I have abandoned the idea of neatly packaged diseases. Health problems tend to cluster in groups and evolve over time. Many factors contribute to the final end-stage disease, listed as diagnoses in medical records.

Non-specific illnesses may be misunderstood by physicians who have been taught to make diagnoses of specific disorders. Often patients with mild symptoms are enroute to a major illness, but they may suffer in an ill-defined state for months or years.

As illnesses progress, more specific features tend to emerge-dysfunction and tissue changes become more obvious, and medical diagnoses become more useful. A heart attack or stroke, both calamitous events with obvious features, fit the medical model well and tend to be diagnosed reliably and treated in a standard fashion. These are end-point events - the underlying pathology takes years to develop and increasing dysfunction is often ignored as the pathology progresses toward a dramatic conclusion. Other processes may remain ill defined; chronic fatigue, muscle pains, headaches and cognitive dysfunction may make life miserable for many years before a more definable disease such as arthritis becomes apparent.

I propose a process interpretation of dysfunction over a category definition. In other words, we should be more inclined to ask, "What is the source of the problem and how does the problem develop in the body over what period of time?" These are more useful questions to answer than, "What is the problem called?" If we know more about the way of the disease, then we are better equipped to alter its progression, especially by removing its origin. Since the food supply of an individual is an important biological determinant, diet revision should be an early diagnostic and treatment strategy in medicine, especially when the precise nature of the disease is unclear.

"...If a situation is linear or dominated by influences that are linear, it will be possible to piece together a picture of its whole behavior by examining it in small pieces. The whole will be composed of the sum of its parts...the output of a linear operation varies steadily and smoothly with any change in its input...Non-linear problems are none of those things. They amplify errors so rapidly that an infinitesimal uncertainty in the present state of the system can render any future prediction of the state worthless after a short period. Their outputs respond in discontinuous and unpredictable ways to very small changes in their inputs."