Most health programmes give you a protocol. The TDG Five-Test Programme gives you something different: a clinical picture built by a system that has been refined across nearly forty years of sitting across from real people with real complaints, running real tests, and asking what the data actually shows.
This page describes what that system contains — the analytical infrastructure that turns five laboratory tests into a coherent, personalised understanding of what is driving your health picture and what to do about it.
One thing to be clear about from the start: Metabolic Natures is a structured starting point, not a validated diagnostic test; the plan is checked against what actually changes for you.
How to read your results
Finding something is useful. So is finding nothing.
Most clients arrive having been told, more than once, that their tests are normal. Functional tests often show something the standard ones didn’t look for, and a finding gives the plan a direction: something to change, and something to retest. But a clear result is useful too. It rules things out, so time and money go where they are more likely to help. Either way, a result is read alongside your history and your symptoms, never on its own.
The Analytical System
Clinical Tools — Built for Your Specific Situation
The practice portal contains a suite of specialised analytical tools — each designed to interpret a specific domain of functional health and contribute to the complete clinical picture. No single tool gives the full answer. Together they give a picture that no standard consultation can produce.
Every tool in the suite has been opened and tested in a browser. Where an idea came from someone else, it is credited.
The Nutrition Integration Engine
Six Layers of Personalisation — Resolved Into One Protocol
Generic dietary advice ignores the most important variable: you. The Nutrition Integration Engine resolves six layers of individual data into a single coherent nutritional protocol — one that works with your constitutional biology, your test results, and your actual life simultaneously.
1
The Starting Plate
Layer 1 — the starting plate. Protein is set first, in grams per kilogram of body weight; the Metabolic Nature reading then sets the starting band for starch and fat. Every later layer can override it when your results say so.
2
Food Sensitivity Findings
Foods flagged on the food panel are candidates for a trial elimination, not automatic removals. An IgG result largely reflects what you have been eating, so a flagged food is taken out for a set period, then brought back one at a time. The reintroduction decides, not the panel.
3
Digestive Ceiling
The GI-MAP reveals your current digestive capacity — stomach acid output, pancreatic enzyme production, intestinal permeability, and microbial balance. The protocol is adjusted to what your digestive system can currently process, not what it theoretically should be able to handle.
4
Blood Chemistry Modifications
Specific blood chemistry findings — elevated homocysteine, insulin resistance, thyroid conversion impairment, nutritional deficiencies — modify the dietary recommendations. The test results override theoretical type recommendations where there is a specific biochemical indication.
5
DUTCH and OAT Adjustments
Cortisol pattern, oestrogen metabolism, testosterone status, melatonin, and organic acid findings from the DUTCH Plus and OAT further refine the nutritional approach. Hormonal findings have specific dietary implications — a client with elevated 4-OH oestrogen requires different food emphasis than one with low progesterone.
6
Implementation Context
Financial constraints, cooking capacity, time, cultural food practices, religious considerations, and schedule all modify the final protocol. The best nutritional protocol is the one that can be followed. A theoretically optimal protocol that is practically impossible is clinically worthless.
Before the Tests Arrive
Intake Forms — Building the Clinical Picture From Day One
The intake begins before a single test result arrives. It is tiered, so you only complete what your case needs: six standard forms for everyone, a Deep Dive where the picture is more complicated, and specific lines of enquiry added case by case.
Standard — everyone
Deep Dive — added when the case needs it
Lines of enquiry, added case by case: hair mineral analysis (HTMA), methylation, SIBO, environmental toxin exposure and peptide readiness.
Common Questions
What clients ask about the system
Is this available to me as a client, or is it only for the practitioner?
The analytical system operates in the background of every TDG consultation. You don't use the tools directly — you receive the output from them in the form of your clinical report, your written protocol, and the consultation in which the findings are explained. The tools exist to make your investigation more precise, your results more interpretable, and your protocol more personalised. The client experience is a clear, coherent explanation of what your body is doing and why. The system is what makes that explanation possible.
How is this different from a standard functional medicine consultation?
Most functional medicine consultations involve a skilled practitioner interpreting test results using their clinical knowledge. That knowledge varies enormously between practitioners. The Detective Health system codifies nearly forty years’ experience working with people of pattern recognition into a systematic analytical framework — so the interpretation is not dependent on memory or intuition alone but on a structured process that accounts for the interactions between findings, the blocking factors that mask the true picture, and the six-layer nutritional integration that produces a protocol specific to your biology, your test results, and your life.
What is the Metabolic Nature assessment and why does it matter?
Your Metabolic Nature is your constitutional metabolic pattern — the oxidative rate and autonomic balance that determine how your body processes food, responds to stress, and requires nutritional support. One of six Metabolic Natures, read from a scored questionnaire. It is a starting position for your plate, checked against your food record and your review — not a fixed type, and not something a lab test confirms. Your reading sets the starting point for how much starch and fat your plate carries, and shapes when you eat. Protein is set by your body weight, not your type. The plate is then adjusted by what your results and your food record show. Metabolic Natures is a structured starting point, not a validated diagnostic test.
How long has this system been in development?
The system has been built up across nearly forty years’ experience working with people, and the functional testing side through FDN practice since 2009. The idea that people differ biochemically goes back to Roger Williams (
Biochemical Individuality, 1956) and George Watson (
Nutrition and Your Mind, 1972) — historical sources, not trials. The two-axis idea behind Metabolic Natures is inherited — from the metabolic typing work of Kelley and Wolcott — and has been rebuilt against current evidence. What changed, and why, is on the
correction page. The tools, intake forms and the Nutrition Integration Engine were built for this practice. Where an idea came from someone else, it is credited.
You came with questions.
The system exists to find the answers.
Every result is information. A finding gives the plan a direction; a clear result rules something out. Either way, you leave with a clearer picture of what is going on and what to do next.
Book a free 20-minute call →
TDG Five-Test Programme →