Clinical Diagrams

Hypothalamus to pituitary to adrenals — the three-step stress hormone relay that governs your cortisol pattern, waking energy, immune function, and sleep quality. Covers the negative feedback loop and what happens when it breaks down under chronic stress.

Two women. Same blood oestrogen level. One feels well; one doesn’t. The difference is where the oestrogen goes after — the 2-OH, 4-OH, and 16-OH metabolic pathways, the 2:16 ratio, and why a standard blood test completely misses this picture.

Under chronic stress, the body diverts pregnenolone — the raw material for all steroid hormones — toward cortisol production and away from sex hormones. Low testosterone, low progesterone, oestrogen dominance: this is often the upstream cause. And you can’t supplement your way out of it without addressing the steal first.

The gut barrier is one cell thick. When tight junctions break down, lipopolysaccharides, undigested antigens, and pathogens cross into systemic circulation — driving inflammation that appears as skin conditions, joint pain, brain fog, and autoimmunity. This diagram maps the barrier structure, what the GI-MAP measures, and the sequenced repair protocol.

Your fasting glucose is normal. Your fasting insulin — which isn’t on the standard panel — tells a different story. This diagram maps the progression from optimal insulin sensitivity through compensatory hyperinsulinaemia to established resistance, and why HOMA-IR catches the pattern years before your GP would.

Fatigue that doesn’t respond to rest, brain fog, poor exercise tolerance — these often have a cellular origin. This diagram maps optimal versus dysfunctional Krebs cycle activity, what the backed-up OAT markers reveal, and why the OAT is the only test that shows neurotransmitter production, B-vitamin status, gut overgrowth, and mitochondrial function in one panel.

Chronic HPA activation suppresses vagal tone, reduces stomach acid, and impairs protein digestion. The downstream consequences — depleted zinc, B12, and iron — produce immune dysfunction, nervous system symptoms, bone loss, and poor recovery. One upstream driver behind dozens of seemingly unrelated symptoms.

How gut dysbiosis elevates beta-glucuronidase, reactivates conjugated oestrogen metabolites, and drives oestrogen dominance regardless of ovarian production. The mechanism linking a GI-MAP finding to hormonal symptoms — and why treating hormones without treating the gut produces incomplete results.

How the five functional tests map onto Reed Davis’s H.I.D.D.E.N. dysfunction model — Hormonal, Immune, Digestion, Detoxification, Energy, Nervous system. The TDG framework adds Randox blood chemistry as the advanced outer layer, making this an extended clinical investigation beyond the core FDN suite.

GI-MAP, IgG Food MAP, and OAT are not three separate investigations — they are three lenses on a single underlying process. This diagram shows how microbiome dysbiosis leads to mucosal barrier compromise, which drives food immune activation, which produces systemic inflammation with metabolic downstream consequences measurable on the OAT.

Three systems that medicine treats as separate departments — immunity, inflammation, detoxification — are in reality one interconnected network. Each drives the others bidirectionally. This diagram maps the relationships, the clinical markers that reveal each system, and why addressing one without the others produces incomplete and often temporary results.