Every symptom is a message. We learn to read them.
Most health systems work backwards — they wait for symptoms to become severe enough to diagnose, then treat the diagnosis. The TDG system works differently. We work forwards from biology — reading the data your body produces, identifying the patterns underneath your symptoms, and intervening at the root rather than the surface.
This requires more information than a standard consultation. It requires a complete picture of who you are — your history, your biology, your lifestyle, your stress, your sleep, your movement, your relationships. That is why we ask so many questions. Not because we are being thorough for the sake of it. Because incomplete data produces incomplete answers.
"The body keeps a faithful record of everything that has happened to it. Our job is not to guess what that record says. Our job is to read it."
The thinking behind everything we do
Every supplement, dietary change, or lifestyle protocol applied without data is a guess. Some guesses help. Many don't. Some actively set you back by addressing the wrong system while leaving the real driver untouched. We test first because evidence is not optional — it is the foundation on which everything else is built.
Your gut affects your hormones. Your hormones affect your immune function. Your immune function affects your brain. Your brain affects your stress response, which feeds back into your gut. No system in the body operates in isolation — and no single test, or single practitioner looking at a single marker, can see the full picture. The TDG system was built to read across systems simultaneously.
A ferritin of 40 means something very different in a 52-year-old perimenopausal woman with heavy periods than in a 35-year-old male athlete. A cortisol pattern that looks flat on a chart reads completely differently if you know that person has been working 70-hour weeks for six months. Numbers without context are just numbers. Your intake forms provide the context that makes your test results meaningful.
Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that growth is constrained by the scarcest resource, not the most abundant. Your health works the same way — you are only as well as your most depleted system. This is why protocol sequencing matters as much as the protocol itself. We identify your shortest stave first and address it before adding anything else. Adding more to a leaking bucket does not fill it.
Red blood cells live for 120 days. Meaningful change in your HbA1c takes three months to register. Gut microbiome shifts take weeks to stabilise. Mitochondrial repair follows its own schedule. We work with these timelines, not against them. This means setting realistic expectations, tracking the right markers at the right intervals, and not abandoning an approach before it has had time to work.
Five stages. One continuous process.
The TDG programme is not a consultation followed by a report. It is a structured clinical investigation that moves through five connected stages — each one building on the last.
Twelve intake assessments covering your complete health picture — symptoms, history, lifestyle, biometrics, stress and allostatic load, nutrition, movement, psychosocial health, medication interactions, and gut health. Stephen reads every form personally before your first consultation. Nothing is automated. Nothing is scored and filed without human eyes.
Advanced blood chemistry, GI-MAP stool analysis, DUTCH Plus hormone panel, Organic Acids Test, and IgG4 food sensitivity panel — run simultaneously to generate a cross-system biological picture. Test kits are coordinated and posted to you. Blood draw is arranged through your nearest clinic.
Results are run through the TDG Clinical Platform — 30+ specialist analytical tools built specifically for this methodology. Findings from all five tests are cross-referenced against each other and against your intake data. Patterns are identified. The primary driver is distinguished from secondary contributors. The shortest stave is found.
A structured, periodised clinical programme built entirely from your test data and intake information. Nutrition framework matched to your Metabolic Nature. Targeted supplementation at medicine-tier doses where deficiencies are confirmed. Lifestyle sequencing. Exercise prescription where appropriate. Nothing generic. Nothing applied from a template.
Regular check-ins, protocol refinement as you respond, and structured re-assessment at agreed intervals. The 120-day red blood cell cycle means some changes take time to register in testing. We track the right markers at the right intervals and make decisions based on data — not assumption.
Your forms are not admin. They are clinical data.
The twelve intake assessments are not a formality. They are the first layer of clinical investigation — the information that gives your test results meaning, and the context without which no pattern can be accurately interpreted.
Because chronic stress directly suppresses sex hormone production, flattens your cortisol curve, depletes your adrenal androgen reserve, and drives gut dysbiosis through the gut-brain axis. Your stress history is biological data — not background noise.
Social connection, isolation, and relationship quality are among the most powerful modulators of HPA axis function, immune regulation, and inflammatory load. This is not psychology — it is physiology. Allostatic load does not distinguish between sources of stress.
Many commonly prescribed medications deplete critical nutrients — statins deplete CoQ10, PPIs deplete B12 and magnesium, metformin depletes B12, oral contraceptives deplete zinc and B vitamins. Without knowing what you take, we cannot account for drug-induced deficiencies in your results.
Exercise volume, intensity, and recovery quality directly affect cortisol patterns, testosterone, thyroid conversion, mitochondrial function, and inflammatory markers. A competitive athlete's "normal" blood chemistry is not the same as a sedentary person's — context changes what the numbers mean.
Stephen reads every form personally before your first consultation. Your responses are stored securely via Netlify's encrypted infrastructure and never shared with third parties. They inform your clinical programme and nothing else.
No question is compulsory. But every question you skip is context we don't have — and context we don't have is a pattern we might miss. Answer as fully as you are comfortable with. If something is difficult to rate or describe, a note in the comments box is always helpful.
Some of our intake forms touch on difficult areas — trauma history, reproductive health, mental health, relationship quality. These questions exist because they are clinically relevant, not because we are prying. If you find a question difficult or distressing, you can skip it and mention it to Stephen in your first consultation instead. There is no wrong way to engage with this process.
From 900+ data points to one clear direction
The TDG Clinical Platform takes every data point from your tests and intake forms and runs it through 30+ specialist analytical tools — each one designed to identify a specific pattern or system imbalance. The output is not a pile of results. It is a ranked clinical picture with a clear intervention priority.
| What we analyse | What we're looking for | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Blood Chemistry 150–300 markers |
Functional ranges, not just pathological thresholds. Ratios and patterns across markers — not just individual flags. | A ferritin of 22 is "normal" on an NHS panel. It is not optimal for energy, immune function, or thyroid conversion. |
| Gut Microbiome GI-MAP stool analysis |
Pathogen load, dysbiosis patterns, gut immune markers, digestive enzyme sufficiency, intestinal permeability. | The gut-brain axis, oestrobolome, and immune regulation all originate in gut ecology. Gut findings change everything downstream. |
| Hormones DUTCH Plus panel |
Full diurnal cortisol curve, adrenal reserve, sex hormone production and metabolism, oestrogen detoxification pathways. | Serum hormone tests miss the metabolite picture. A normal oestradiol level tells you nothing about how oestrogen is being cleared. |
| Cellular metabolism Organic Acids Test |
Mitochondrial function, Krebs cycle efficiency, neurotransmitter production, methylation markers, B vitamin functional status. | Fatigue that doesn't respond to sleep or rest is often mitochondrial. OAT findings frequently explain what blood chemistry cannot. |
| Food reactions IgG4 sensitivity panel |
Delayed immune reactions to 200+ foods — the hidden inflammatory driver that standard allergy tests miss entirely. | IgG4-mediated reactions can take 24–72 hours to manifest. Most people consuming a trigger food daily never connect it to their symptoms. |
This is what thorough looks like.
The TDG system asks more of you than a standard consultation because it gives more back. A protocol built on 900+ data points and 12 intake assessments is not the same as one built on a 20-minute conversation and a basic blood panel. It is slower. It is more demanding. And it is substantially more likely to find what is actually driving your symptoms — and address it at the root.
If you have questions about any part of the process, any of the forms, or anything you have read here, Stephen reads all correspondence personally. You can reach him at hello@detectivehealth.com or through the Practice Better booking system.