Start with what you feel

Symptoms

One symptom, several possible root causes, and the markers that tell them apart.

Most symptoms have more than one plausible cause, and several of them often run together, which is why chasing one at a time is so frustrating. These pages work backwards from what you actually feel: the root causes worth considering, the specific marker that distinguishes each, and the point at which it stops being a testing question and belongs with a doctor instead.

Energy and the nervous system

The most dismissed symptoms on this list, and the ones where the useful markers are least likely to have been run.

Brain fog

Thyroid, blood sugar, inflammation, B12, sleep. Five very different causes, five different markers.

Wired but tired

Exhausted all day and awake at night. Mostly a body clock and blood sugar question.

Afternoon energy crash

Fine at nine, flattened at three. The gap between eating and crashing is the clue.

Waking at 3am

A specific pattern, and what you notice on waking narrows it fast.

Anxiety out of nowhere

An overactive thyroid reads almost exactly like anxiety, and rarely gets checked.

Body and metabolism

Insulin governs fat storage and moves years before glucose does, which is why it sits under most of this group.

Cannot lose weight

When effort is not the variable, insulin, thyroid and sleep usually are.

Cravings for sugar

A correction signal rather than a character flaw, and the curve that creates it.

Always cold

Cold when nobody else is. Heat production, and the conversion step TSH cannot see.

Cold hands and feet

Warm core, cold fingers. That combination is a distribution question.

Hair falling out

Iron stores, thyroid, and the three month delay that hides the cause.

Puffy face in the morning

Usually gravity. What matters is whether it has cleared by afternoon.

Gut, skin and joints

Bloated after eating

Timing after the meal narrows it faster than any single test.

Skin breaking out

Where it sits, when it flares, and the insulin pathway underneath.

Joint aches

Morning stiffness duration separates inflammatory from mechanical, and the first one has a window.

Hormones

Low libido

Usually has a date attached, and something written next to that date.

Each page names the markers in the body text and links straight to what they mean and how to test them. Where a symptom can signal something serious, that is stated near the top rather than buried at the bottom.

15 pages published so far. More are being added.

Arrive at your appointment with better questions

Occasional notes on the markers worth measuring, what the research supports, and where it stops.