The Commonality.me Story

Hi! I’m Chris, and for twelve years I suffered from chronic illness including symptoms of brain fog and fatigue.

It was 2013 when I finally figured out what was causing my symptoms and how to recover. My answers did not come from a GP, a specialist, the internet or the latest University research; it came from me taking charge of my own health, and gathering enough of the right data about myself and applying the right algorithm, in order to discover the right findings.

My recovery left me wondering: could other people suffering from chronic illness use the same process to find their own path to back to full health?

Chronic illness: the diagnosis for the inexplicably unwell

For me, chronic illness felt like my body shifted from running like a Ferrari to running like a VW Beetle. And not one of those funky remakes you see zipping around town, but a 1950s rust bucket you can hear coming from miles, and that hasn’t been serviced in a while.

Not only was the life sucked out of me, so was the colour. Every day for twelve years I felt grey. My life goals, many of which I’d met by then, and which I’d begun adding to, started to shrink, and fall away. Just getting through the day, each day, became my goal.

Twelve years of this, whatever this was.

Something was wrong.

I knew it. My family knew it. And the doctors knew it. The problem is no-one could say exactly what “it” was. I’d come back from an appointment with the same vague “It could be”, or “It has all the hallmarks of”, and I’d be in despair. Eventually I got a label: “chronic fatigue” (whether the diagnosis was formally correct is a whole other story). What made it worse was the constant cycle that took up more than a decade of my life.

Maybe you know that cycle: Talk of some new discovery on the internet or through a GP; hope that some new drug or solution (always at a cost) is going to fix things; waiting several months to see if the promised changes have taken place; before gradually and depressingly, realising nothing has changed. You feel no better. Maybe slightly worse. You’re back to square one.

Rinse, launder, repeat.

Well years of rinse, launder and repeat left me all washed out. I knew I had to do something or life would pass me by. Not just my life, but the lives of the ones I loved and cared about; as friendships became harder to sustain, and as family spent more time living life around me, rather than with me.

‘Small data’ aka ‘Chris data’: starting with the basics

I’m a stats and data guy, so six years into my chronic illness I started writing down data. Data about myself. In the era of big data, I did small data. Chris data. What Chris ate, how Chris slept, what Chris did physically, what supplements or medications Chris was taking. Project Chris, you could call it!

And as I did Project Chris something changed. Not in my body, not straight away at least. But in my head. I came to a growing realisation that for the first time since 2001, I was taking charge of my own health. I was moving away from passive outsourcing of my health problems, to active empowerment.

Now don’t get me wrong. Ninety percent of the time, just like you need a mechanic for your car, a good GP is critical to your health. But for what was going on for me? And maybe what is going on for you? There’s that critical ten percent left over in which, given the right toolbox, you can fix some things yourself.

And the toolbox is, as I discovered doing Project Chris, the right data.

You see data by itself is not enough. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had plenty of data thrown in your face from the most scientific to the least plausible. The key is the right data. Information is a false friend if it’s not the right information. And false friends have a habit of draining you.

Guided by this conviction I decided to do a PhD in what is known as “Machine Learning”.

Machine Learning: finding clarity in the fog of fatigue

Machine Learning is simply using algorithms to predict outcomes, like how well I will be tomorrow based on what I know about today and the last week. The beauty of machine learning is that it focuses on clear, raw data. It doesn’t cloud the water with pre-determined theories.

Machine learning listens to and learns from data.

So that’s where I headed. And once I had analysed the data, it became clear: The top three impacts on my health according to the machine learning applied to Project Chris were sleep, exercise and phytosterols (the molecules found in plant cells).

Finding sleep to be important validated the process: sleep affects everyone, including me! It also said exercise was good for me. But phytosterols? I didn’t know what they were so I started Googling. I found that it had been patented by an immunologist in England for people with certain kinds of autoimmune conditions (and had virtually no risks) – so I bought some online.

My life was transformed. Not immediately, but definitely, as over 4 weeks the right data did its work.

That’s how machine learning operates. It’s about building up a body of data through trial and error and the variations in day-to-day life that can be used to identify patterns.

So rather than trying an infinite number of solutions, you start with the ones that are most likely to help. And you start where you are most likely to find those solutions.

If you’re looking for pearls, you can open every shell in the ocean. You might get lucky. You might not. Machine learning simply says “How about we take luck out of the equation: by starting our search for pearls at a pearl farm?”

And notice I said “we” not simply “you” in that question? If I can access rigorously tested scientific data for Project Chris, then we can all do that for Project “Insert Name Here”.

Commonality: what could we achieve if we combined all of our data?

The beauty of machine learning means multiple data sources (i.e. from lots of different people) expand the body of knowledge exponentially. As more people contribute their data, the database grows in focus and intelligence and the cross-referencing begins to highlight patterns, expose problems, and provide specific solutions.

What worked for me might not work for you. But maybe there is someone just like you in Estonia, who did find a solution. You’d want to know about that! And if they tried something that didn’t work, you’d want to know about that too. If we’re sharing data – and glued together with machine learning rather than trawling through it ourselves - we increasingly avoid blind trial and error and it’s time and cost.

The idea of machine learning is not new. In fact, it’s an ancient idea. Think of it like a cluster of villages where, at each village gate, elders gather and take counsel.

The village elders are appointed so that the village might flourish. If villagers simply dealt with their own problems by themselves without sharing information, the next generation of villagers is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

But as villagers come to the elders with problems (and solutions), a body of knowledge is built up, sifted and disseminated. The village elders become the conduit through which collective wisdom – or machine learning – is created.

But just as importantly, those villager elders are tasked with gathering information from the surrounding villages too. A cluster of villagers works well. A cluster of villages even more so. This is the magic ingredient.

Village elders are tasked with gathering and sorting the data from within their village and from the surrounding villages as well, a few doing the work for the benefit of the many. And that’s where Commonality.me comes in.

Commonality: an app that allows you to discover your own personalized data

The right data changed my life so much that I created an App based on machine learning. Commonality.me is a portal to enable you to access – and offer - data that is both within easy reach (within your village) and that is harder to reach (from other villages).

Not everyone can do a PhD in machine learning in order to find solutions for their health, but with Commonality.me not everyone has to. It operates like a village elder charged with the task of collecting and curating the right data, both from all villagers and all villages.

Commonality.me is open to anyone who has the same desire I had: to run my body as my own doctor; to source and trial the best data in order to take back ownership of my health.

Commonality.me is not a magic bullet. And it offers no magic promises. Commonality.me is simply a place to discover personalised data that could get your misfiring VW Beetle running like Ferrari again: before you die of old age.

Chris