Clarissa Berry Health

Clarissa Berry Health Holistic Nutritionist mNANP + Personal Trainer
Gut | energy | skin | hormones
Athletic performance

I have to say I loved our heatwave (although my son didn’t). I needed to properly warm my bones after the horrendous win...
16/06/2026

I have to say I loved our heatwave (although my son didn’t). I needed to properly warm my bones after the horrendous winter we had! And the sun has so many diverse benefits, if we can learn to reap them safely.

If you think about how our ancestors lived, they would have been outside most of the time, every day of the year. We have evolved so closely with the sun that our bodies have the most fascinating responses to different wavelengths of sunlight - regulating our internal clock, hormone and neurotransmitter function, sleep architecture, vitamin D synthesis, immunity, tissue repair and energy production.

Sunlight at different times of day has different effects on the body. Morning light clears melatonin and stimulates cortisol to help us feel awake; midday sun enables vitamin D production; evening light provides tissue repair.
Safe sun exposure means building gradually, starting in spring so your skin can acclimatise before the stronger summer sun arrives - again, like our ancestors would have done - and getting morning sunshine to prime your skin for UVB later in the day. Aim for as much skin as possible during the UVB window - you can use an app like D Minder to find out when that is in your area - but don’t let yourself burn.
Your body reads sunlight cues through your eyes and your skin. Sunscreen and sunglasses block these signals, so it’s important to use them wisely, not by default. Personally I use sunscreen on my face (because the data on wrinkles is also there!) but try not to on my body unless I’m spending extended time in hot sunshine. Otherwise I’ll spend as much time in the sun as my skin can tolerate for vitamin D production, then seek shade. Sunglasses I would only recommend while driving, skiing, or for extended time near water/intense glare.

Did any of this surprise you? Let me know in the comments!

These are some beliefs about gut health that I started with, which have transmuted over my almost 8 years as a nutrition...
12/06/2026

These are some beliefs about gut health that I started with, which have transmuted over my almost 8 years as a nutritionist.

Did any surprise you? Resonate? Do you disagree with me? I’d love to hear in the comments 🙂

11/06/2026

I’m talking about….. 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 walking!

Yes, walking. I told you it was low bar! Stay with me though because I bet you don’t know what it’s doing for your gut. IMO walking is such an underrated health habit - maybe because nobody can patent it.

The literature supports 7-8k steps per day for general wellness (they say 10k because it sounds sexier but really that’s a made up figure). 7-8k is a good baseline target to have, and if you can do more then great.

For gut health specifically, the benefits of walking include:

Gut motility: Walking helps move your food through the digestive tract and also supports the self-sweeping mechanism that clears debris between meals. This is especially helpful for bloating, gas and constipation, and can even support your microbiome.
Nervous system: Walking reduces cortisol, and helps shift us into a parasympathetic/rest and digest state. It also has documented benefits on mood, which feeds back into the gut-brain axis.
Blood sugar stabilisation: Walking after meals helps stabilise your blood sugar, especially useful if you have existing blood sugar issues, or issues with stress, anxiety or energy levels.
Lymphatic drainage: Walking stimulates your lymphatic flow which supports your immune system, inflammation and helps your body clear toxins/waste products.
Sleep: Weirdly enough, step count can predict sleep quality. Sleep has broad benefits on gut health, including supporting your microbiome.
Nature: You don’t have to walk outside, but if you do, you get the added benefits of natural light (which speaks to your internal body clock), and maybe also bird song, soil/forest microbes, the colour green, and sunlight for vitamin D production.

I’ll be honest, some days I don’t hit my 8k target, especially when it’s raining or I’m tied to my desk. But I really notice the difference.

10/06/2026

Polyphenols are one of my favourite topics in gut health because they are just SO COOL! Way cooler than most people realise I think. We're constantly told to eat a rainbow and drizzle olive oil on everything, but do we actually know why?

Polyphenol-rich foods do something amazing in the gut. They're not very well absorbed in the small intestine, which means they mostly end up in the colon, where they interact directly with your microbiome. They selectively feed beneficial species like Akkermansia, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, while inhibiting more opportunistic ones like E. coli, other Proteobacteria and C. difficile.

Different polyphenol-rich foods have different specific effects, which is why variety across the week serves your microbiome far better than a large amount of any one thing.

My favourites:
Pomegranate and cranberries
Blueberries and/or all berries really
The humble apple (skin on, stewed for extra points)
Artichokes
Garlic, onion and leek (if you can’t tolerate them yet - let’s work on that)
Green tea
Cacao (powder, nibs, dark chocolate)
Extra virgin olive oil
Walnuts and pecans
Turmeric and ginger
All herbs and spices

Variety beats a single large serving any day, which is why “eat the rainbow” is still great advice.

The connection between stress and IBS is one of those things that everyone acknowledges and almost nobody properly addre...
05/06/2026

The connection between stress and IBS is one of those things that everyone acknowledges and almost nobody properly addresses.

Yes, stress makes symptoms worse in the moment. But chronic, ongoing stress can actually change the architecture of the gut itself. Motility, stomach acid, the gut lining, the microbiome, and how strongly you feel those changes - all of it shifts over time when we’re stressed, and it all feeds back into itself in ways that keep symptoms going long after the original stressor has passed.

Telling someone with IBS to just “manage their stress” is both correct and completely insufficient. It’s right because the nervous system really is central to gut function. But it’s insufficient because unwinding years of chronic stress from the gut requires more than a meditation app. The good news is that it IS reversible, with the right approach.

02/06/2026

The supplement industry has done a very good job of convincing us that the path to a healthy gut microbiome comes in a capsule.

The most evidence-based interventions for your microbiome aren't found in a supplement aisle. Fermented foods, if you can tolerate them, consistently outperform probiotic supplements in the research. And prebiotic fibres - present in most fruits and vegetables - are what actually remodel your microbiome over time and help it produce the beneficial compounds that keep your gut healthy. You don’t have to buy a blended prebiotic powdered supplement to feed your microbiome if you eat a diverse diet, and some of the ingredients may not work for your body anyway.

A well-chosen probiotic or prebiotic supplement, matched to your specific needs and the current state of your gut, can definitely be really valuable. The key words here are well-chosen and matched to you - not picked off a shelf because the brand has great marketing.

Start with food. Build the foundations. And if you want to layer supplements on top of that, I’d recommend doing it with guidance rather than a guess.

If your gut symptoms follow a monthly pattern, there’s a good chance you already know it. What you might not know is why...
29/05/2026

If your gut symptoms follow a monthly pattern, there’s a good chance you already know it. What you might not know is why, or that it can be really useful information. Symptoms are always clues.

The hormonal shifts across your cycle directly affect gut motility, visceral sensitivity, histamine levels, and the bacterial environment in your gut. These aren’t subtle effects. For someone with IBS, they can be the difference between a good week and a week where you’re cancelling plans and wearing your most forgiving trousers.

And yet the connection between hormones and IBS is something that rarely gets made in a standard GP appointment. Symptoms get attributed to stress, or diet, or just the general misfortune of having a uterus.

If you haven’t already, start tracking your symptoms alongside your cycle. Note when they flare, what they look like, and whether you notice anything beyond the gut - headaches, skin reactions, anxiety - at the same time. Patterns that feel random often stop looking random quite quickly when you map them against your hormones.

26/05/2026

The steps I’ve mentioned are in a specific order for a reason, and that order is probably the most important thing I could tell you about recovering from IBS.

The functional medicine principle I work on is that you have to address the most fundamental, upstream problems first. It sounds logical when you say it out loud, and yet it's something that's easily missed.

Most people start with their diet, which is often too far downstream of other issues. You might see some improvement, but if your nervous system is dysregulated, or stomach acid is compromised, or nutritional deficiencies are present, these upstream factors will undermine your valiant efforts and thwart you at every step. The nervous system is arguably the most important piece, because it governs motility, stomach acid production, gut permeability, and the microbial environment, among countless other things. You can eat “perfectly” and still feel terrible if that piece isn't addressed.

The same logic applies all the way down. There's no point investing in complex testing or targeted supplements before the foundations are in place. It's a bit like building windows before you've built the ground floor. The foundations are almost always more impactful than people expect - and a lot cheaper too.

19/05/2026

The low FODMAP diet is not designed to be a permanent way of eating. It's a short term intervention, a way of reducing fermentable load while you work out what's actually going on in your gut. Somewhere along the way that idea got muddled, and a lot of people are now living indefinitely on one of the most restrictive diets out there with no clear plan for what comes next. I was actually one of those people - I spent a good 4 years in varying degrees of restriction.

FODMAP intolerance isn't a permanent condition - it purely indicates that your gut is *currently* struggling to process fermentable carbohydrates, likely because of underlying imbalances that *can* be addressed.

Unfortunately, coming off a low FODMAP diet isn't as simple as reintroducing foods and hoping for the best, sometimes no matter how gradually you go. If you’ve tried it and it hasn’t gone your way, it may be that you’ve gone too fast (I know I got cocky a few times and it backfired on me), or that you haven’t completely addressed underlying imbalances. When symptoms return, it’s easy to assume that you just have to stay restricted forever. But, done carefully, with the right support and the right groundwork in place, most people can significantly expand what they tolerate.

If you're stuck on low FODMAP and don't know how to get off it, DM me and we can chat about what that might look like.

If you’ve treated SIBO and it’s come back, maybe even more than once, you’ll know this particular flavour of exhaustion....
15/05/2026

If you’ve treated SIBO and it’s come back, maybe even more than once, you’ll know this particular flavour of exhaustion. You did the protocol. You restricted your diet. Two, three, four times. And here you are again. I’ve been there myself and it is so disheartening wondering if anything you’ve done has helped, if anything is ever going to really work for good and what on earth to do next.

The fundamental question to ask here is WHAT is allowing it to return? It’s not that you’ve done something wrong, the protocol has just missed something key.

SIBO develops when something shifts in the gut environment - motility has slowed, stomach acid has dropped, the gut lining is irritated and leaky, or maybe the nervous system is running the show in a way that compromises everything else. If those conditions are still in place after treatment, it doesn’t matter how many kill phases you go through - the bacteria have everything they need to come back.

Most SIBO protocols are designed to eradicate. Fewer are designed to change the underlying terrain. And that’s usually the difference between someone who sees real progress and someone who keeps relapsing.

In the post I’ve covered the most common drivers in my experience. It’s not an exhaustive list - there are structural causes, thyroid involvement and more - but it’s a starting point for asking better questions about what’s actually going on, and I hope it helps.

Drop your questions in the comments.

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