Chris Kresser: First of all, I should go back and apologize. I don’t think you guys have seen the hyperglycemia content yet. I think we’re still finishing up the HPA axis. In my mind that’s long ago because I produced it a few months ago, now several weeks ago, and I don’t know. It’s all a blur. But anyways if you haven’t seen the hyperglycemia unit, you will be seeing that. It’s actually the first presentation in the blood chemistry section after we go through the intro material. So apologies for that and I think a lot of your questions around blood sugar will be answered there. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on type 1.5 diabetes or autoimmune diabetes because that’s just beyond the scope of this course and that’s what Kim is asking about here. But what I can say is that you approach all autoimmune conditions in the same way from a functional medicine perspective. And that’s again the beauty of functional medicine in that what differentiates it from conventional medicine is that we look at the underlying causes and the processes that are present rather than the specific manifestations.
So you take someone with rheumatoid arthritis versus someone who has inflammatory bowel disease and someone with MS from a conventional perspective, they’re going to use drugs that are specific for those particular conditions. And to some extent, that’s appropriate because you need to deal with the symptoms and improve a person’s quality of life. But it doesn’t address the underlying process, which is autoimmunity. And from a functional perspective, we look at all those three different conditions and we may use specific treatments for each condition, like we might use some supplements or support specifically for joint pain in someone with rheumatoid arthritis, and we might use some antimicrobials or things to help with gut stuff for someone with IBD, or, you know, we might use something that supports neuronal health for people with MS. But we’re at a fundamental level going to be looking at all of the things that trigger immune dysregulation and this starts with everything that we’re talking about in this course, like all of the GI issues that you now know how to diagnose and treat, HPA axis dysfunction which you now know how to diagnose and treat, and then all of the various problems you could uncover on a blood chemistry screen like hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia or nutrient imbalance, or various forms of immune dysregulation or metabolic dysfunction. And then there are things like heavy metal toxicity or mold toxicity, chronic infection, all these things can promote immune dysregulation, and in someone who has any kind of autoimmune condition or presentation, that has to be the primary focus, and then you can use diet and lifestyle supplementation to address the manifestations and give people relief while you’re addressing those underlying causes