Chris Kresser: As I mentioned earlier [question #5], CSA stands for cryptolepis-sida-alchornea, which are three herbal antibiotics. It’s definitely not just for kids. I’ve used it to deal with antibiotic-resistant staph infections in adults and other conditions where you need powerful antibiotic support but you don’t want to use antibiotics and you need to be able to dose it very finely. The reason I don’t include it in the adult protocols is with GI-Synergy and some of the other components of the protocol, I just don’t feel like it’s necessary, but you could use the CSA tincture in place of GI-Synergy, for example. I like GI-Synergy, though, because it has a broader spectrum of ingredients, but it’s not really practical to use for kids because they’re a bunch of capsules and young kids aren’t able to swallow those. CSA can be used for any age.
Then the sourcing, as I mentioned, would be Woodland Essence. If you live in a place where you can’t easily order stuff from Woodland Essence, you can look around for other sources of those herbs—cryptolepis, sida, and alchornea. Or you could just increase the dose of the other things in the pediatric protocol or look for another kind of herbal antibiotic combo. Stephen Buhner, who I’ve mentioned now a few times on this webinar, has a book called Herbal Antibiotics, which is really helpful. If you’re interested in botanical medicine, which I think you should be if you’re in the functional medicine world because it’s really powerful medicine and is becoming more and more important in this age of antibiotic resistance, then I would definitely recommend that book.