You mention on the live call often that the elimination diet is the gold standard for discovering food sensitivities. But in your programs such as Healthy Baby Code and High Cholesterol Action Plan, you don’t start people out on elimination, rather, more on a standard Paleo diet. If a person doesn’t have results such as lower cholesterol or successful pregnancy, do you then move on to an elimination diet? And a related question, how do you decide which patients to put on an elimination diet and which to move to a Paleo diet?

Chris Kresser:  I would typically just start with Paleo and then I would do, if the person is my patient, rather than someone that’s just doing a program, I would test them for all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about in the course and address those things. And then I would probably use Cyrex Array 3, 4, or maybe even 10 to try to get a head start on figuring out what they might want to eliminate. And then I would suggest they eliminate those foods to start. Elimination diets when you have no idea where to start or what to do are really difficult and time consuming, and a lot of patients just won’t be up for that. So I would first do Paleo reset. If they have signs and symptoms of autoimmunity, I might do autoimmune Paleo. I would address all of the gut and HPA axis and blood chem issues I found, and then I would consider doing Cyrex 3, 4, and 10 as the basis for an elimination diet.