IBS: Why Your Symptom Diary and What You Tried Matter to Research

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Living with irritable bowel syndrome usually means becoming your own researcher: cutting foods out and adding them back, trying fibre, peppermint oil, a low-FODMAP diet, a tablet, a therapy, and keeping track of what changed. There is no single test for IBS and no single treatment that works for everyone, so that personal record of trial and error is exactly the evidence research on IBS is short of.

How many people live with it

How many people have IBS depends on the criteria used. The Rome Foundation's global study found that the share of adults with IBS was lower when the Rome IV criteria were used, compared with the Rome III criteria, in the Internet survey (4.1% vs 10.1%). An older meta-analysis put the pooled prevalence at 11.2%. New doctor-diagnosed cases run at a median of 38.5 per 10,000 people a year.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on IBS describes the tests and reviews that leave records:

• Blood tests to rule out other conditions: a full blood count, CRP and ESR, and antibody testing for coeliac disease.
• Treatment reviews: second-line medicines such as a low-dose tricyclic antidepressant are reviewed regularly, and symptoms are part of the annual patient review.

Beside these, a symptom and food diary shows what no test does: which days were bad, what came before, and what eased it. If you do not have your test results, ask your practice for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete IBS story with the records the guideline lists comes to about $88 per licence on the benchmark today. With 60 days of symptom diary entries added, it comes to about $273 per licence, because a day-by-day record linked to what was tried is evidence research rarely gets. Every line and its source is on the IBS page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every treatment and diet you tried. You can add test results, clinic letters and pages of a food and symptom diary as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.