How We Research

Every Know Your Gut article starts with research, before a single sentence gets written. Here's what we look at, how we decide what makes it into an article, and what we leave out.

What we look at

We built a proprietary AI research pipeline for this step. It runs a separate search for each kind of source below, all at the same time (the last two only on topics where they apply), and pulls the exact quotes from each source. Then everything that comes back gets compared side by side in step 2.

The studies themselves

We look at research on people: clinical trials, large studies that follow people for years, and reviews that pool many studies together. For each one, we note how many people were in it, how long it ran, who was studied, and who paid for it.

Health agencies

We pull what the organizations that set public health guidance say (e.g., the NIH, CDC, FDA, WHO, and the NHS), straight from their own pages and dated, since guidance changes.

Doctors' guidelines

We check what gastroenterology and nutrition organizations tell doctors and dietitians to do (e.g., the American College of Gastroenterology and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics). Their advice doesn't always match the newest study, and when it doesn't, we say so.

Evidence against it

We never skip this one. We look for studies that didn't hold up when someone repeated them, experts who argue the opposite, popular claims that rest on one small study, and where a claim people repeat online first came from. This search runs separately from the search for supporting evidence.

Who's selling it

On supplements and heavily marketed topics, we also look at who sells the thing a claim supports and who funded the studies behind it, because plenty of gut health advice traces back to a product page.

How students ask about it

On topics that are all over social media, we read what students search and ask (on TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and in Google's search suggestions) so that the article answers the question people are really asking. We borrow their wording, and their claims still have to pass the same checks as everything else.

How every claim gets sorted

Published as stated

The evidence comes from studies on people, it applies to the readers we write for, and we can name the source in the article.

Published with its limits

The claim goes in with its exact limit attached (e.g., "in one small trial," "in mice," or "in adults with IBS"). A vague "may" doesn't count as a limit.

Left out

Findings shown only in animals, single studies nobody has repeated, claims with no original source behind them, and anything that better evidence contradicts don't go in the article.

What we check before anything goes up

Every quote, word for word

Every quote is checked against the page it came from, and every link is opened to make sure it works and says what we say it says.

One source, not four

When several sites agree, we check whether they all trace back to the same paper, because four pages citing one review are still just one source.

Whether it applies to you

A result in older adults, in people with a specific disease, or in mice doesn't automatically apply to a healthy teenager, so we check who was studied before we say what a finding means.

Where studies disagree

When good studies point in different directions, we show both sides with their sources and say which side has the stronger evidence.

Published

Our AI pipeline is a research tool: it ONLY finds and pulls sources for us.

The Know Your Gut team writes, edits, and approves every article in its entirety, and double-checks every source before it's published.

The article goes up with every source listed, so you can check our work yourself. If we find a mistake later, we fix it.

We won't:

Lean on unnamed experts

You won't see "experts say" or "studies show" on this site without the study or the organization named.

Diagnose you

We don't publish quizzes or checklists for deciding whether you have a condition. That's a conversation to have with a doctor.

Sell you something

We don't sell anything, and there are no ads on the site.

Replace your doctor

Our articles explain how the body works. They aren't a diagnosis or a treatment plan, and if something feels wrong, a doctor is the right next step.

Spot something wrong?

If something in an article looks off, tell us. We'll recheck the source and fix the article if we got it wrong.

Report an error