Log it fast, find the pattern, prove it to your doctor
Log your symptoms in seconds, find out what your gut actually reacts to even when the reaction lands three days later, and hand your doctor a report worth reading.
Step one
Logging that takes seconds
The single most repeated complaint about food diaries is that they get abandoned inside a week, because logging every ingredient is tedious. Every decision in Clairop's logging flow comes back to that.
A bowel movement is one tap on the Bristol scale. Urgency, blood, mucus and whether it woke you at night are optional detail underneath. Symptom sliders use the exact wording and ranges of the clinical indices, so the app never asks you the same question twice to produce a score it could have calculated.
Step two
Know what's actually in it
Scan a barcode and Clairop pulls the product's ingredient list, then checks it against a reference table built from published food composition research. You get the FODMAP load broken down by all six subgroups, because tolerance is per-group: plenty of people react hard to fructans and are completely fine with lactose.
Every value shows the paper it came from. Where an ingredient isn't in our table, the app says so rather than assuming it's low, because telling someone a food is safe when we don't know is the one mistake here that can actually hurt them.
Step three
Patterns that hold up
Gut reactions arrive late. Clairop tests every food you log against three delay windows: within six hours, six to twenty-four, and one to three days.
For each, it compares symptom severity after meals containing that food against meals without it, and reports the effect size alongside the result. Because hundreds of comparisons run at once, the results are corrected for false discovery. Without that correction, testing 200 foods across three windows would throw up roughly 30 false triggers by chance alone, and every one would be presented to someone as a food to avoid.
Nothing is shown until there are at least five meals with the food and five without. Below that, the app tells you the count and keeps waiting.
Step four
Something to take to your appointment
For Crohn's, Clairop calculates the Harvey-Bradshaw Index. For ulcerative colitis, PRO-2. Both from answers you have already given, both named, and both with the items that need a physical examination left out and that omission stated on the score.
The report itself is one page: score trend, mean movements per day against your own baseline, days with blood, overnight episodes, medication adherence, lab results and confirmed triggers. Its provenance sits above the numbers rather than in a footnote, so a clinician reading top-down knows before they reach a single figure that this is patient-entered data.
Everything cites its source
Clairop has no regulatory clearance, because it neither diagnoses nor treats. What it does instead is show its working, so a sceptical gastroenterologist can check the arithmetic and read the papers.
Method & sources
Frequently asked questions
- How does Clairop work?
- You log meals, stool and symptoms by tap, voice, a sentence or a meal photo. Clairop scans barcodes for FODMAP load by subgroup, tests each food against three delay windows to find foods that line up with worse symptoms, calculates the Harvey-Bradshaw Index or PRO-2, and turns it all into a one-page GI visit report.
- What is the best way to track IBS symptoms?
- Log stool form on the Bristol scale, your main symptoms with a severity, and what you ate, every day for several weeks, because many reactions arrive late. Clairop keeps that quick, one tap for a bowel movement and voice or a photo for meals, then does the comparison across delay windows for you.
- What is the best app for finding delayed food triggers?
- Clairop is built for delayed reactions: every food is tested against symptoms under 6 hours, 6 to 24 hours and 1 to 3 days after eating, results carry an effect size, and false discovery correction stops chance results being shown as triggers. Nothing appears until there are five meals with and five without a food.
- How does Clairop log a bowel movement?
- One tap on the Bristol stool scale. Urgency, blood, mucus and whether it woke you at night are optional detail underneath, and they feed the Crohn's and colitis scores and the GI report, so the app never asks the same question twice.
- How does the Clairop barcode scanner work?
- Scan a product and Clairop reads its ingredient list, then checks each ingredient against a reference table built from published food-composition research. You see the FODMAP load across all six subgroups, each value citing its paper. Ingredients not in the table are shown as no data, never assumed low.
- Which Crohn's and colitis scores does Clairop calculate?
- The Harvey-Bradshaw Index for Crohn's disease and the PRO-2 score for ulcerative colitis, both calculated from answers you have already given. Items that need a physical examination are left out, and that omission is stated on the score and the report.
- What is on the Clairop GI visit report?
- One page: your activity score trend, mean bowel movements per day against your own baseline, days with blood, overnight episodes, medication adherence, lab results and confirmed triggers. Its provenance is printed above the numbers, so a clinician knows straight away it is patient-entered data.
- Can Clairop diagnose IBS, Crohn's or colitis?
- No. Clairop is a general wellness app for people with a diagnosed digestive condition. It records what you log and looks for statistical patterns; it does not diagnose, treat, or recommend or adjust medication. New or worsening symptoms, and red flags like blood or weight loss, need a doctor promptly.
- Do I need to log every ingredient?
- No. The most common reason food diaries fail is that logging every ingredient is tedious, so Clairop lets you describe a meal out loud or photograph it and lists the ingredients for you, and you can correct anything it got wrong.
- Is Clairop on Android?
- Not yet; Clairop is iPhone only. Comparisons with trackers that run on Android are at clairop.com/compare.