Nutritional Systems Model

A nutrition-model for the body that focuses on systems.

This is an outline project I’ve had in mind in for a long time, most recently inspired by the work with the Ruby programming language for simple, pseudo-natural-language processing, and by Dr. Mark Hyman’s work on Functional Medicine (The UltraMind Solution, Ultrametabolism).

Conditions

• A visible condition is a symptom
  • Ex: Not enough energy
• A testable condition is something that can be measured
  • Ex: “Not enough Vitamin X”
• Possible Causes of a Deficiency
  • Not in the soil 
  • Destroyed by farming practice
  • Not present in available foods
  • Not in the diet (foods selected from those available)
  • Not absorbed
    • Absorption not enabled
    • Absorption blocked
  • Missing co-factor
    • Output: Visible conditon suggests not enough
    • State: Measurement suggests enough or too much
    • Input: Dietary intake analysis suggests enough or too much
  • “Nutrient Drain” (used elsewhere)
    • Output: Visible conditon suggests not enough
    • State: Measurement suggests not enough
    • Input: Dietary intake analysis suggests enough or too much

System Language

Operations

Things the system can do:

1. List symptoms: Show all symptoms in the database, for browsing.
2. List causes: Given a symptom, show all possible causes.
3. Trace connections: Given a symptom and a cause, show how they’re related.
4. List common causes: Given multiple symptoms, show intersection of possible causes.
5. List other symptoms: Given a cause, show all possible symptoms that derive from it

Verbs

• cause, causes, produce, produces
• enables
• impedes
• has, have, contain, contains

Adjectives

• insufficient (not enough)
• excess (too much)
• sufficient (balanced)

Processes

• Nutrient
  • Intake
  • Digestion
  • Absorption
  • Utilization
• Biological organ
  • Function
  • Breakdown

Symptom Database (example)

Symptom: Carbohydrate Cravings

See Fatigue after Eating.

Symptom: Fatigue after Eating

Cause: Sugar metabolism:

• Insulin spikes cause fatigue after eating. (cause)
• Insulin spikes cause carbohydrate cravings. (cause)
• Sugar causes insulin spikes. (causes == cause)
• Partially hydrogenated oils contain trans fats. (contain)
• Trans fats produce insulin resistance. (produce)
• Insulin resistance causes insulin spikes.
• Whole foods contain fiber.
• Fiber slows digestion. (slows)
• Slow digestion prevents insulin spikes. (slow == slows)
• Refined foods lack fiber. (lack (verb) = have not enough (verb + adj)
• Lack of fiber causes insulin spikes. (lack of (adj) == not enough, =/= lack (verb))

Symptom: Insomnia

• Indigestion sometimes produces insomnia
  • “produces” here, rather than “causes” to represent skipped links in the causal chain
  • Reserve “causes” to identify direct links
• Food allergies cause indigestion
• Toxic food causes indigestion
  • If indigestion is caused by food allergy or food allergy, it will produce insomnia
  • Are there other causes?

Please share!