[SirMaster]

>I think there are other foods that bother different people, but we haven't managed pin down exactly which foods bother which people. It's a hard problem

Sounds like a job for a neural net. If people would log all what they eat and how they feel. If the neural net had access to all the components of the foods they are inputting, surely with enough data a pattern would emerge of what common component in what they eat is correlated with worse symptoms.

[hanniabu]

Not that easy. I have sibo and depending on what I eat and how I eat it, it changes the effects it has on me. Also the amount and frequency. For example, if I have raisins at the start of my meal then I don't see issues, but if I have them at the end of my meal then I do. If I have it here and there then no issues, but if I have it a few meals in a row then it'll give me issues.

And raisins affect me within 20min, but if I were to face something like potatoes or tomatoes then it doesn't give me issues until hours later (after my next meal or even the next day).

[cjdell]

You may benefit from speaking to a nutritional therapist. You might have a biofilm problem at specific points along your digestive tract but I would let them make that determination and come up with a personalised treatment plan. Nutritional therapy is about "eating yourself well" and you might be surprised how effective it is. Good luck!

[polishdude20]

I thought sibo was fairly treatable with antibiotics? Or is it a recurring thing that just won't go away?

[tonnydourado]

> If people would log all what they eat and how they feel.

Dietary data is one of the hardest things to collect. Either you need to hospitalize people and control their whole diet, and your sample size is small, because of costs, or you need to rely on self reporting, and your data is unreliable.

Basically, much easier said than done.

[ijustlovemath]

Biological systems are highly nonlinear and time-dependent, and also very individual! People have been trying learning techniques in glucose control since the early 2000s, and have only seen limited success in very controlled scenarios. I think a simple neural net would fall short of catching all that complexity, at least using the current architectures

[Buttons840]

Yes. I have celiac disease and I know people report following a strict gluten free diet for a whole year or more before they start to feel better. For me, I never did feel better, but blood tests show that certain celiac-related antibodies have returned to normal levels.

That's a very delayed and weak signal.

[BurningFrog]

People won't log all the food they eat, but supermarkets actually have data on what food people buy.

So correlating that data with people's health could be very interesting!

I don't think that has much chance getting past an IRB though.

[ijustlovemath]

Youd have to somehow control for waste and individual consumption within a household, which would be very difficult!

[BurningFrog]

Not for statistical studies across a population.

[olyjohn]

God forbid we use the data to do something good. But for marketing? Yeah no problem.