MCAS Explained: How Histamine Hijacks Your Brain and Mood

The reason MCAS feels so unpredictable is that these meat eaters are released in surges. So they're not consistent in a steady flow. There's a big surge and then it will shut down. This is why you can have a storm of symptoms and then miraculously you seem fine and you can't understand why you would feel horrific for two hours and then find a couple hours later. Your brain is wired for deception. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. Are you ready to listen? Welcome to another episode of Decoded. I'm your host, Bizzy Gould. This episode is something that I have wanted to learn about for a long time. It's come up throughout my experience and journey with autoimmune disease. It's something called MCAS, Mass Cell Activation Syndrome. I've often wondered if it's something that I have struggled with personally. From going through the deep dive research and data that I'm going to be presenting to you today, I think the chances are high. In my practice with break method, I have seen an overlap of people that report experiencing mass cell activation syndrome and things like PMDD and postpartum depression. So I will be tagging along a counterpart at the end of today's episode specifically highlighting those correlations because we have an amazing doctor coming on the show in a few weeks to do an entire episode on just the overlap of MCAS and PMDD and postpartum depression. So let's get into this episode on MCAS. Goal for today would be to lay the groundwork and foundation so that you understand what it is, how to track the signs and symptoms in your own body, what some research is on what may cause it in terms of the actual biological and physiological mechanisms, what may have caused it from environmental toxins to exposure to nutritional issues, etc. So by the end of today, I want you to be reasonably familiar with how to describe what MCAS is, how to identify it, and why it actually throws off some downstream symptoms that look like mental health disorders. If you've ever felt suddenly flushed, anxious, and foggy after a meal or having a hot shower or even just after a stressful day but you're fine just a few hours later, you may actually be experiencing mass cell activation syndrome. Today we'll be unpacking why this immune issue can mask great as a mood or a hormone disorder, breaking down the biochemistry step by step and giving you some practical steps to identify it in yourself if that is something you're experiencing and highlight the path to success so that you know how to get yourself out of it. On a future episode, as I mentioned, we will be having a doctor on to dig a little bit deeper into the relationship between MCAS, PMDD, and postpartum depression. So what is MCAS? It's a condition where masked cells, which are immune lookouts that are stationed in the skin, the gut, the lungs, the blood vessels, and even the brain's borders, release too many chemical mediators like histamine, for example. There are three broad flavors often discussed clinically. One is primary or clonal and this is where masked cells carry kit mutations which are overlaps in the system mastocytosis. Secondary would be activation driven by an identifiable trigger like an allergen or an infection or even heat exposure. And then there's idiopathic. This is where it looks and behaves like mass cell activation but there's no clear driver and in general when we're looking at anything western medical related idiopathic typically just means we don't know where it comes from. We're not saying that it's not real but we can't we can't draw a cause and effect relationship that makes sense. MCAS is experienced in an episodic fashion meaning that typically flares are being experienced through multiple systems at the same time. So think flushing or hives in your skin, bloating diarrhea, constipation in your gut, heart palpitations, wheezing in the lungs, brain fog, and possibly even lightheadedness or anaphylaxis. So if your symptoms tend to cluster in bursts and touch any of the areas I just explained and they tend to come and go with seemingly no causality this might be for you. To understand mass cell activation syndrome we have to talk about histamine. What is it? What does it do? Where does it go? So you're likely familiar with histamine because of allergic reactions right? We all associate histamine with needing to take benadryl. Having experienced hives a lot throughout my autoimmune experience I am well versed in histamine reactions and benadryl but it actually has other functions inside of the body. It's stored in tiny granules inside of the mast cell and also in basophils which are a type of white blood cell. It's made and released right inside of your brain by specialized histaminurgic neurons. That means histamine's influence runs from your skin and gut all the way to your thoughts, your focus, and your mood. And your body has two main cleanup crews for histamine. The first is DAO or diamine oxidase. It lives mostly in your gut and breaks down histamine from food or anything hanging out in your GI tract. The second is HNMT, histamine N methyl transferase. This one works inside of your tissues and the brain and it uses SAM. That's your body's universal methyl donor to neutralize histamine so that it stops signaling. Once histamine is in play it can knock on four different doors inside of your body. These are called histamine receptors and each door is going to open up a different set of effects. Each one, two, three, and four are what we're going to be going through so every door has their own number. Each one is the one that most people think of. When it's overactive you're going to get itchy, flushing, nerve-firing, and it can contribute to anxiety symptoms and even insomnia. H2 is more about your stomach and your heart. It ramps up stomach acid, speeds up your heart rate, dilates your blood vessels, and that's why it can show up as either reflux or palpitations. H3 lives mainly in the brain. It acts like a presynaptic break controlling the release of histamine, dopamine, and serotonin. And when it's off balance it can change your alertness, attention, and mood. H4 plays a big role in the immune system. It guides immune cells to where they're needed but that also means that it's linked to things like inflammation and itching. So I want you to picture this. Histamine sends out a group text to every single receptor that we've just described. H1, 2, 3, and 4. And they each have a different mailbox. Every mailbox delivers a unique message to the body from skin rashes to stomach acid to brain chemistry shifts. And that's why histamine can feel so different from person to person and even from moment to moment. So now that we have the basics of histamine down, let's walk through exactly what happens when you're experiencing an MCAS flare from the moment that it's set off to the symptoms that you're feeling. It's all going to start with a trigger. For some people that's a food allergen and for others it might be an infection, a sudden change in temperature, a glass of wine, certain medications, intense exercise, a hormonal shift, or even a big spike in stress. The list is highly individual and everyone is going to have their own set of triggers and they may have more than one trigger. Once this trigger is in play, mast cells are going to spring into action and there are a few different ways that they can get activated. One is the classic allergy route where IgE antibodies recognize the trigger and they set off mast cell degranulation. The non-allergy routes where other systems like the complement system, troll-like receptors, they detect microbes or even neuropeptides like substance P and it can flip the switch. There's also a pathway called MRG-PRX2 that can cause a drug-induced reaction without involving IgE at all. When mast cells are activated, they release a flood of other chemical mediators and some of these are preformed and ready to go. Things like histamine, tryptase, chymase, and heparin. Others are made fresh in the moment like post-gladinin II, leukotrines, platelet-activating factor, and a cocktail of other inflammatory cytokines. These chemicals hit targets throughout your body. Blood vessels are going to become leaky and dilate which can lead to flushing, swelling, headaches, or even drops in your blood fresher that make you feel light-headed. We'll get into another episode on POTS but this is something that's certainly implicated in POTS and dysautonomia. Nerves fire more rapidly, especially with H1 and H3 receptor involvement, which can feel like tingling anxiety or a full-on panic attack. Smooth muscles in your airways and gut contract which can cause wheezing, cramping, or even diarrhea. Stomach acid production ramps up through your H2 receptors, causing reflux or nausea. In the brain, changes to H3 receptors plus inflammatory cytokines can bring about brain fog, slow your thinking, and completely drain your motivation. The reason MCAS feels so unpredictable is that these meat eaters are released in surges, so they're not consistent in a steady flow. There's a big surge and then it will shut down. This is why you can have a storm of symptoms and then miraculously you seem fine and you can't understand why you would feel horrific for two hours and then fine a couple hours later. Once your body's cleanup crews, which are DAO and HNMT, show up, they break them down and the flare can start to settle down. But if the trigger is still present on your mass cells, they can be overly sensitive and it's only a matter of time until that next wave hits again. This is why MCAS symptoms can seem random but they're not actually random at all. There are results of this chain reaction that starts with the trigger and it runs through a biological cascade and it ends with a unique mix of symptoms, which depending on which receptors and tissues got hit the hardest, are going to change and they may even change from flare to flare. I want to talk about something called psychoneuroimmunology. It's something that way back early on in my yoga career, I dug very deeply into and taught about in our past yoga teacher training program. This is where we understand that the immune system and our experience of our mental-emotional state are very interconnected. The mind and the immune system are extremely connected. This is why things like people talking about dying of a broken heart are actually real. You can experience so much heartbreak and so much emotionality that it can actually cause symptoms that cascade in your immune system. Even the incidents of people that are diagnosed with some sort of late-stage cancer or terminal cancer that have just been through some sort of massive heartbreak or divorce, there's a lot of correlation with heartbreak and emotional issues. Your immune system does not operate in isolation. All of our systems are connected in a variety of ways. More specifically, your immune system is a constant conversation with your brain. One of the main ways that it communicates is through something called cytokines. These are chemical messengers that rally immune cells when there is a threat. But cytokines don't just trigger inflammation in the body. They can also trigger what's called sickness behavior, so things like fatigue, social withdrawal, and a drop in motivation. These emotional and behavioral shifts aren't psychological weaknesses, but they are biologically programmed strategies that help you conserve energy so that you can recover. Histamine and cytokines can loosen the blood-brain barrier, making it easier for these inflammatory signals to influence your CNS. And once they're in, they tweak neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, altering your mood, your focus, and your emotional stability. This is one of the reasons that people who have historically struggled with chronic conditions or even things that Western medicine can't quite diagnose what's going on are often told that their pain is essentially made up, that it's psychosomatic, that it's not real. When the reality is we know that things like MCAS can actually be some of the cause of some of these symptoms that again seem idiopathic, and many doctors historically have just brushed them off as a mental condition that's not real. So there is a stress connection that we can't discount when it comes to psychoneuro immunology. Stress signals like CRH, corticotropin-releasing hormone, and substance P can directly prime mass cells to become more reactive. And once mass cells are triggered, they release these meat eaters that we've been talking about that amplify stress circuits in the brain. So this ends up being a feedback loop. Stress makes mass cells more sensitive, mass cells fire, and their meat eaters make you feel even more stressed. Sounds great, right? This is why eventually in many of these conversations that we have involving emotional mental issues and body physiology, we eventually get to a chicken or egg conversation, which one came first. And the reality is, they're both working in tandem to damage your experience of emotional and physical freedom. And that's why we're here having these conversations, because they're typically are more than one area or facet of the process that you have to disrupt so that you can actually effectively heal. That's one of my quips in general with much of Western medicine is much of the processes typically to dampen out whatever the symptom is, but we're not actually treating the whole system or the cycle that caused it. We're just likely trying to blanket one of those downstream symptoms instead of the root cause. So here on this show, we always try to dissect root causes, but also how root causes can even be existing in cycles themselves, how our emotional states can be influenced by our perception of reality and our beliefs and how that over time can start to become a physical reality that we create in our internal physiology and chemistry. So we can't discount the connection between these two things, what you think and believe to some extent you will feel. And even if perhaps in the early stages, it wasn't real, eventually it can become real if you keep walking it out over and over again. So let's talk about the vagus nerve, because this is something that is very commonly talked about now. There's vagus nerve stimulators out everywhere. I'm actually partnering with an amazing company where I have a doctor that founded the product coming on the show in a few weeks. I can't wait to introduce you to him. He's a total gem and he developed a device that actually works on stimulating the vagus nerve. Can't wait to tell you all about it, but the vagus nerve is important because it is our built-in anti-inflammatory break. So when you see ads come across your Facebook feed that are like, I was stressed out and I gained weight, now I use this vagus nerve simulator, now I'm skinny. That's how they're drawing that correlation, essentially saying if I can properly stimulate my vagus nerve, I can get myself out of that perpetual stress response, and then my body can decrease its inflammatory response. The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. And when your vagal tone is strong, it sends signals that damp inside a kind output and actually calm your immune system. That's why practices that improve vagal tone, like deep breathing or gentle movement or even singing, can have a really powerful impact on inflammation and emotional stability. True story, I have often joked, despite the fact that I am in the mental health field, my best form of therapy for myself is karaoke. Karaoke and comedy movies all the way. If anyone watching this episode wants to join me on a karaoke world tour, it's still on my to-do list. It's like one of the few items on my bucket list. Just do all the big karaoke spots all across the country. Maybe piggyback it with some book tour stuff. We'll figure it out. But if you love karaoke as much as I do, hit me up on my Instagram DMs. So here's the takeaway when we're talking about the vagus nerve. MCAS is not just about rashes, gut issues and headaches. It can actually be a biological driver of anxiety, low mood or mood dysregulation, moodiness, cognitive fog, and it really isn't all in your head by itself. But it is coming through your head via the immune system's direct influence on your brain chemistry and vagal tone can be a major factor in learning to reorganize or re-circuit these systems. Let's take a look at MCAS, PMDD and postpartum mood disorders. This is something that I run into quite a bit in my practice. There does seem to me anecdotally to be a cluster here, but I'm going to leave it to the doctors to dissect this on our future episodes. So let's take a look at PMDD and postpartum mood disorders or postpartum depression. PMDD is when people have very pronounced PMS-like symptoms that can skew all the way into temporary suicidality. I know many people that experience this when they are getting into that state of PMS. PMDD is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. So essentially you go into a full-blown existential crisis, everything feels futile and your hormone shift is so intensified that often again you struggle suicidal ideation in this temporary period until you eventually get your period and boom, you come out of it. This is a term that has become increasingly more popular over the last 10 years. I remember hearing it for the first time maybe in like 2013 and now it seems to be a very common topic. Anecdotally on TikTok, I've heard a lot of people talk about, which makes sense relevant to this episode, that certain things like Pepsidase C or even Benadryl can possibly help some of these PMDD symptoms because it may in fact be histamine related. So we will put that in a little back pocket and unpack that in another future episode. But I think there is some interesting information there and just from kind of merging the TikTok world with the science of what we're unpacking here, technically it makes sense. 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So we want to keep in mind here that we know mast cells don't just respond to allergens and infections, they also respond to hormones, which is why things like PMGD and postpartum depression are something that could potentially interact with MCAS. They actually have sex hormone receptors on their surface. Estrogen can make mast cells more sensitive and more likely to release histamines and progestone on the other hand can have a stabilizing effect in certain contexts. That hormonal interplay is one of the reasons MCAS can flare during specific phases of your menstrual cycle or after childbirth. So let's start with unpacking PMGD. In the late luteal phase, the week or so before you get your period, progesterone levels drop sharply. And if you already have mast cells that are more sensitive to histamine, that shift can tip the balance toward more histamine release and more mast cell activity. So you're putting yourself into this mast cell storm. The results, irritability, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, and other PMGD symptoms that I've already talked about like temporary, suicidology, depression, and the experience of existential crisis or futility in life. When we look at the postpartum period after delivery, there's also an abrupt hormonal change. And in fact, in many cases, this can be a full on hormonal crash and a complete reset of your immune system. For someone with MCAS tendencies, the transition can unmask mast cell activated flares. Neuroinflammation and histamine signaling can feed directly into mood changes, creating anxiety and depression phenotypes that don't respond well to standard postpartum mood protocols because the underlying driver is actually immune system related. So here's a little clinical pearl that I discovered in this research. If mood symptoms consistently track with things like hiver flushing, sudden food reactions, heat intolerance or GI swings, it's likely worth screening for mast cell activation patterns. You may not just be dealing with hormonal mood disorders, but you actually might be looking at hormonal expression of an immune system in balance. So let's talk about the possible connection between the MTHFR gene variants, methylation, and the inability to properly clear histamine. The MTHFR gene produces five MTHF. This is an active form of folate, and that active folate is essential for generating SAM. We went through this earlier in the podcast. It's a universal methyl donor that your body uses in hundreds of chemical reactions. And one of the places that SAM is critical is in the enzyme HNMT, which helps clear histamine and tissues in the brain like we just discussed. So in theory, if someone has the MTHFR variant, that significantly lowers their production of five MTHF. That also may then make less SAM available. Less SAM means HNMT can't work efficiently, which could actually slow your histamine breakdown and make the histamine signal in the body and brain louder and stronger and even longer than it should be. Now here's the important nuance. MTHFR does not cause MCAS and not everyone with MCAS has the MTHFR issue. It's not a root cause, but it could be an amplifier. And in other words, if you already have mast cell activation, reduced methylation capacity might make your histamine flares last longer and feel more intense. But the presence or absence of MTHFR variant alone doesn't necessarily determine whether you have MCAS or will get MCAS. So as we are dissecting these little pieces, I'm sure light bulbs have been going off. You might be tying some of your symptoms over time and reactivity distress into this episode. So I'm going to give you five signs that you could be experiencing MCAS so that you can take that information and run with it and try to determine what your best next steps are. And I do want to try to make this as practical as possible. And I don't want this to be something that puts you into a state of fear. This is absolutely something that affects many people. And there are so many things nowadays that you can do with it that don't involve just running to the guy in the white lab coat and taking a bunch of Western pharmaceuticals. We know that that's not what we typically support here. If that's what you need to do, I support you and support your decision. But typically on this show, we try to encourage people to explore a variety of options before just immediately subscribing to that sort of solution. So sign number one is that you have episodic flares that hit two or more organ systems at the same time. So example would be skin symptoms like hives are flushing and then simultaneously gut symptoms like bloating or diarrhea or a sudden rapid heartbeat with palpitations and the skin flare symptoms. So it has to be two areas of the body at the same time. So immediately both rapid onset two different systems that are having episode flares at the same time. Sign number two is that as you're starting to experience these and track them, your symptoms do have predictable triggers. Some people, this is actually something that's triggered by heat exposure for others. It's alcohol, exercise, certain foods or medications, high stress or even certain hormonal phases like we discussed with PMDD or postpartum. Sign number three is that you notice rapid relief when you take an H1 or H2 antihistamine like we just described. So example would be if you're having histamine response and you take something like benadryl or pepsidase C, hypothetically if it's histamine related those symptoms should come down in minutes or even hours. And sign number four is you've had an objective bump in mass cell mediators on lab testing during a flare like elevated triptase or increased histamine, post-cladinin or leukotriene. I don't know if I said that right, levels in your urine. So that's something that you would look to a medical provider to run lab tests and take a look at. And sign number five is you have a personal family history of things like either anaphylaxis, environmental or food allergies, dysautonomia like POTS we discussed it briefly a little while ago and consistently elevated baseline triptase which is sometimes linked to hereditary alpha tryptosemia. Again, I don't know if I said that one right but somebody can correct me. So if you're nodding along with any of these out of the five it might be worth bringing a possible MCAS to a clinician who understands the testing and the clinical patterns. There are many naturopaths who work with this as well. So if this is something that you're experiencing it could be the right step to go to a highly qualified naturopath and run some additional testing. So now you may suspect that you have MCAS. What are you actually going to do about it? The key here is to build a plan so that you can track what's helping and start avoiding triggers that you're now starting to realize may set these things in motion. So step one we're going to keep it simple would just be avoid or reduce your exposure to certain triggers but to do that you have to start identifying which ones set you off because we know not every single person is different. An example would be Surized biological dad I believe had this and it was implicated in a variety of mental health downstream issues and whenever he would drink alcohol immediately face flushed and emotional shift and it could be literally like a couple sips of alcohol. So that's an example of how potentially alcohol was something that triggered this in him. For me it can be heat exposure mixed with stress mixed with food and very specific foods which we'll get into in a moment but we do need to be clear about tracking not an obsessive fear based way but just cataloging when these things happen what are the things that I just ate what are the things that I would just were just exposed to and just keeping a running tally list of it so that you can start to see the trends and the patterns. So for example if you find that it does happen to be when you drink red wine this happens you might need to no longer drink red wine. So we want to start to look at the cause and effect relationships and keep a running tab on that. Step two is that we do want to support your nutrition and your gut health no matter what the trigger is for your mCAS nutrition and gut health support will always make a difference so ideally a structured low histamine approach is going to help you the most. I am putting at the show notes of the episode I made you a free pdf that shows you the distinction between low histamine and high histamine foods. I will say for those of you that got on the bandwagon of like fermented everything in kombucha you may be sad when you read this list but if you are having histamine intolerance paying attention to this food list could completely radically change your life. And remember that this is a tool that is meant to be used for a limited time with intensity rather than be something that you become obsessive and fixated about forever. We want to help bring your body back toward that heel state and then determine what the best long term actions are. So we do want to make sure that if you are going to move toward that low histamine diet you are then again taking the time to track your symptoms track your triggers is it getting better is it going completely away and then you would go through the process of slowly reintroducing in small quantities to see if you've gotten your body out of that heightened state and it's no longer reacting or if you may need to challenge yourself to avoid some of these things for a more prolonged period. Step three is always going to be to protect your sleep. I sleep well now that I'm an adult but most of my childhood I was an insomniac and when I look back at mass cell activation syndrome and just some of the comorbidities here as I've done the work and research I do think that this was partly involved in my experience of what was labeled as panic disorder. I had panic attacks from age nine to nineteen virtually off and on all day long but when I look back at it I was likely eating all of the wrong foods leading a very stressful life in terms of just how I was constantly having to mediate arguments and fighting and threats between my parents and putting myself in that role of peacekeeper and then struggling with insomnia where I barely slept for years I would stay up all night long. So protecting your sleep is something that is critically important if you're experiencing MCAS. You have to try to aim for a regular schedule and if you can try to keep your room cool and dark not frigid cold okay my husband loves to keep it so cold that I'm like you know bundled up in multiple blankets in the middle of the summer because remember you no no matter what with MCAS you are potentially sensitive to temperature in general so you want to keep it cool but not freezing cold and you do want it to be dark. We also want to make sure that you are moving your body more gently especially when you're in the midst of MCAS flares. I will say that I historically have had these MCAS flares for years which led me to feel almost like I couldn't do booty anymore I couldn't anytime I went to go work out even things that I loved I just had no energy and then I'd get rashes afterwards I felt flushed. Now that I've been micro dosing peptides which I talked about a couple episodes ago all of those things are gone so whatever my MCAS related symptoms would have been prior to taking peptides those have all completely disappeared. I'm back at the gym I'm like way full of energy I'm sleeping great even things like coffee aren't as appealing to me anymore all my cravings are gone so there is something here regarding this this peptide world as it relates to some of these MCAS symptoms for sure but we do want to make sure that when you're in the midst of a flare and you haven't yet found something that's working for you you don't want to be overdoing it at the gym overdoing with hip workouts doing endless hours of cardio you've got to keep it more gentle and ideally it get yourself some sun exposure while you're doing it so doing those things out in nature during the summer would be great. I also would encourage you to build some sort of prayer or intentional time during the day to just connect and tap back in not worry about the things that you should be doing or haven't yet been done but just take some time for yourself this is a time that I personally spend in the sauna 15 minutes hopefully every day but my minimum is five days week and when I'm in the sauna I try to just keep myself focused that's my prayer meditation time. Step four would be making adjustments to your environment so people with MCAS historically are very sensitive to fragrance this is something that I have struggled with my whole life and virtually every relationship I've ever been in they usually think that I'm just overly sensitive or controlling in this regard but some deodorants and colognes if I smell them even a little bit I immediately get a migraine feel like throwing up and I'm repulsed by the person so it doesn't matter how much I love them as soon as I smell that smell there's a deep repulsion that I just want them away from me. True story and this is funny when I was at a hotel in Austin for D. of Asprey's biohacking conference they were selling these little perfume rollers okay so I was looking at the perfume roller and in that setting it smells really good and I was like hmm this is good I like that so I bought it and I brought it home with me and every time I put it on me all of a sudden when it mixed with me and my pheromones and my body chemistry I would immediately feel so sick and be like oh I have to get this off of me so example even with myself a scent that I love separate of me once it was physically interacting with my body put me into a full-blown m-cast sort of cascade flare so we do have to keep these things into consideration so these would be things like I mean I cannot imagine somebody at this point still using glade air fresheners I feel like we've blown it wide open on that one but if you're in an environment where someone's still using chemically driven fragrance inside of the house that's like constantly spewing out that fragrance that's going to do it scented candles can do it any sort of perfume and honestly even certain essential oils can all do this but also you want to consider things like what cleaning supplies are around people that are sensitive that are kind of in these cascading m-cast flares will become increasingly more sensitive to any sort of chemical like smell be it a cleaning solution or a fragrance so you may need to consider really pulling all those things back and trying to go full hippie status for a while it could greatly benefit you another thing that could be helpful would be using a HEPA filter indoors if air quality and dust mites are things that also could set this off but the bottom line either way is that mass cells create background noise and if you create a smart lifestyle tweak and you're more conscientious of the environmental choices and things that you're surrounding yourself with you may not actually need a more serious medical intervention you could potentially reduce your exposure to some of these triggers again not in a fear-based obsessive way but in a reasonable way after you have done the work to methodically track how exposure creates these sort of m-cast related flares so I did mention how peptides seemingly have impacted my flares that I'd had for a long time so I do want to just circle back here for a moment and talk about two in particular that seem to have the most potential with something like m-cast so just reminding you that these treatments are not FDA approved specifically for m-casts although there is growing clinical curiosity on these topics and there is some initial evidence that's coming out that these peptides may actually address mechanisms that are involved in mass cell activation and create positive outcomes so this is considered off-label use so it should always be done with a trusted source if you are curious about how to identify these trusted sources and understand what labels of an appropriate compounding pharmacy should have etc go a couple episodes back to the episode on the peptide protocol so the two that get the most attention here regarding m-cast research are thymus and alpha one this is an immune modulating peptide originally studied in the context of infections and immune deficiency and it does seem to have the ability to rebalance your immune responses and in theory could reduce this overactive mass cell behavior another one is bpc 157 which I did talk about at length on the peptide episode and this is known for its role in tissue repair and gut barrier integrity so because the gut seems to be a major site of mass cell and histamine regulation improving the function of the barrier and reducing gut driven inflammation seems to be able to directly support mass cell stability so let's be clear these are totally off-label I made that super clear but the research is absolutely promising but you need to go to a trusted reputable resource for dosing duration and how you're going to address your specific symptoms I work with lemd I absolutely love the company the show notes will have all of my links to support you there you are paired with a doctor you go through the whole virtual background where they understand what you're dealing with and there are a variety of resources through lemd and a variety of different doctors that do weekly chats on different topics I'm going to be having somebody on my show that is more specifically addressing the role that peptides may play in addiction medicine and emotional and binge eating which I'm so excited about so do your research roll up your sleeves get into it don't be fear based with how you're addressing it and just know that it does really seem that this emerging market of peptides may actually be really the next iteration of medicine and pharmacology which I'm really excited about because the research does appear to be promising but picking the right trusted resource is everything don't go black market and cheap on this this is not how you want to be doing things so the exciting part about all of these therapies that I mentioned is that they do all appear to target the root level processes so instead of how I mentioned with some western medical pharmaceuticals they're kind of dampening out the downstream symptoms but not addressing the root the peptides all seem to do the exact opposite they address the root itself which eventually end up getting rid of the downstream symptoms so these therapies address immune modulation tissue repair inflammation resolution and they aren't just masking the symptoms they're actually shifting the root cause itself this is why I will shout from the rooftops how micro dosing terseptide has completely reversed my own immune symptoms it's absolutely nuts so now that we have addressed the root foundation of what mCAS is how to identify it in yourself what some of the mechanisms are that cause this some of the overlap between things like mTHFR and histamine intolerance let's ask ourselves the question is mCAS forever I think some people that have been struggling with autoimmune or chronic conditions you can get yourself to this place where it feels like this thing might chase you forever like you're never gonna quite figure out where it started right kind of like a whack-a-mole like I address these triggers then all of a sudden I have a stressful week and the symptoms creep back and now they seem to be reacting to different triggers there does seem to be this experience with many things that are on autoimmune or chronic and mCAS is no different but I will say that there are many people who have gotten this into substantial remission simply by identifying their triggers and possibly really overhauling their diet and their environmental exposures the episode that I have coming up next week is talking about how not to go into fear and obsession over your health protocols and how that can be just as stress inducing so my reminder to you is there's a time and a place to be rigid and then to find some flexibility and ease with how you're doing things but if you're in an acute flare that might be the time to be rigid and to take a cold hard look at what you're being exposed to and eradicate some of those things from your daily life and will you have to be on a low histamine diet forever no not forever but you may need to be really strict about it for a while because using a low histamine diet as a tool could drastically change how frequent your flares are or even how long a duration those flares are and of course yes you can still exercise this is something that people are like oh my god but I love exercise I would just encourage you if you are having flares consistently it might be time to just maybe put away the hit and high cardio workouts for maybe eight weeks challenge yourself to go eight weeks shift to something that is more mobility focused you can still do weight but things like doing cable workouts things where you're in between sets you're breathing you're not just going for highest output heaviest weight pull pull it back there are some amazing programs out there that are focused more on functional strength and mobility that even use weight these can be great options for you so that you gym junkies can still be doing something but you're not pushing yourself into a place where mcast flares are going to be happening all the time in your life I did mention that I'm going to keep expanding on how mcast might actually be a missing link with certain emotional symptoms that tend to coincide with allergic reactions and gut flares and I do have a specific doctor that I've invited on the show who is a specialist in this area and she'll be specifically breaking down how mcast can kick off symptoms like pmdd and postpartum depression what some of the latest researches on how these symptoms could be mitigated or how we even address the root causes and also what steps you can take in how you're setting up your daily routines in your daily life to both be aware of how these flares can impact your life and your mental state and how to preemptively deal with some of those things before they create destruction so if you have been suspecting as you've been listening to this episode that mcast might be something that you're experiencing do head to busygold.com on the show notes I did put my free low and high histamines food list just click that opt in I will send it to your email I think it could be something that could absolutely help you I know that was something that I brought into my world maybe three to four months ago I shifted to more of a SIBO based diet protocol and was very intentional about limiting my high histamine foods and it did make a difference but I will say it's hard to tell how much of a difference it made in the long run because I also found micro dosing tersepatide shortly after that but many people have reported having a drastic shift in their mcast flares based on adopting a low histamine diet monitoring their sleep and ditching some of the high intensity workouts for a while so I hope this episode was helpful my intention was for this to become a building block for us to build on with the future guests that we have on the show I hope you enjoyed this episode please feel free to share this far and wide if you haven't yet done so I would love for you to go on either Apple or Spotify give us a five star rating drop us a note in the reviews we'd really appreciate it we are a new show but I am excited to announce that we're only I believe seven or eight weeks into the show at this point and we're consistently in the top five in mental health and health and fitness and that's all because of your dedication sharing the issue far and wide and just engaging with the show so thank you for that I appreciate you so much share this with somebody who needs it and if you wanted to learn more about peptides go back to the peptides episode and click those show notes I'm happy to help you with anything that you need regarding the peptides and understanding when to use them which ones to use etc I am now officially a peptide nerd so I hope you enjoyed this episode I will see you next week your brain isn't broken it's running an old code brake method is a system that maps your neurological patterns decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast no talk therapy spiral no getting stuck in your feelings just logic-based rewiring in 20 weeks or less head to break method.com and see what your brain is really up to. Your brain is wired for deception but here's the truth patterns can be broken the code can be rewritten once you hear the truth you can't go back are you ready to listen