May 2026 I had a conversation with ChatGPT which resulted in something potentially very useful in terms of orienting how you think about your health and how you address a return to optimal health.
Problem No. 1 – Sub-Clinical Below Optimal Health
Despite our advanced civilization, many people are suffering from sub-optimal health. In many cases there is an absence of test results that point to a specific cause for their non-optimal condition.
Over the years of running Healthelicious Foods I have heard stories from many people of countless trips to many doctors to no avail. Their test results come back with acceptable range, they do not feel well but no direct cause can be identified.
Problem No. 2 – The ’Drug For Each Disease’ Address
When symptoms do manifest that can be tested and measured, the present address by allopathic medicine could be characterised as a knee-jerk reaction: to suppress the symptoms of specific diseases with one or more drugs rather than looking to correct the underlying system imbalance.
This leads to two further harms, prevented healing and accelerated decline.
1. The underlying bodily system health is not corrected so harms can only increase and compound and
2. The average drug has 75 side-effects, leading to additional drugs being prescribed to address those drug side-effects. This all-to-often leads to a person being on 6 or more medications.
Problem No. 3 – No Consistently Accurate Diagnostic Framework
No Universal Diagnostic Flowchart exists to identify non-optimal functioning human systems because biology is:
nonlinear
adaptive
compensatory
probabilistic
Two people with identical symptoms and identical labs may still improve from completely different interventions.
Also:
symptoms lag behind dysfunction
biomarkers can remain “normal” while function deteriorates
the body compensates remarkably well
That obscures causality.
A Different Look
Taking a step back from this approach to look at the body as a whole, we can observe, “Many people are not suffering from one catastrophic disease but from cumulative suboptimal inputs across multiple systems.”
Most importantly, often correcting several moderate dysfunctions simultaneously produces disproportionately large improvements.
Which begs the question, “Can human health dysfunction be modeled as a systems optimization problem?”
While it is true that no Universal Diagnostic Flowchart exists, it is also true that a Tiered Decision Framework IS possible!
The most efficient diagnostic systems usually work by:
1. identifying high-probability causes first
2. ruling out dangerous causes
3. correcting foundational deficits
4. escalating investigation only if needed
This is actually how good clinicians think intuitively.
A “Systems Health Triage” Model
A practical model of address to move closer to optimal health might look like this:
TIER 1 — FOUNDATIONAL INPUTS
These probably explain a surprisingly large percentage of chronic dysfunction.
Assess:
sleep quality
circadian disruption
diet quality
protein intake
micronutrient sufficiency
hydration/electrolytes
movement
sunlight exposure
alcohol/substances
stress load
social isolation
Many people dramatically improve here alone.
TIER 2 — COMMON PHYSIOLOGICAL FAILURES
Basic labs:
CBC
ferritin
B12/folate
vitamin D
thyroid panel
HbA1c/glucose
CRP
liver/kidney markers
lipids
This catches many common issues.
TIER 3 — GUT / IMMUNE / HORMONAL
If unresolved:
microbiome assessment
food intolerance patterns
cortisol/HPA axis
sex hormones
autoimmune markers
chronic inflammation
sleep disorders
TIER 4 — ENVIRONMENTAL / COMPLEX
Only then investigate:
mold
heavy metals
chronic infections
Lyme/co-infections
mitochondrial disorders
toxic exposure
genetic polymorphisms
Because these are:
expensive
complex
often over diagnosed online
I have often said to a person, “Sorry to break the bad news to you but you really need to become your own health researcher, to discover what best suits your particular spirit/mind/body combination.”
If you are not enjoying optimal health, hopefully this Systems Health Triage Model will provide you with a healing path forward.