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.

The popular “pregnenolone steal” says cortisol raids a shared pool of raw material. It doesn’t fit how the hormones are made: cortisol, DHEA and sex hormones come from different tissues. What chronic stress does is turn down the brain signals that drive ovulation and sex hormone production. Same symptoms, different mechanism, and it changes what you do about it.

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 FDN’s H.I.D.D.E.N. model — Hormones, Immune, Digestion, Detoxification, Energy, Nervous system — with an honest grade for how well validated each test is on its own. Blood chemistry, the layer TDG adds, is the most strongly validated of the five.

GI-MAP, a food panel and the OAT look at one gut-immune system from three sides. This diagram draws the usual chain — microbiome, barrier, food immune response, systemic inflammation — and grades the evidence behind every arrow: strong for infection, calprotectin and coeliac disease, weak for zonulin and food IgG.

Immunity, inflammation and detoxification are filed under different departments but affect each other. This diagram maps the connections, grades each one — strong for inflammation slowing liver drug metabolism, weak for a measurable “toxic load” — and gives the practical rule: check CRP before trusting a ferritin or a liver marker.