How this site is written and checked

Written by Kathryn Dunn · Published 23 October 2026 · Last reviewed 23 October 2026

You've probably read a page about Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and wondered who wrote it, whether they knew what they were talking about, and what they were trying to sell you. This page answers those three questions for every page on IBS Explained.

Who writes it

Everything on this site is written by Kathryn Dunn, a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist in York. Her qualifications, her training and what she is and isn't are on the author page. Her name and photo sit on every article so you always know who you're reading.

Nothing here is written by a content agency or by AI and published unchecked. Drafting tools are used, as they are in most writing now, but every sentence is read, checked against its source and signed off by Kathryn before it goes live.

Where the facts come from

Every claim about IBS, a treatment or the NHS links to where it came from, so you can check it yourself. The sources used, in the order they're trusted:

• NICE, the body that writes the guidance GPs in England follow
• The NHS website
• The British Society of Gastroenterology, the UK specialist body for gut medicine
• Guts UK, the UK charity for digestive conditions
• Published research papers, linked to the original journal, never to a write-up on somebody else's site

Where the research is thin, mixed or old, the page says so. Where a treatment has a guideline recommendation, the page gives the grade of that recommendation, not only the word "recommended". Where a figure comes from a single study, you'll be told it's a single study.

The site doesn't link to other practitioners' sites for facts, however good they look, because that's where errors get copied from.

How often it's checked

Every page shows the date it was published and the date it was last reviewed. Pages are reviewed when a guideline changes, and the treatment pages are read through at least once a year whether anything has changed or not. If a page is out of date and hasn't been caught yet, the review date will tell you, and you're welcome to say so.

What the site won't do

It won't give you a diet to follow. Kathryn isn't a dietitian. Pages describe what a diet is and what the research found, and point you to a registered dietitian for anything about your own eating.

It won't tell you what's wrong with you. Only a doctor can do that. If you've got new or changing symptoms, see your GP before you read anything else here.

It won't promise you an outcome from any treatment, including the one Kathryn offers. Pages report what happened to people in studies, in the past tense. What happens to you is a different question.

It won't use stories from Kathryn's own clients to show a treatment works. A story about one person is not evidence. If a case study ever appears here, it'll be anonymised, used with permission, and there to show what the work is like rather than what it achieves.

It doesn't carry adverts, sponsored content or affiliate links, and it isn't funded by any company, charity or NHS body. It's paid for by Kathryn.

The one thing to be straight about

Kathryn earns her living from gut-directed hypnotherapy, which is one of the treatments described on this site. That's a conflict of interest, and the honest way to handle it is to name it rather than hope you won't notice.

So every treatment gets the same page, written to the same pattern: what it is, what the research found, who it suits, and what the guidelines say. Hypnotherapy gets no more space and no kinder tone than anything else, and where the research on it is weak, the page says so. The only place on the site that mentions Kathryn's own practice is one line at the end of the hypnotherapy page.

If you think that balance has slipped anywhere, tell her.

If something's wrong

If you spot a mistake, a broken link, a claim without a source, or a page that reads as though it's selling something, email [email protected]. Errors of fact are corrected and the correction is noted on the page. Nobody's email is added to a list.