A Working Causal Model

This has been a bad health year for me. Like other bad years, it began with an interval of adrenal stress and a series of fall viral infections that triggered a flare of illness that has lasted for months. I eat only a few hypoallergenic foods, rely on vitamins and probiotics, and sometimes take antibiotics for yeast overgrowth. This year was different, though. The diet recommended by Dr. Vega revealed eating to be the direct cause of almost all of my symptoms, and led to a temporary cure that enabled me to create a working model of my illness. The working model is presented in this figure.

Working Model

It’s a simplification. It isn’t a web, and it isn’t dynamic. It’s a flow chart that is simple enough to be comprehensible, and complex enough to enable a start. It’s far from the whole picture, and will probably evolve with experience, but it’s simple enough to use, and offers plenty of opportunities for the pursuit of cure.

If you have a working model of your illness, please post it here. If you are an activist, please share our models with researchers who may be open to learning from and partnering with grass roots medical detectives.