General Functional Medicine
I know we haven’t discussed kidney issues, but I have an 18-year-old patient who has slightly elevated creatinine, 1.13. Scale is 0.57 to 1.03. Is this elevated enough to be a concern? Urine was clear and yellow. No other urine findings. Cholesterol and triglycerides are high, 185 and 39, respectively.Should she be referred to her GP or a specialist for this slight elevation? If not, suggestions for bringing this down?
Chris Kresser: Creatinine when it’s mildly elevated in kids is usually not a concern. It’s something that happens if they’re...
Chris, you briefly mentioned jaw alignment in an earlier Q&A session. Can you please talk about this?
Chris Kresser: Sure. It’s interesting. It’s a whole other realm of mismatch. The basic theory is that if you look...
What are your thoughts on elevated fasting ammonia? What are your thoughts on gut pathology, or do you think it’s solely liver toxicity? I see this often in patients with long-term seizure or psych drugs that are impossible to remove. I usually treat with lactulose, rifaximin and/or neomycin, but would love ideas on other workup.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, certainly liver toxicity is one major cause. Another is dysbiosis because bacteria produce ammonia, and if we...
Where did the terminology ‘hedonistic system’ come from?
Chris Kresser: That’s a term that’s used in the obesity literature. There are two primary ways that the brain regulates...
Are there any human trials with monolaurin that you know of? I can’t seem to find any, and I’d like to understand it better.
Chris Kresser: When I looked originally, I didn’t see a lot of human trials either. I’m just kind of going...
Great piece of information on pentosidine depleting lysine. Given this, could yeast overgrowth be a factor in recurrent HSV (herpes simplex virus) outbreaks? Have you seen HSV outbreaks decline with SIBO/dysbiosis/parasite treatment? Do you have any other pearls that might be useful for HSV? Can rampant HSV 1 or 2 be involved in gut issues?
Chris Kresser: The answer is yes, certainly yeast overgrowth and any other kind of pathogen overgrowth or infection will weaken...
What did you do with the male patient in your last case study with elevated cholesterol that failed to respond to the diet and antimicrobial gut protocol as far as lowering cholesterol?
Chris Kresser: We’ll talk more about that in the blood chemistry unit, and then I encourage you to go through...
Did you see Kevin Hall’s research with NuSI in regards to weight loss, insulin, ketogenic diets at ICO 2016? If so, what are your initial thoughts?
Chris Kresser: I did see it, and it’s exactly in line with what I’ve been arguing for years now, which...
If someone is getting a lot of cramps, they may do well to supplement with calcium. Can you talk a little bit more about this? For most of my life, I was told that cramps were a salt issue and you should eat more salt if you got cramps a lot. Then for a few years I was under the impression that it’s actually a magnesium deficiency, that sodium and calcium help muscles to contract and magnesium and potassium help muscles to relax, so hearing that frequent cramps are related to calcium is very new to me. Can you explain the physiology?
Laura Schoenfeld: As far as cramps are concerned, there are a lot of different things that can affect cramping, and...
On a 23andMe test, what gene do we look for to see if we’re heterozygous carriers of the FH gene mutation?
Dr. Amy Nett: I don’t think you can actually get the FH gene information from 23andMe. The only test I...
