Where would you start with a child with aphthous ulcers stomatitis? Would you look at it as a possible first sign of autoimmune disorder? Would you recommend an autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet even before testing?

Chris Kresser:  Yes, I would look at it definitely as a sign of autoimmunity. I would start looking for things that trigger and provoke immune dysfunction that we talked about earlier. It’s certainly worthwhile to try an autoimmune Paleo diet.

I had a young patient who is I think about three years old who had, I’m forgetting the exact name of the condition, but it presents with kind of chronic low grade fever and flushing. No one could really figure out what was going on in the conventional world. They wanted to give her all kinds of medications that made her feel terrible and were risky, or they just said, sorry, there’s nothing we can do. They brought her to me and we did the full functional medicine workup, but I did start her on an autoimmune Paleo diet while we were waiting for the test results, and by the time they came back for the case review, which is about eight weeks later, she was feeling almost perfectly well. Her temperature had normalized and the incidents of the flushing episodes had gone from like once a day to maybe twice in the entire month. So don’t underestimate the power that these dietary interventions can have.