Undiagnosed Symptoms
In many situations patients suffer symptoms but no pathological, disease cause can be found so a diagnosis-of-exclusion might be given. Common examples include;
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome,
- Fibromyalgia,
- Tiredness Chronic Fatigue,
- Headache,
- Hormonal or Menstrual Disorders,
- Mood Disorders including anxiety, stress, low mood & depression and
- Medically Unexplained Symptoms.
In these situations even though a person might feel far from their usual healthy self they might be told that “all the tests are normal” and often there’s no further medical care.
However what this means that no abnormalities have been found so far by looking through the bio-mechanical, patho-physiological disease model.
Bio-mechanical Model
The bio-mechanical model is often encapsulated by the Surgical Sieve, a mnemonic like a medical mental checklist of all the different types of disease process that can affect the body;
Exposome Model
In these cases, where the bio-mechanical model doesn’t uncover a formal diagnosis or find a remedy to a persons symptoms, once the disease causes have been ruled out (and it is important to emphasise here that the Dr giving advice must first review the test results and evidence that excludes pathophysiological causes of a person’s symptoms) then more detailed testing can be considered.
There are many approaches to this more detailed level of testing. One approach is based on the idea of the Exposome – “a recently introduced concept aimed at explaining the complex exposures we face as humans. It can be viewed as the environmental equivalent of the human genome” (1) and, compared to the bio-mechanical patho-physiological model, it’s a different way of looking at disease.
Real World Example
I saw a patient who thought they probably had thyroid disease because they had been suffering from many of the symptoms – weight gain, tiredness, fatigue, sleeping too much and intolerance to cold. I found that they had a diffuse neck swelling in the thyroid area and I tentatively agreed with them and fully expected to find abnormal results on their TFT (Thyroid Function Tests). However all their blood tests came back normal (we tested for anaemia, diabetes and several other parameters too) and their ultrasound scan of the neck was normal. By way of further investigation we also tested their TRH (Thyroid Releasing Hormone) and Thyroid Antibodies which are both useful predictors of future thyroid disease.
The bio-mechanical model might stop enquiring at that point but by using the exposome model there are other avenues. Iodine and Zinc are required to make Thyroxine. The B group vitamins and vitamin D as well as Selenium and (to some extent) Co-enzyme Q10 are all needed for Thyroxine to exert its action on the target cells around the body. Therefore a detailed look at the nutritional and metabolic pathways of Thyroid physiology can reveal treatable factors.
In this case the micro-nutrient profiles all showed results that were in the normal range but with a pattern of “high-normal” and “low-normal” results that can be regarded as sub-optimal, not abnormal, diseased or pathological but simply “not as good as they could be”.
Providing nutritional supplements to address the unfavourable pattern was very effective at reducing, in fact stopping the patient’s symptoms.
General Approach
In some of these situations Cloud Health might offer to undertake a one of a range of investigations. Usually these fall into a few groups;
- Nutritional Investigations (Vitamin Profiles, Fatty Acid Profiles and Essential & Toxic Minerals Profiles),
- Chronic Infection Investigations (Glandular Fever, Lymes Disease, Cytomegalovirus, Coxsackie and Herpes Family),
- Gut Biome & Function Investigations, (SIBO, sub-clinical infections, dysbiosis and increased intestinal permeability),
- Endocrine Investigations (Pituitary-Adrenal-Gonadal and Pituitary-Thyroid axes, Post-prandial Hypoglycaemia) and
- Metabolomix (glucose and energy metabolism with its related reactions).
Refs: (1) https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-417217-3.00001-X (2) http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2013-204949 (3) http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/pmj.79.929.154