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).
Contents
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:
- List symptoms: Show all symptoms in the database, for browsing.
- List causes: Given a symptom, show all possible causes.
- Trace connections: Given a symptom and a cause, show how they’re related.
- List common causes: Given multiple symptoms, show intersection of possible causes.
- 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?
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