Dashboard: Suspect Food Correlations

Suspect Food Correlations

The Suspect Food Correlations capability is the most powerful feature within TCT and is another way TCT helps users find correlations between their diet and their symptoms.  The Dashboard presents the user a ranked order list of food, ingredient, and allergen items that may be the cause of their symptom.  Within this feature, the user's logged symptoms (common AND custom) are synthesized with their dietary data using a complex algorithm.  With enough data, TCT lists suspect items and displays a "score" (highest being the most probable) so the user can strategically choose what item(s) they want to stop consuming as part of an elimination diet.  For the Dashboard analysis only, preset calculation parameters are in place.  Those parameters include associating your symptom with foods logged within the previous 4 hours as well as limiting the evaluation period to the last 30 days. For this feature to be effective, the user must log symptoms and meals consistently and accurately.

What to expect when you open the Dashboard

When you first use TCT and open the Dashboard, a note asking for "More Information" is displayed for each of the toggleable buttons ("food", "ingredient", and "allergen").  These notes will remain until sufficient diet and symptom data has been logged and available to conduct the analysis (this note will also appear when there hasn't been a symptom logged within the last 30 days or meals logged 21 of the last 30 days).  After logging requirements are met, this note will be replaced by a dedicated box with the symptom name (e.g., "Headache") and either a list of items that have been scored above "1.0", or with a new note stating, "No Correlations Found".  Inside each symptom box is an arrow that will navigate you to the Suspect Food Analysis page where you can change analysis parameters (e.g., change the symptom window to less than 4 hours and/or change the analysis period to less than or greater than 30 days).  If you are monitoring multiple symptoms, simply scroll to the left to reveal all the symptoms logged within the last 30 days.

Food, Ingredient, and Allergen toggle buttons

The user can toggle between food, ingredient, and allergen buttons to identify suspect items within each category.  This allows the user to evaluate different levels of data to support an elimination diet.  Each category (food, ingredient, allergen) requires 21 days of diet data before the analysis can be conducted.  There could be a case where there is enough "food" data, but not enough ingredient and/or allergen data to conduct an analysis for those categories.  This could result in the Dashboard listing suspect items under the "food" category while a note requesting more information is still displayed for the ingredient and/or allergen categories (see note below).  If this is the case, please continue to accurately and consistently log your diet and symptom data so that once enough data is available within each category an analysis can be conducted.

If enough data existed to conduct our analysis but no items scored high enough to make the list, the user will see a note stating, "No Correlations Found".  This means that based upon the data you submitted, TCT had enough data to conduct an analysis, but no correlations were made with a score above 1.0. If this happens, it is possible that neither foods, ingredients, nor allergens are the cause.  However, TCT's recommendation is to continue to accurately log symptoms and foods to give TCT more information to conduct continuous calculations over time so that correlations can be found if they exist.

Dive into the details

To dive into the suspect food correlation details, simply select the arrow in the symptom box and navigate to the Suspect Food Analysis page.  Once there, you can change the symptom window, the analysis period, and the level of analysis.  The settings on this page will affect the Dashboard analysis parameters mentioned above but will give the user more options for analysis based upon their personal needs.

Notes

• Due to the available licensed and public database information TCT uses, it is possible to conduct an analysis under the "food" category but not be able to conduct an analysis for the "ingredient" or "allergen" categories. This is because the ingredients and/or allergens of the foods you recently consumed might not be listed in the database and therefore limit the amount of data available to accurately calculate suspect items in those respective categories.

Conclusion

The Suspect Food Correlations Dashboard feature provides a ranked order list of suspect food, ingredient, and allergen items.  The parameters set for the Dashboard calculation is set however the user can navigate to the Suspect Food Analysis page to adjust the parameters and run unique analysis suited just for them.  Like all features in TCT, accurate logging of symptom data and diet data are critical to the analysis and ultimately the success of the user on their quest of identifying how their diet may be impacting their symptoms.

‍