Why I Built Flarely: A Colitis Patient's Story

The problem nobody talks about at dinner

I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in my mid-twenties. If you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to explain what that means — but for the uninitiated, it means your immune system has decided your colon is the enemy. The result is unpredictable flares, urgent bathroom trips, fatigue that feels like someone pulled the plug on your battery, and a constant, low-grade anxiety about what your body is going to do next.

The physical stuff is hard enough. But what really wore me down was the guessing.

Every flare sent me spiraling through the same mental checklist. Was it the pizza last night? The stress from that deadline? Did I sleep badly? Was it the coffee — or the milk in the coffee? I’d replay my last 48 hours like a detective reviewing surveillance footage, except the footage was blurry and the clues contradicted each other. One week, food triggers like dairy and spicy food seemed like the villain. The next week, I’d eat cheese with zero consequences. I started to wonder if I was imagining patterns that weren’t there.

I tried keeping a food diary. A physical notebook, which lasted about nine days before I forgot it at home and never picked it back up. Then a spreadsheet, which was more durable but about as pleasant to use as filing taxes. I’d sit down at the end of the day and try to remember what I ate for lunch — the details that actually matter, like specific ingredients or portion sizes, were already gone. And correlating any of that with my symptoms? Forget it. I’m not a data scientist. I was just a tired guy with a gut problem, staring at rows and columns that told me nothing.

The worst part was the doctor visits. My GI would ask, “Have you noticed any triggers?” and I’d shrug. “Maybe dairy? Sometimes spicy food?” It felt like showing up to a mechanic and saying, “The car makes a noise… sometimes.” I knew my doctor wanted more to work with. I wanted to give her more. I just didn’t have a good way to capture it. (I later wrote about walking into your GI’s office with real data — the kind of preparation I wish I’d done back then.)

The moment it clicked

I remember the exact meal. I was at a restaurant, staring at a dish I’d never ordered before, doing the silent mental math every IBD patient knows: What’s in this? Is there hidden dairy? How am I going to feel in four hours? And I thought — my phone can identify a song from a few seconds of audio. It can translate a street sign in a foreign language from a photo. Why can’t it look at this plate and help me understand what I’m about to eat?

I started looking for apps. There were general food trackers built for calorie counting, which didn’t care about my triggers. There were symptom loggers that felt like filling out medical intake forms — 15 fields, three dropdown menus, and by the time you’re done, you’ve lost any motivation to do it again tomorrow. Nothing connected the dots between what I ate, how I felt, and what was happening in my life on the days things went sideways.

So I built it.

What Flarely actually does

Flarely is the app I wished existed during every confusing flare, every vague doctor conversation, and every restaurant menu standoff. Here’s what it does, in plain terms:

Log symptoms in about 30 seconds. I know from experience that if tracking takes more than a minute, you’ll stop doing it by week two. Flarely keeps it fast. A few taps to record what’s going on — stool type, pain, urgency, fatigue, the stuff that matters — and you’re done. No essay required.

Snap a photo of your meal and let AI do the work. This is the feature I’m most proud of. Take a picture of what you’re eating and Flarely’s AI identifies the likely ingredients, flags common IBD triggers like dairy, gluten, or high-fat items, and shows FODMAP levels for what’s on your plate. It’s not perfect — no AI is — but it’s a lot better than trying to remember at 10 PM what was in your lunch.

See patterns you’d never catch on your own. After a couple of weeks of consistent logging, Flarely starts connecting the dots. It looks at your food, your stress and sleep, your symptoms, and surfaces correlations. Maybe you flare two days after high-FODMAP meals. Maybe stress alone isn’t a trigger, but stress plus poor sleep is. These are the kinds of patterns that are nearly impossible to spot in a notebook but become visible when you have the data.

Share a real report with your doctor. Flarely generates a clean, 30-day summary you can pull up at your next appointment or send ahead of time. Actual data — trends, trigger correlations, symptom frequency — instead of “I think it might be dairy, maybe.” It turns a vague conversation into a productive one.

Your data stays on your device. This was non-negotiable for me. IBD data is deeply personal. Flarely processes and stores your information on your iPhone. I didn’t want to build a company that profits from your health data, and I didn’t want you to have to wonder who’s reading your symptom logs. Nobody is. They’re yours.

Who this is for

Flarely is for anyone with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, or any form of IBD who is tired of guessing. If you’ve ever looked at a plate of food and felt a knot of anxiety about what it might do to you — this is for you. If you’ve ever sat in a GI appointment wishing you had better answers — this is for you. If you’ve tried tracking before and given up because it was too tedious — I built this specifically so you wouldn’t have to give up again.

It’s also for people who are newly diagnosed and overwhelmed. I remember that period vividly — the flood of information, the conflicting advice, the fear. Flarely won’t cure any of that, but it gives you one concrete thing you can do every day to understand your body a little better. And in those early months, having something actionable makes a real difference.

Try it

Flarely is available on the App Store for iPhone. You get a full 14-day free trial — no credit card upfront — and after that it’s $4.99/month. I priced it to be accessible because I know what it’s like to already be spending too much on prescriptions and doctor visits.

If you want to stay in the loop on new features, tips for managing IBD, or just hear from someone who gets it, drop your email at flarelyapp.com. I read every message.

I built Flarely because I needed it. I hope it helps you too.

— Chintan

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Flarely is a tracking tool, not medical advice. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. Always consult your GI doctor before making changes to your diet or treatment plan.