Jainism has a concept called *anekāntavāda* — the doctrine of many-sidedness — which holds that any complex reality can only be understood by holding multiple partial perspectives simultaneously, none of them complete on its own. Mahavira's followers used it to resolve philosophical disputes, but it maps surprisingly well onto something modern functional medicine keeps rediscovering: that a symptom is rarely one thing. Fatigue isn't 'low iron' or 'poor sleep' or 'stress' — it's a convergence point where several partial truths meet. The mental model trap in health is the opposite of anekāntavāda: we find one explanation that feels satisfying and stop looking. The Jain term for this error is *ekāntavāda* — one-sidedness — and it's worth naming because naming a mistake makes it easier to catch in real time. Today, if you find yourself landed on a single cause for something your body is doing, treat that landing as a prompt to look for the second and third partial truths still waiting.

Think of a health pattern you've explained to yourself the same way for years. What's the explanation you haven't seriously considered yet?

Drawing from Jain philosophy (anekāntavāda) — Mahavira (synthesized with functional medicine's multi-factorial framing)