Taylor Lunt's health reasoning: root causes are always outside your body

In a LessWrong post, Taylor Lunt presents a framework for reasoning about health issues: the root cause is always outside the body. He illustrates this with his personal struggle that began with stomach pain and bloating. Initially attributing it to bad gut bacteria, he took antibiotics and probiotics, but symptoms returned. He later traced the issue through excess stomach acid, then low bile flow, then vagus nerve dysfunction (linked to heart palpitations), and eventually to muscle tension in his neck—released by a physiotherapist. The ultimate cause? His desk job, an external factor.

Lunt argues that every step in this chain treated symptoms, not the root cause. He criticizes the healthcare system for its 'utter disinterest' in finding external root causes, citing examples like IBS (a label, not a cause), chemical imbalance theories in mental health, and sleeping pills for insomnia. His core insight: if you can't point to something outside the body as the root cause, you're still treating symptoms. For professionals, this means rethinking chronic issues—from back pain to digestive problems—by looking at workplace ergonomics, stress, or diet rather than internal fixes alone. The post has gone viral on LessWrong for its practical rationality approach.