When Your Immune System Won't Calm Down: Understanding MCAS, Histamine, and POTS with Krista

What if your body suddenly seems to react to everything?

Foods you've eaten for years. Supplements that used to help. Strong smells, changes in weather, stress, exercise, even your own hormones.

In this episode, Elizabeth sits down with Hey Hey MAE lead practitioner Krista to unpack Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), histamine intolerance, and their common connection to POTS. Together, they explore why these conditions are becoming increasingly common, what symptoms can look like, and why they often point to a deeper story of immune dysregulation.

You'll learn:

• What mast cells are and the important role they play in the immune system
• Common MCAS and histamine symptoms, including hives, flushing, digestive issues, anxiety, dizziness, shortness of breath, and food reactions
• The difference between histamine intolerance and MCAS
• Why MCAS and POTS frequently occur together
• Common root causes and triggers, including Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr virus, mold exposure, PANS/PANDAS, recurrent infections, mold and toxin exposure, and hormone changes during perimenopause
• The role genetics may play, including MTHFR, HNMT and DAO pathways involved in histamine breakdown
• How we approach these conditions through the lens of functional immunology and root-cause healing

Most importantly, this conversation reframes MCAS as more than just a histamine problem. Often, it's a signal that the immune system has been stuck in a state of chronic activation and is asking for deeper investigation.

If you've ever felt like your body is overreacting, becoming increasingly sensitive, or simply won't calm down, this episode offers a hopeful framework for understanding what's happening and where to begin.

The goal isn't simply to lower histamine. It's to understand why the alarm keeps going off in the first place so we can resolve the condition, restoring long term health.

Please note that transcripts may contain minor errors or inaccuracies. We hope you enjoy reading them and find them helpful.

Hey, you're going to be okay. I'm Elizabeth Mae and my functional health practice. Hey, hey. May helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one can figure out your health challenges. My team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast where we'll hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause, immune centered approach.

Today, we're tackling a topic that's becoming increasingly common in our practice. It's something we seen for several years, but we're seeing a big rise of it across our chronic illness world in America. MCAS or mast cell activation syndrome and his twin issues. If you've ever felt like your body suddenly started reacting to foods, but maybe not always the same ones.

Maybe supplement reactions, smell sensitivities, different medication responses, or you know that you've had environmental exposures to things like mold, or you struggle with Lyme, or even just big immune responses to stress itself. This episode is totally for you. We are going to tackle MCAS understanding it, understanding mast cells, understanding more of what histamine is doing. And it's good for in Pots.

So while we're talking about MCAS specifically, I kind of want to walk through it in terms of immune dysregulation. And one of our lead practitioners, Krista and I are going to chit chat through this because she sees so many of our mold clients, which is a big place where histamine, reactivity, sensitivity and casts will show up. And we really want to talk through how this is a bigger conversation than how do I just lower the histamine, or how do I stop the histamine response?

We want to know why is the immune system behaving this way in the first place? So let's start at the top. Krista. What are mast cells? Let's just kind of break down the basics of what's going on in the body. Yeah. So mast cells are a type of white blood cell. And while most white blood cells like to kind of hang out and circulate within the blood and travel to sites where there's infection mast cells, they instead reside in the tissues, especially the areas of the tissues, the interface with the outside world.

So that could be like skin, sinuses, airways, lungs, digestive tract, bladder. They can hang out around the nerves, the blood vessels, connective tissue and ligaments. And they're kind of the soldiers that are responding to, well, they're kind of patrolling there like the Sentinels or alarm systems that are watching the environment, and then they're deciding how to coordinate an immune response, which usually involves, first degree, in which the mast cells will break open and start to spill their contents, which have different mast cell, chemicals such as histamine, which is the one that we hear about the most.

But there's other cytokines, Landon's, of course, striptease and all sorts of other things that can be released as well. And they also create kind of vasodilation to allow other immune cells to come in. So they're really, really intelligent and really helpful when they're behaving and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is really orchestrating and delegating this immune response.

Yeah. So it's really like histamine isn't necessarily the bad guy. He's a part of the the whole system that's showing up. And I always like to explain mast cells. And of course I teach children a lot. We all do. But Marcel's are kind of like little confetti cannons. And until they're like shot off, they're kind of okay. They're just there to be ready for a party.

But when the party starts, they really start to send out a lot of their products. Which one of those being histamine, and they really are in those protective places, like you said, places between us and the outside world. So they're definitely a part of immune defense. It's when they get aggressive that it's an issue. And I kind of want to break down to vasodilation because that's a big word.

That's like a what. That really just means that your blood vessels are being dilated. So there's more space. It's like a highway. We're making the highway a little bigger so more immune cells can get into the place that the immune cells need to be going. And mast cells, if we go back to our kind of usual teaching on T, h one and two, which there are plenty of episodes on that they're part of that T two arm of the immune system, and they can do lots of they can release, like you said, cytokines.

And so cytokines can also be they are inflammatory promoters. Interleukin 139. Some of those guys I l is another abbreviation for that people may be familiar with. But these trigger more mast cells. It's all communication amongst immune system. And so once you get it, once you get a mast cell started, sometimes mast cells aren't happy to calm down.

So that brings us kind of like to MCAS. So what is MCAS. So stands for mass cell activation syndrome. So this is when we're looking at these cells. And they're kind of just whatever they want. And so that can be temperature changes is a big one. It can be infections. It can be which we kind of want them to respond to infections, but we don't want them to be over responding.

They can respond to, you know, pollen, mold, mycotoxins, stress is a huge one as well. They can respond to foods that they shouldn't be responding to, and they can respond to so many different things that it becomes really difficult to really understand what's happening, because there's so many other systems that get impacted. We talked about the violation just a little bit.

So we'll go back into that, that that you end up with so many different symptoms so they can impact the skin as well. So you can get highs and itching and flushing and redness. You can also the impact the digestive system. And then you'll get a lot of nausea and vomiting. And if there's if there's blood sugar swings you could have histamine being produced within the within the stomach too.

And that can also when mast cells are dumping histamine and also on its own. And then you can end up with more symptoms there as well. Marcel de granulation could look like things like reflux. We might even see kind of food restrictions or picking up in kids around what's going on with the immune system throughout those tissues, certainly respiratory system, which people are probably aware of, that just sort of, you know, shortness of breath, chest tightness, but kind of for no reason where we're going.

Gosh, why all of a sudden is this happening? I'm not exercising. I don't feel like I'm reactive to the environment, but maybe I just had a little bit of a stressful event, or I haven't eaten in a little bit and all of a sudden I'm like, having shortness of breath and I'm confident phlegm, things like that. We can also see it, of course, in the cardiovascular system too.

So we get a lot of people that come to us with, complaints of heart or tachycardia or that racing heart, dizziness, blood pressure changes. We can see it there are in the brain too. So they can also affect, you know, things like brain fog. You'll also get headaches, insomnia, you know, pain responses to which when we get into if we talk about pots and even a little bit of cervical instability and connective tissue issues, we can get a lot of the body trying to kind of brace and compensate for a lot of the inflammatory processes that are going on throughout the cervical spine, too.

So it can just be all over the place. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the cervical spine and even some hypermobility stuff can cross over. And that is something when I think through clarity calls, which is our first step in working with people, is people who are struggling with MCAS will say like, I feel like my body is reacting to everything, whether that smells or stress or random foods, that's totally there.

We also see people who feel like they have eight, ten, 12 foods. These are the only things I can eat without a major response. And that's one thing. Then we do see, like the mood swings and like the psych presentation. A lot of times in kids, like, we're good, everything's fine. And then we've absolutely lost our marbles and are doing all sorts of bizarre things, or focused on everything from being super anxious to suicidal, just, like kind of all over the place.

And that's really a lot of the language that starts mast cell involvement. But since we work with a lot of lime and mold, the hypermobility piece is huge. The upper cervical or they'll say a lot of times like, as long as I see a chiropractor who does Atlas adjustments, which is super upper cervical, I'm okay, or that really helps me.

Those are all clues for me. And that's really because that histamine is interacting with our joint spaces and just making us more hyper mobile. But I do want to talk more about that piece because I think that's huge. And so often earlier Dan le syndrome, I want to say it's popular because we see clients who absolutely have genetic markers and more than just symptom load, but we also see people who self-diagnose, which is I don't know, I feel like it's fine.

You can self-diagnose and cast a lot of times in pots before you can get any kind of useful something, but like, what is it? What's going on there? Why are we often seeing people who have histamine issues feeling like, oh, I'm super hyper mobile, or I feel like I've got related illness? It's not it's not just that, right?

Like it's not just the earlier day and this possibility. Yeah. Well in mast cells release of course differing chemicals. So this again a cytokines again histamine. And any of these mediators can contribute to the basal dilation. And that sort of you know we have blood pulling down below. And so then we have dizziness. And that's kind of more into like the pots and some of those disorder.

But when there's inflammation around the cervical spine, you can end up feeling like you have kind of like a bobble head. So if you don't yeah, you don't have these structures really being supported the way that they should. And it can trigger some other processes and other disorder alongside of it. And so you can have you know, and for some people that's like the first sign for like going into a mast cell flare, all of a sudden their neck starts hurting because things are becoming wonky throughout here.

Other systems start to stabilize or to start to stabilize the neck, and then they're going, okay, then the then the bloating happens and then the pots like symptoms where we have some of the blood pulling down below, we don't have proper constriction because of that dilation to get it back up to the heart, back up to the brain.

So then the heart's racing. And so that can sometimes be the first clue for some people. Oh there's so much pain. And then we can think about things like, well, what infections are hanging out in those areas to that could be triggering these messages like EBV that hangs out near the occiput, or Bartonella, things like that line.

So certainly lots to explore when it continues to keep happening in certain parts of the body, too. Yeah. You know, it's really interesting is I think to back to my own like a cute tick bite just to kind of give like a little window into, like what does this look like? Can it just show up or can it build over time?

Yes, both. But a lot of times it does kind of become a lot more acute. And several years ago I was bitten by a tick and I contracted Alpha Gal syndrome at the same time, which is like a very serious food allergy to the Alpha Gal sugar molecule, which is found in mammal meat. So basically, you become acutely allergic, responsive to any mammal, meat or mammal product.

So that would mean dairy, that would mean meat, cheese, glycerin dry from me. So lots of different places. And I would take my pork based thyroid medicine in the morning, which is a t tiniest little pill. And I would very quickly have like the whole right side of my body would be burning. My gallbladder would be very, very painful.

I would have lots of nausea and just icky feels. My chest would get tight. It would be hard to breathe. I would feel faint. Sometimes I would feel like I was going to pass out, or if I leaned backwards, then I didn't have enough blood flow and I would get very woozy. It was very bizarre, but all that was going on, that's a little bit.

I mean, I think it was kind of odd, but not so much anymore. All that's going on is my immune system was reacting, mast cells were getting involved, and then I was having this. You can see it was like multiple body systems at one time. But the part that was interesting for me physically because we'd absolutely seen clients with this over the years, but like, I could feel the response start to happen, like my posture would kind of slouch.

I would kind of move into like a shrimp, shape and my neck would start to hurt and it would feel like my head was sliding down my spine. There would become a lot of instability there and just a lot of, inflammation, basically. And it was just the most bizarre thing. But as I continued to heal and those episodes got further and further apart, that was always my sign.

Like I would feel very loosey goosey, been my knees and my hips. I would just kind of feel like I kind of have to be really conscious about holding myself together. And then, like you said, you end up. Sometimes we see clients where they have a lot of body paint on one side or the other, one hip and one shoulder.

There's compensation. And so it's not necessarily you have muscle pain as your main symptom and major soreness, but it's because of the allergy immune mast cell activation situation that made you a little hyper mobile or made you a little Lucy Goosey in your spine. And then you've got muscles compensating so you can start to see how MCAS affects all these systems.

And then also it's a whole heck, a lot of chain reaction. But I think what I'm really hearing you say, and that we see is that when it comes down to it, mast cells, our immune cells, and that is like when they decide to start exploding basically, and they're sending out those mediators instead of mast cells responding appropriately.

They're just overreacting. And one of good analogy is like it's a smoke detector. Mast cells, like immune cells, are there to drive around and look for threats or intruders. But when they start going off all the time, like if your smoke detector goes off every time you make toast, there's not a fire, but it thinks there is. So it's still doing its job.

But it's the detector part isn't broken, it's just overly reactive and are really sensitive. And that's when we move into that like more Marcus mast cell activation syndrome. So can you kind of help us to differentiate between like histamine intolerance and then like an m caste presentation. Because all these words, as they grow in popularity after Covid, immune stuff are being used interchangeably.

Like are they the same thing? Does it matter what we call it? Yeah. So histamine is both a chemical and it's also a neurotransmitter. So it can be produced in the brain. And then it's also produced by the mast cells and then the basal fills. So it's also produced by our immune system. And it can come in endogenously through foods.

There's certain genetic factors that can certainly reduce the ability to break down histamine. We all hear about the genetic mutations, and there's a couple of others that we can look at to as well to think about histamine breakdown and Dio enzymes and things like that. But so we have it coming in from food. And then we also have to think about the body's ability, for whatever reason, it is to be able to break it down and eliminate the excess histamine.

And then there are people that really just, are very intolerant to there being excess levels of or just histamine in the body, as I wouldn't even say it has to be necessarily in excess, but just kind of circulating through the body because of, other factors. We know that pathogens also produce histamine. So parasites and fungal overgrowth will produce histamine too.

And so we kind of have to look again, we brought this up, you know, in other podcast episodes. But that bucket scenario and that histamine is coming from multiple places. So you look at we're looking at, you know, the immune system and mast cells and responding to things appropriately or not. And then we think of just this, kind of intolerance to histamine sometimes.

There's a lot of times there's both. I mean, there almost always is if there's Mast cell issues, there's going to be histamine issues. And I kind of just I feel like they really do, exist alongside each other, kind of depending on what's going on. Like in my mold, my, my mold. People, like, I almost see them both all the time.

If we're just dealing with like, an overgrowth of bacteria or parasites and something's moving through the system, or maybe there's genetic pieces to it, sometimes it can be an issue, and then it can kind of clean up right away and not be an issue anymore. So these might be those people that go on vacation and they get some weird parasite.

And then every time they drink red wine, they're flushing in their hearts racing. We take care of the parasite. All of a sudden they don't have, you know, singing issues and they can drink red wine again. That's just that's like an easy example. And then there are some people where it is something where they're having to kind of watch and be careful about the histamine intake, getting rid of pathogens that are contributing to that bucket overflowing.

And then also, addressing the mast cell piece, which means addressing the infections, the immune system and the nervous system to all together and the environment. So lots and lots of work to do and be done around that quick break. If you've been curious about homeopathy, this is your sign to try it at hey hey, homeopathic. We've created liquid remedies for everything from sleep and skin to digestion and beyond.

Safe, gentle and design for real life. And if you're a practitioner, are preferred professionals. Line opens the door to powerful tools like no soda, miasma, detoxes, and more. Anyone can shop, but professionals can apply for exclusive access. Visit hey Hey homeopathic.com and start your path to natural healing today. Lots of work to do. And I also think it's free because I genetically don't clear histamine very well.

And then also in seasons like you can have Lyme you can be living in mold. And that puts a lot of strain on the kidneys. And so they're responsible for some production. Dao breaks down histamine. So in those seasons when I've lived in mold or when I had a cute Lyme, my Da production was not sufficient to keep up with things.

And then also, if you remove yourself from mold, that takes one thing off the table. So there's lots of different ways and angles to get to a healthier place, which I think is cool. And then also there's lots of ways and angles to either promote more histamine or not get added enough. And so that part's interesting, but I hear you saying kind of histamine intolerance is more about the body's inability to clear it efficiently or quickly enough, whatever the reason.

And then mast cell activation syndrome is about, yes, there's not good clearance of histamine, but those max cells are really doing too much. They're over sensitive. And it's maybe more of a profound issue. And his tone is going to be it's going to be present with him cast. But really the MCAS piece adds the layer of like getting those cells, doing all the crazy, mediator release to really calm down.

So we know my cells are an overactive immune system on that inflammatory side. So we want to think about why does that one become reactive. And this is where our collective conversation with our clients always news because it's not just like okay, you haven't cast. That's great. I always say, I got my diagnosis during my Lyme season. And you know what?

It got me? Nothing. I already knew that I was having big histamine issues. And so we want to ask like, why? Why would someone have an immune system that's really reactive and developed MCAS? Well, you know, I'm always going to say mold exposure, chronic chronic mold exposure oftentimes what of us have been in it or entire lives and don't know if we're in it now?

Why weren't we in it when we were children and growing up and all of that? So most people have been in it for a long time, and their immune systems have been doing something really weird for a long time. And then there's that one little domino piece that falls over or just, you know, and everything starts to shift, which Covid is a big one.

Lyme and co-infections can, you know, they evade the immune system and they keep the immune system very confused for a very long time. And so we can also see MPAs, and I almost always see it in some degree of it. And again, I you know, I really think empaths and the ability piece and pops go hand in hand.

I almost always all three pieces for most of my line people, there can be a significant stressor to like a divorce or a death in the family. And all of a sudden that is what ticks the immune system over. And then all of a sudden we have what we would, you know, guess to be and pass so we can go into testing another time.

And testing is not always very reliable. Looking at symptom presentation, where there's multiple systems in the body that are affected, it gives us really good clues about whether or not this is a mast cell issue, especially in children, but adults too. Yeah. So there's lots of different triggers. And really I do like I feel like you always do a good job talking about like early exposure.

We see a lot of kids, but we also see adults who are like, oh, I have MCAS. Well, I had seasonal allergies. Well, I would always get like a little extra sick or I would really have a hard time recovering. Or for me, I did grow up in a house the first few years of my life where there was significant mold, like a lovely old farmhouse, and it definitely had plenty of that.

And my body is more sensitive over reactive 35 years later. And so these mast cells, they your whole immune system is it functions. It's there to patrol and keep you safe. But it does have behavior patterns. And that's why the nervous system is involved too, because it directs a lot of that responding. And some cues for me when I'm doing calls are somebody who's like, I'm good till it's seasonal allergy time that I absolutely like plummet and can't function.

Okay, well that's cool. You may be able to get through your seasonal allergies, but if you stack something else like a mold exposure or, a tough round of Covid or Epstein-Barr stent or even the lineman co-infections, your body is going to probably be very quickly reactive, and we may be all the way to MCAS much more quickly.

And it's it's really just more about that immune system being over reactive, because it's kind of been conditioned through years of either early exposure or issues, but it's definitely not a random diagnosis, I would say. And I don't feel like people need a full MCAS diagnosis to be dealing with this. We see that all the time, that that immune system is there to respond to threats.

And like you said, stress is just as much, a threat to my body's well-being as a tick bite is like, that sounds a little nuts, but it's really inflammatory. If you think about how you function and behave when you are stressed, like none of that's necessarily bad. It's just your you're under a fight or flight situation all the time, whatever the stressor is.

And that can promote those immune cells, which is interesting and maybe confusing or a new concept for listeners. Yeah. Well, talk to me a little bit about like the toxin exposure route of MCAS, like mold is one. Do we see other toxicities contributing first? And just just to add something to what you had said about the nervous system piece, because people know that tick bites also affect the nervous system and can keep us in sympathetic overdrive.

So if we have a nervous system that we feel is not doing us any favors, we got to look for infections too, because of how they just regulate the nervous system. So pathogens are always sending messages up to the brain, and a lot of people don't even feel themselves until they take care of it. And that could be decades, if not, just being depressed and being overly anxious and having social issues and all this stuff that just starts to make Marcel's true granulata.

I would say that like EMF exposure is another big one for Marcel to granulation again. And so hiring. Yeah, somebody to come into the home and kind of assess the EMF and the dirty electricity and putting in some affordable little pieces to kind of help yourself there can be really helpful for people. And then also fungal burden, you know, candida overgrowth can release, does release tons and tons of histamine.

So that can be the big piece to of course, you know, toxins, anything that's coming into the body, backing up the liver, keeping the liver from being able to clear the histamine for me to clear hormone. So we know that like fluctuations during the cycle can also cause mast cell to granulation. So when hormones are just changing throughout the cycle, especially with people that are extremely, extremely sensitive to any kind of hormonal change, especially in Peri menopause.

So, so we need that liver working. Well, we need toxins being able to clear we know that we live in a toxic environment, and they're always kind of our systems, always dealing with them. So what are we. What are we doing to to help toxins to be able to move through our system. Blood sugar dysregulation is another huge thing.

And that's kind of, the basic foundation I feel like, that we need to be looking at with every single person in our clients need to be taken seriously too, because you can have so much healing that can take place. If you stabilize your blood sugar, then you don't have all those blood sugar swings, because that will cause mast cells to graduate and release the histamine, other inflammatory, chemicals and mediators.

So that would be a big thing. You know, any kind of got dysfunction to. So again, like parasites and other, you know, bacteria, pathogenic bacteria within the gut to that's releasing inflammatory cytokines and just kind of keeping the immune system always engaged. Yeah I think that's really important. Kind of just talking through the blood sugar piece too.

Because really Marcel's kind of respond when there's a threat and blood sugar is still threat to like how you feel and how you function right now. So if my blood sugar drops, my body is like, oh, we gotta get this blood sugar up so this girl can stay upright and keep functioning and be able to do her stuff.

But that is still like a threat to my day to day well-being. Even the GI stuff. When people have like a parasitic infection or just bacterial overgrowth, sometimes we'll see mast cell response after their stool. And so what happened there? Like you went to the bathroom and now you're having kind of a mast cell episode where your body literally was clearing or moving that pathogen load.

And your immune system nervous system, which is there detecting for threat, says there is parasites in the poop. And the poop just move like we're under. We need the inflammatory response. So there's a lot of maybe, maybe we think of as bizarre things that can trigger mast cell responses or even just histamine response. But really, it all goes back to the body is under some sort of a threat, whether it's infection related or toxin exposure.

Mold exposure, maybe hormone changes. The only one that's not quite a threat. We see that sometimes with our clients who have dealt with infections in the past, and they'll surface and say, I feel like I'm a little pot or a little bit in cast stuff going on, not like it used to be. But are my infections back?

Not typically. It's usually your proclivity towards an increased kind of overactivity. That hormone flux comes in, and we kind of have a little bit of a new season. You're just very familiar with what Pots and cast feels like because you've already experienced it at its worse. And I think it's important to you were talking about that nervous system piece.

So much of the internet chatter is about we just rewire the nervous system and your pots will go away. Just rewire the nervous system and your MCAS will go away. What are your thoughts on that part? Well, danger is any change for an empath person. So it's kind of like the temperature just changed outside. It's now hot. And I mean anything could be even like wind blowing on people's faces.

And then it kind of activates the nerve and people start to flare as well. So any kind of change to the body can cause a flare. And so that's something. And so doing work around the nervous system and getting your body to be in a place where it feels safe is really important. We talked about the chronic infections piece to that too, of how chronic infections affect the nervous system.

And I can say that because we see it so often where we address EPB or we address Bartonella and people are like like their issues just go away. They're what happened in like, you know, a few months is is more than they've been able to make shift in 10 to 20 years of therapy. So we're going to say that.

But I really there's a lot of programs that are out there. What I don't and I've had my, my people say, this has been helpful. It's been really helpful. What I don't like is that we're ending up on a computer, having to look and work through the program, and you learn certain things, but I would love for people to spend a little bit more time finding ways to just disconnect and be in their body and get the tools you need from those programs and put them into place, and then get off and unplug.

Because the blue light exposure, the EMS exposure, all of that is also going to be we're not used to it. Our bodies aren't used to what our cells are not used to it. For those of us with lots of adverse childhood events, we can't have all this input all of the time. And so I just would wish for people to get all the skills they can around the nervous system and then stop looking, stop searching, implement the skills and and figure out what's going on with infections and and the immune system to.

Yeah, we kind of lovingly joke sometimes that with clients like, how do we get this one to stop the search because they're in care, we see what's going on. We've we've walked through data and said, here's where it is. This is what's happening. And now we're going to get your body to calm down. But if you keep searching all the time for the new answer, the new problem, the whatever, without implementing the change for a period of time, which we always asked for, like, can we just have?

Sometimes we try to ask for four months. Sometimes we'll narrow it down because the body that's under threat, you feel like I can't give you four months, lady? We'll say, okay, let's just do two months and let's work through the process and really try to calm down. But what you're saying is so true, because even when I had AlphaGo, I mean, I know a lot of this stuff.

And so it was a little easier for me to be like, okay, what I need to do is now that I've done dressing the infections and I'm doing the kneeling, and my physical body is starting to deal with the mammal meats better. I'm doing okay with that. I have to do the work of telling myself every time I go to eat them that like I'm safe, I'm safe, my body's stronger, it can handle this.

And it's like simple stuff like that rewires your nervous system. And a lot of times I always joke with our team, kind of like, you have to show up with the confidence for the client until they can take it as their own, and we're encouraging them to take it as their own all the way through. Because you can heal, your nervous system can relax, but your belief system is so important, and that's one place where MCAS kind of makes me bummed, because a lot of communication online is like, here's how to manage your MCAS.

This is where you'll be the rest of your life. And we're just like, no, absolutely not. There are reasons that it's there. So we work on those reasons. We remove those danger pieces. We teach you how to really self soothe, whether that's around for me like it's okay to eat this beef, it's no longer reactive or my house is clean for mold.

Let's look at the data. We know that it's clean, and developing a belief system like that's really all nervous system work is, is the belief systems that drive our brain and our nerves communication. That part I think, is what is also magical for your clients, because you do a really good job of walking in through a lot of those emotional pieces and being really diligent and persistent at pushing them to get to that place, because it's so important.

And I think even just to piggyback on one other thing, the EMF piece, sometimes people feel like what? That is not an issue. Oh my goodness, I have been so surprised, even in the last few years, how much of an issue it is, because it really the dirty electricity piece can drive mast cell response entirely. We have a client who has dirty electricity from a factory that's like dumping onto their property at home, and their little girls have big mast cell issues, and that's literally all that's going on.

And so thinking about people living in cities with more exposure, I don't want anybody to think of Emfs as like a danger, but really they are like a little bit of a danger trigger to your body. And they can they can start flares too. So I love what you said, that dangers any change for a dim cast person.

What's changing? So I always have people kind of keep a calendar for a little bit to, like, get to know their body because you'll start to notice, patterns in your flares. Like, I flare during the week, but not the weekend. I flare. I can eat this during the week, but I can't eat it. Or I can't eat the stir in the week, but I can eat it on the weekend.

And so there's that nervous system piece to that's spilling over your bucket, and I'll put em cast into a bucket. It's got his own bucket and his team has its bucket. So you start to really learn about your body. When are you having flares throughout your cycle. You know, and so things like that and just really what your triggers are.

So I mean, that's really important once you start to develop that pattern and that awareness, then we get to come out and like kind of get out all of the confusion and the mess and really help you get to another place of healing. But that awareness of what's happening is really important to you because people come in and with.

That's what made me think about it was the food piece. They're like, oh, I can eat, I can't eat this or I can't eat this. Is that true or is it what else is going on during that time? So just one factor, even though we can in our very well-meaning just trying to function through life, kind of think like, oh, it's just this one part, if I can get this part better then like, but it's layered.

It's multiple things for sure. Let's talk about the genetic piece, because this is another area people ask about constantly. And I think we've been taught in conditioned by our traditional system that like, oh, if I got this, if my mom had it, then I just got it from her. But some people feel like they have MCAS because their parents had a histamine issue or allergy issues, like my dad always had to get allergy shots.

Probably why I have this. Is that true? Is there any validity to this thinking about MCAS being like a genetic thing? We touched on empty H4, but can you expand on some of that for us? So again, we have other genetic SNPs that that can influence the I'm going to call the excretion excretion histamine or clearing of histamine.

But I think, you know, MCAS is more. Yes, I do. When I think about our clients, we do see it throughout the parents, the allergies, the grandparents, you know, it's it is kind of moving through the lineage. But I think that trauma moves through the lineage too. Right. And so and then also the mold mycotoxin exposure. Your parents were in the same environment that you were in when you were growing up too.

And they most likely I know that my family certainly all lived in horrible amounts of mold. And chronic infections are also moving through the family, too. So there's if child has line, most likely mom and grandma might have it full. So and so. I think about those kinds of pieces is more of kind of we're inheriting a lot from our family.

Besides that, just the genetic susceptibility. So and so there's a lot to that whole piece. And then, you know, testing genetics can be something to do as well, just to kind of see how you can optimize and how you can really help your body be able to clear toxins, because some people have certain genetic SNPs where they really can't, they can't clear chemical exposures very well, and they they can't clear toxins very well.

And, you know, SNPs besides the chip can talk and are so, so those are things to kind of look into things that can fill your bucket from a genetic standpoint as well. 

So if you've been wanting to transform your health but don't know where to start. I've got you. My full color cookbook is much more than recipes. It's a 300 page crash course in healing through food. You'll get 125 plus gluten free, dairy free, soy free meals the whole family will love. Plus step by step guides on dropping smarter, improving digestion, and making your kitchen a healing place. It's gorgeous, practical, and designed to make healthy living simple. Grab your copy at heyheymae.com/Cookbook and start changing your health. One delicious bite at a time.

I think that's important to to talk about this inflammatory response. It's it that's inherited, and I love to talk about it in terms of emotions because emotions tend to last like 90s. Right. Like as a physiological process, the story you tell yourself keeps you activated past the 90s, whether you're mad, past that, or sad or super scared or whatever it may be, if you really sit down and think about it and kind of next time you have a big emotional response like check yourself in five minutes.

Like, do I still feel really physically, physically feeling that feeling? Or is it like what's going on in my brain that's responding? And sometimes those I just think about clients who are like, get really stressed about any and everything. Well, did you learn that from somewhere like, do your parents function that way? These things are still inflammatory producers, right?

Like their feelings, but they are inflammatory responses. And it's kind of a different category. But that is one piece. And then like you said for H&M, t is one that I see a lot and this isn't we don't tend to pull genetics right off the bat when it comes to MCAS. We want to figure out why it's there, help you get comfortable, get you to a place where that's calmed down.

But sometimes in some of our kids who have cross, issues like for me, ADHD or autism, some of that stuff I'll be pulling genetics for to learn about some pieces and I'll find like, oh, this person's genes code them to not break down histamine as well or produce down as well. But ultimately genetics just creates susceptibility, not inevitability.

Just because a gene is there encoding for function doesn't mean that the poor function is happening. That's the whole beauty of epigenetics. Sometimes a gene really turns on like a celiac person who has celiac genes that but still eats gluten find that may be more about. They haven't had an event that has triggered that gene to express in the unhelpful way.

So for me, it's not a be all, end all, but it's also not the genetic piece I don't think is the place where we just check out and say, oh, because my dad had allergies. Johnson was super allergy reactive. I'm just going to be this way forever. There's more to that for sure. So important chat. But let's talk about the MCAS and pot situation because you can't really talk about MCAS without talking about pot.

So will you tell us like just a quickie on what it is again and, and what's going on there when it's interacting with MCAS or showing up together. And you just made me think about the Comp gene too, because then you can't you can't clear all the stress hormones. You can't stress hormones. You're not that liver. It's not clear in histamine.

And then you can have more granulation too. So that's the one I don't like to see. And when I see it I I slowed down clumped I do yeah, I do deeper I do different protocols with people. I work with them differently. There's a lot more nervous system stuff that's put into I think about hormones differently when I see that as well.

Yeah, yeah. And it's awful sometimes to know that. But we also don't always get to know the gene parts. And people still get better, which is important to to think about. Yeah. So parts again when we see mix and we see it releasing its mediators. We can also think about Potts too, because the stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.

And we know that history mean creates a basal dilation. So you can have blood pooling down to the lower extremities. You can have it pulling down into the gut. And then people are going, gosh, I have all this bloating this all the time. And I'm also dizzy. And the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system should kick in until you know, and start to actually create vaso constriction to get that blood kind of pumping back up to the heart.

And if there is kind of deeper layers of just autonomia, sometimes that does not happen. And so people can end up with blood pooling and there's still dizzy and their heart rate slows. And so that's probably another conversation. But it can look like a lot of really scary stuff. So people come to us with a lot of symptoms all over the place, and they've been to all these different cardiologists, and they are telling them, we can, let's see, do a heart monitor.

Heart monitor. You can go on beta blockers, drink a ton of electrolytes, which is, which can be a really good thing to do. And then they make them feel, you know, they feel like they're crazy. No, but I just did this, and I didn't do this, and this happened. And, you know, they do end up feeling crazy.

So it's all connected. And most of the time a lot of the time we just see all those little pieces happening all at once, just more. For some people it's it's could be a little bit more of the pot stuff. For some people it could be a little bit more of the hypermobility stuff. They just really kind of go and I can't even say that they that it's more on either end.

Again, genetics and other things kind of fit into that picture. But lots of stuff is going on and that's what we know. And so we get to investigate, take your symptoms and really put together the full picture with the having seen hundreds of people with the same issue. So, yeah, it's I think a lot it's the same kind of pattern that like when one system becomes dysregulated, the other is kind of cascade and follow.

And so traditional medicine is going to be like, oh, you go to the cardiologist because you got this cardio stuff and you need to go to rheumatology because you got some weird immune stuff, and you need to go to GI because you're having diarrhea every time this happens. And that seems weird. And then also you probably should visit endocrine because your hormones are your adrenals or that sort of stuff is off.

But really it's about one system is becoming dysregulated and it interacts with the other systems. And then we see that symptom presentation. The other thing about Pots is you kind of talked about going to the doctor and getting the run around. Not that the run around is intentional, but I want to say that if you feel that you have pots and you pass a tilt table test, you can absolutely still have pots.

When I had my AlphaGal syndrome, I'd had I lived in mold like eight years prior to that and had a lot of MCAS stuff, and I never experienced the pots until the AlphaGal tick bite. And what was going on with that immune system portion of the anaphylactic type response to the mammal meat was so huge that that pushed me further into more of a Pots presentation.

I had more tachycardia, I had a lot more blood pressure fluctuations. I had the really low blood or really low heart rate and then really high heart rate. All of those things were playing together and I passed the tilt table test. I also, when taking the test, didn't want to lean all the way back because I knew I was going to pass out, and I enjoyed that.

So, you know, there's more to it. And traditional medicine is recognizing it. Now. You can at least have a conversation and say, I feel like I have pots and they know what you're talking about. But this is definitely one area where like, there's not a lot of tools and there's not a lot of help or identification because it's it's not relatively new, but it's definitely increased quite a bit with Covid and so approaching impact.

MCAS and Pots is different. But I want to walk through like how do we approach MCAS? This is where people are often like surprised by our approach. Because yes, we do want you to feel better. We want symptom relief as quickly as possible. But symptom relief is not the whole thing. We want symptoms to be relief for the long haul.

We don't want to just toss antihistamines at you and teach you how to manage your mast cells. We want to ask like, why are your cells so reactive? Why are we in this super intense degree phase where you weren't there before? We want to find a longer solution. So talk to us kind of about, how we address it.

Well, first we're calming the fire. So we are going to I want to get like a really good idea of what's going on. And so again, that calendar piece, I, you know, not everyone wants to do it. Not everyone even does it. But I am keeping notes of everything that they that the clients have going on throughout their month.

Like, I know when everyone's cycles are, it's kind of funny. So I'm keeping a really good, good notes on kind of when is this flaring happening? What is happening, what infections can be a part of this picture. And we are looking for chronic infections because this is sort of an, you know, a condition where or syndrome where like no stone left unturned.

I want to know what infections your body has seen, whether it's, you know, Borrelia, Bartonella, barbarous, you know, Covid. But still was that where the shift took place? What kind of mast cell supports do we need to bring in? How does your body respond to them? Also can give information. You know, we walk clients through this immune training process to kind of bring that intelligence back to the immune system.

So it's not, overreacting and doing things that it shouldn't do. I do work with, again, like the the environmental triggers piece, looking at what's, you know, especially when it comes to mold and mycotoxins, because that can be such a huge instigator and other infections that are coming in for like pots. What we just were talking about that can go away, but it can come back if that's where that person is susceptible, if an infection is coming in.

So we are really kind of going through, you know, going through the health history, figuring out what this body has seen. You know, we're looking at adverse childhood events to to kind of see what's going on with the nervous system and then putting together a really nice plan to kind of clear out all the muddy water and also get an idea of where this person is triggered the most and, feel like I could go on and on about that because we could go into how we use homeopathy to address that and the emotional piece too, but maybe for another podcast.

Yeah. And so that calmed the fire piece I feel like is more commonly the histamine mast cell fire is maybe the one place where traditional medicine, like throws some tools in there that can be helpful. Like they'll use antihistamines, for both H1 and H2, they'll use mast cell stabilizers. But ultimately those are Band-Aids. They also kind of actually interrupt a helpful immune process we should be able to inflame, have a little mast cell action for like to deal with an actual threat, like a real actual like if I get bit by tick today, I would like for my immune system to show up, eat it up with it, and then resolve.

And those medications come in and they kind of they thwart the process. They don't help the body resolve an immune cycle. And so that's one way that like yeah, that helps. Or even I've seen functional folks, or even just usually nurse practitioners and offices that have dug and trying to figure out things for their people who have brought in Da or they brought in, different herbs that can be, you know, antihistamines, those things will be there.

But past calming the fire, we have to really ask why is it happening? And then get the immune system to rebalance where we don't have that to to dominance, where the mass cells aren't being recruited for every single last threat, where your body is able to have more discernment between is this, is this an emotional response that Elisabeth's body is having right now and that feels like a threat?

Or is it? She walked into a room of Starkey box mold, and we actually need to show up and clear this out, because if that immune system is screaming, we want to know why is it screaming? And is it really screaming for a reason? Do we need to kind of level it out? I think something else we see sometimes with traditional medicine world trying to calm the fires, maybe they'll notice, like, okay, this happened after you had shingles.

You've got Marcel stuff going on. And so they're like, okay, we'll bring an antiviral because that'll address the infection. Or this all started in your kid after they had strep. And we know that strep can create MCAS type presentations. Going to create a lot of histamine. That is a neural transmitter. So it can kind of make a lot of this behavioral stuff okay.

Doctor says let's just do some more antibiotics. That's going to help us get rid of the strep. Then we'll get rid of the cast. But it doesn't help long term. And that's really where our process is different because antibiotics are just killing. The work that we do is to modulate the immune system in a permanent way, so it knows to address they attack the strep when it comes in, don't just over produce mast cells and over flood the body with histamine, actually kill the problem, stop over reacting to it.

And that part is what gives you that longevity. And even with my AlphaGal stuff in that season, to turn off that mast cell activation, I did have to pull out any mammalian meat, anything dairy, all that stuff. I did use Da, but then we had to address the lime and co-infections that came in my body with that AlphaGo bite, rewire the nervous system through that needling process.

And I tell myself, like, I'm safe now. It's okay. I can eat meat like that is over. And my mast cells calmed down, my immune system learned to eat the lime up instead of overreacting. And then you get that longevity where years later, I'm still eating meat. It's great, and I'm still using glycerin on my skin and not getting rashes like I was.

I can deal with temperature outside. I'm not passing out. I don't feel like I get overheated. Those sort of things are not happening anymore for me, because the immune system rebalancing part that we do, it gives our clients longevity of health. And that really is is the most important issue. So one of the most important things I want listeners to walk away with is that it isn't just a histamine problem, it's a clue or a signal to other stuff.

You've talked a lot about how mold is often in their molds, a hot button ticket conversation molds in a lot of houses that we live in, but really it can be a trigger and MCAS can be the signal to say like, hey, Elizabeth, bodies and mold were struggling. So we're making all these mast cells and having all this g granulation.

It's it's evidence that the immune system is stuck in a really defensive posture in our job is to figure it out. And I think to just thinking about our clients who struggle with Marcus, it's a really stressful thing. And then stress promotes it. So you're kind of like stuck in this hamster wheel and being able to have somebody like you come in and say, let me ask you the questions.

Let me put your symptoms on this calendar and start to kind of track what's going on. Let me ask key questions to help us figure out what's activating the immune system is such a gift and a grace to that person. Like, I know our team helped me when I first had my bite, and we were just piecing together what was going on, and to have that assistance when you're dealing with the cash is so powerful because stressors are triggers, it can escalate the MCAS response, and it does feel like a little bit of a hamster wheel.

So, I think that part's important. What else do you have? Oh, I just keep thinking of mold while we're trying to heal the system, get the environment clean. We can teach you how to be in mold and get, relief. But it's so much easier when that's not a part of the picture. So yeah. Because these infections they, they, they, they like to, they like an environment where the immune system's not doing what it should be doing to.

And then we know that Lyme does its own stuff. So yeah, it's really you know, with MCAS you can just feel totally crazy and people will really look at you like you're crazy. What what do we do with you? There's so many different things. And so I just like for people to know that they're not crazy. All of these things are actually happening.

And let us figure it out for you, because we understand we've been there. So it's like it is. Yeah. It's and you absolutely can feel better too. So. And yeah, there's just so many little pieces to look at. We didn't even talk about the thyroid. So another time. But but yeah, so I just this is like one of my most passionate subjects.

So I think that mold piece is really good. And you do a great job with our clients, and we all see people with mold, but we'll often tag Krista in because she's just super great at understanding or helping them strategize really quickly about, you know, when you figure out you've got mold. It is such a big process, right?

Because you got to get it inspected. You've got to get it remediated. We need to make sure it's, you know, cleared and not in the environment. And and those three sentences just made that whole process very small. But sometimes people can't do that right away. But they still need to feel better. They still need to be more functional.

They still need to get to a place where they can at least go to their job and make income and eat and do things like that. And there are so many things that you do to teach them how to live with mold, or that we do to teach them how to calm the immune system even when threat is theirs.

We're working on it. That gives people really big gains. And my goodness, when I had my bite, I was so thankful that our team had those tools because I was able to keep going. I could still take care of my kids. I could be awake all day long, which is tough when you have a lot of history and you get very tired.

Those parts are really important. And I think it we often meet an MCA's client at a really tired and exhausted place, because physically the histamine does make you tired, but also to be tanked like that most days, your adrenals, your cortisol response is part of it and you can just really feel like hopeless depressed, like without energy reserves.

In those parts are very real, especially if you've gone to the doctor and you pass until table tests and your heart monitor looked great, everything looks fine, your blood panel looks fine. There can still be other panels that we need to look at, other things we need to think about, and that that classic pots and cast signature.

You and our team do really good job of identifying it, figuring out why it's they're getting quick tools in the picture and then getting the immune system resolved. Which is something that is unique. And I haven't found a lot of other places in their traditional world, for sure. You know, offer that to folks. So I'm glad we have this chat today, because MCAS isn't usually the root cause.

I think it's starting to get a little bit of a, I don't know, reputation for like, oh, you just have MCAS. That's what's going on. That's the root of everything. No, mixed is really just the immune system's alarm bell. It's sending out big, debilitating symptoms to you daily that it is having problems. And we don't want to silence those symptoms.

We want to figure out why so that we can turn the alarm off. So it's not activating all the time. Yeah. Well thanks for chatting with us and sharing, I appreciate it. I know so many people are going to love this because we get asked all the time, can you talk more about it by clients who have lived through it and feel better and see it in other people?

So I'm excited for this episode just to give people hope and, a path out of a hard place. So thanks for spending time with me today. You're welcome. Yeah, thanks for listening. I hope you're leaving. Encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we are all healing together.

You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyheymae.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions there. Each Monday my Instagram handle is @HeyheyElizabethMae. You can watch these podcast episodes and more on our YouTube channel. Hey hey Mae, learn about and enjoy our homeopathic line and take our homeopathic short course at heyheyhomeopathic.com.