins), taken with meals to ease digestion and reduce bloating for some people.
- Betaine HCl
- A supplement that adds stomach acid at mealtimes, used when low stomach acid is suspected of causing poor digestion.
- Elimination diet
- Temporarily cutting out suspected trigger foods, then adding them back one at a time to see which ones cause symptoms.
Tests & Diagnoses
- SIBO
- Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth — too many bacteria in the small intestine, where there normally shouldn't be many. A common cause of bloating and gas.
- IMO
- Intestinal Methanogen Overgrowth — an overgrowth of methane-producing microbes, strongly linked to constipation.
- Hydrogen breath test
- A test where you drink a sugar solution and breathe into tubes over a few hours. Spikes in hydrogen suggest bacterial overgrowth.
- Methane (on breath test)
- Methane gas measured on the same breath test. High methane points to IMO and is often tied to constipation.
- Hydrogen sulfide
- A third gas (the 'rotten egg' one) some newer breath tests measure, linked to diarrhea-type patterns.
- PPM
- Parts per million — the unit breath tests use to measure how much of a gas is in your breath. Higher numbers mean more gas.
- Stool test (e.g. GI-MAP)
- A lab test of a stool sample that maps the bacteria, yeasts, and markers in your gut.
- Gastric emptying test
- A test that measures how fast food leaves your stomach, used to check for slow motility.
- Gastroparesis
- A condition where the stomach empties too slowly, causing fullness, nausea, and bloating even after small meals.
- IBS
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome — a common diagnosis for ongoing belly pain with diarrhea, constipation, or both, when tests don't show damage. Often an umbrella label rather than a root cause.
- Celiac disease
- An immune reaction to gluten that damages the small intestine. Diagnosed with blood tests and a biopsy — different from gluten sensitivity.
- Candida / SIFO
- An overgrowth of yeast in the gut. SIFO (Small Intestinal Fungal Overgrowth) is the fungal cousin of SIBO.
- H. pylori
- A stomach bacterium that can cause gastritis, ulcers, and reflux-type symptoms. Detected by breath, stool, or biopsy tests.
- GI-MAP / stool DNA test
- A stool test that uses DNA to map the bacteria, parasites, yeasts, and markers in your gut.
- Calprotectin
- A stool marker of gut inflammation. High levels point toward inflammatory bowel disease rather than IBS.
- Endoscopy / colonoscopy
- Camera tests that look directly inside the gut — endoscopy for the upper tract, colonoscopy for the lower — to spot damage or take biopsies.
- SeHCAT (bile acid) test
- A scan that checks whether your gut is losing too much bile acid, a treatable cause of chronic diarrhea.