What About Mast Cells?
Mast cells are an integral part of our immune system. They are white blood cells and found throughout the body. Mast cells do repair work and respond to potential dangers. They are often our first line of defense against things like pathogens and toxins. So it makes sense that mast cells are especially concentrated in tissues that come into contact with the outside world like our skin, eyes, and the mucosal system that runs from our nose to our colon. Mast cells release many chemicals and one of those is histamine, however there are many others. The others include various chemical messengers and inflammatory mediators. Inflammation is needed to do its job of dealing with the invaders and in healing. You know how your skin gets painful, swollen, and red after you cut yourself? Well that is the inflammation process of repair. It’s just that you can see it when it’s happening on your skin. You cannot see it when it’s happening inside your body but we can often feel it when it shows up as symptoms like pain, brain fog, fatigue and many others.
Mast cells are extremely important for our health and we wouldn’t be able to survive without them. It’s only when they start being hyper or chronically activated that they cause us problems. There are some conditions where mast cells get this way, and what drives these conditions can be an array of things. Basically anything that stimulates our immune system and inflammation will stimulate mast cells. Some common culprits are exposure to mold and toxins, infections, traumatic events, and sometimes certain medications can set it off for some people.
Because mast cells release so many more chemicals and mediators than just histamine, the symptoms of mast cell activation can be vast. No one knows exactly how many mediators mast cells release but the research I have done has indicated there are more than 200, possibly much more (see below for research links). Mast cells exist in pretty much all tissues so the symptoms can affect any body system. It is common for people with a diagnosis of Mast Cell Activation Disorder to have common allergic type symptoms like hives, itchiness, and unfortunately anaphylaxis. However it is also common for there to be other symptoms people don’t typically relate to allergies like pain, cardiac issues, urinary issues, brain fog, mood issues, and fatigue.
When it comes to histamine intolerance, it’s important to know that you can have the production of histamine in the body without mast cells being activated. Like I explained in the last blog post, there are many ways we get histamine into our systems and it is not always from when mast cells are doing their thing. Here is the thing though, histamine overload in the body can in itself activate mast cells. Histamine is inflammatory and when it is high in the gi tract, for example, it causes damage and drives intestinal permeability (aka leaky gut if you’ve heard of that). When the gi tract and lining gets damaged it releases signals that tell the immune system it is damaged and needs repaired. Inflammation is needed for repair and these signals activate mast cells. Further, when the intestinal barrier gets damaged things get through it that should not and this also increases immune responses and mast cell activation. Also, mast cells have histamine receptors on them so can get activated if histamine is high in the body and histamine attaches to the mast cell receptor. This might be getting a little too technical for you, but my point is that mast cell activation and histamine intolerance reinforce each other. Mast cells release histamine and histamine triggers mast cells (through various mechanisms). Talk about a chicken and egg situation!
So besides histamine, what else triggers mast cell activation? The list is long my friends. Mast cells can be triggered by anything that stimulates the immune system and creates inflammation. This can be obvious things like allergens and any kind of infection, although note there are certain kinds of infections that are particularly good at contributing to mast cell activation (that in addition to stimulating the immune system also promote a certain immune system domination called TH2 – more about this in another blog). They can also be stimulated by chemicals and toxins, temperature changes, and stress.
While it is good to understand some of the biochemistry and physiology behind histamine and mast cells when you are dealing with related health concerns, the most important thing I want you to take away from all this is that there are underlying reasons why you are experiencing the symptoms and illness that you are. I don’t believe in idiopathic diagnosis, which some of you may have. How many of you have been told by your doctor that there is no reason for your illness and these things just happen, or your immune system has just become over reactive for no known reason? I have been numerous times. I received diagnosis of idiopathic anaphylaxis, idiopathic urticaria, and idiopathic angioedema. After all that, I stopped pursuing diagnosis with doctors. I knew they did not know how to help me, beyond giving me medications to mask or control my symptoms. Thank goodness I had those medications and emergency medical care available to me, or I would have died. What I am saying though, is the mainstream medical system was not equipped to truely heal my body and address what was actually driving my illness. Underlying my illness was a lot of toxicity and infections, as well as genetic predispositions to allergic type illness. What is underlying your illness will be unique to you.
There is so much more to mast cells and histamine than I have touched on in these first two blogs. My goal here is not to overwhelm you with details and rather give you a basic understanding of histamine and mast cells. For those of you who want the technical details, I posted a few references below if you want to learn more.
In my next blog, I will be discussing my own story of histamine intolerance and mast cell activation in detail, so keep an eye out for that!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469513/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.01873/full
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/8/2/135/pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006497118521649
