The Impact % section in the Habits tab helps you spot which habits may be linked to better or worse gut health for you, based on your logs.

This page shows correlations, not proof that a habit causes better or worse gut health. A correlation means two things tend to happen together in your recorded data. It does not tell us why.

Incomplete or inconsistent logs, and factors you do not record in Balloon, can affect the analysis and lead to misleading percentages. For example, if you mainly log on days when you feel unwell, Balloon gets an uneven picture of your routine. Changes in stress, sleep, illness, travel, or other parts of life may also coincide with a habit and affect your gut health, even when they are not captured in your logs.

For example, if you eat gluten during a stressful week and your gut health worsens, the analysis may show a negative association with gluten. It cannot tell whether gluten, stress, another factor, or a combination explains that pattern.

Use these numbers as clues to explore, not as conclusions about what caused a change. Log consistently on both good and bad days, and consider what else was happening in your life when reviewing a result. More data can help, but even a high-confidence result does not establish cause and effect.

The percentages are relative indicators. Use them to compare the direction and strength of the patterns across your habits. They are not an exact percentage increase or decrease in your overall gut health.

For example, gluten −5% suggests that eating gluten may be linked to worse gut health for you. It does not mean gluten makes your gut exactly 5% less healthy, or that there is a 5% chance of having symptoms.

In this example:

These are example results. Your numbers and goal labels may be different. Read each habit separately; the percentages do not add up to an overall score or to 100%.

Balloon looks for patterns between your habits and your gut health over the last 90 days. For each habit, it compares gut health on days when the habit happened or a goal was met with days when it did not happen or the goal was not met. Depending on the habit, it looks at gut health on the same day or the following day.

Your gut health data includes things like stool type, bowel movement frequency, and symptoms you log. Balloon turns the difference between the two groups into a relative impact indicator, so you can compare patterns across habits.

The more consistently and accurately you log your habits, bowel movements, and symptoms, the more information Balloon has to work with. This helps the analysis become more reliable over time. The percentages can change as new data is added.

Only completed days are included. Today's data can start contributing tomorrow.

Low confidence means an estimate is available, but the data does not yet support a strong conclusion. Locked habits need more days with and without the habit before Balloon can show an estimate.

See Why habit impacts show low confidence or stay locked for how to read these labels and unlock analysis.

Treat the numbers as a starting point for understanding your patterns, alongside the accuracy of your logs and what else was happening in your life. A negative percentage does not prove that a habit harmed your gut health, and a positive percentage does not prove that it helped. Avoid making diet or treatment decisions based on a percentage alone. A negative percentage alone does not diagnose a food intolerance or allergy.