This episode is brought to you by Essentia and Cozy Earth. Simply put, autoimmune diseases are conditions where the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues rather than a foreign molecule like bacteria, and they are a huge problem both in this country and worldwide. You’re probably familiar with the most common autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, hypothyroidism, and psoriasis. But there are many more autoimmune diseases that affect the nervous system, joints and muscles, skin, endocrine gland, and heart. In today’s episode of my series I’m calling Health Bites, I talk about the main causes of autoimmune disease, the conventional medicine approach versus the Functional Medicine approach to treating autoimmune disease, and how to reverse the course of these devastating illnesses.  This episode is brought to you by Essentia and Cozy Earth. Receive an extra $100 off your mattress purchase on top of Essentia’s huge Black Friday sale! Go to myessentia.com/drmarkhyman and use code HYMAN at checkout to get this great deal. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DRHYMAN. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): What is autoimmunity, and what causes it? (6:14 / 4:25) A patient case I treated of a girl with autoimmune disease (8:51 / 7:04) A Functional Medicine approach to treating autoimmune disease (13:00 / 11:14) Strategies to reverse autoimmune disease (26:22 / 24:35) Mentioned in this episode The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet Diagnostic tests and biomarkers mentioned in this episode Celiac Gluten antibodies Anti-gliadin antibodies* Tissue transglutaminase antibodies* *IgA and IgG recommended for both Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices