 First of all it is a joy to formally meet you. I know we've ran in the same circles for quite some time now and so we've heard each other speak and I've known about you and so when you contacted me I was absolutely delighted to talk about mast cell activation today because so many of you out there listening I know if you've dealt with Lyme or mold or other infections we'll talk about all that today and some other causes of mast cell. But Beth is really an expert in this area and in just a few minutes we'll dive into her story and a little bit of her background and you know what got her interested in this because we all have a story. So thanks for joining us today just a little bit of background information if you haven't seen our YouTube channel it's just under Jill Carnahan it's all free. I would love for you to subscribe there you can get this video just a day or two it will be live there to share and then all kinds of other free resources and videos are on the YouTube channel. My regular website is just JillCarnahan.com lots of free blog resources there as well so if you want to know more about that and then your website Beth is at mastcell360.com is that correct? That's it yeah okay and we'll be sure and include that link. So let me introduce you Beth and then we'll jump right in. So Beth O'Hare is a functional naturopath specializing in complex chronic immune conditions related to mast cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance. She's a founder and owner of mast cell 360 a functional naturopathic practice designed to look for all factors surrounding health conditions genetic, epigenetic, biochemical, physiological, environmental, and emotional. I love that Beth because this is a complex thing and so you have to like Bob Miller a friend of ours he's background electrical circuits and all that and I'm background engineering and you must have a little bit of that in you because it's complex right? Her sub-specialties are mold toxicity and genetic analysis in the area of mast cell activation and histamine intolerance so we will totally dive into that today so any of you listening that have had mold exposure or concerns about that that is definitely one of the big triggers we'll talk all about that in just a little bit. I won't read all of this but she is just a real real expert and we are so delighted to have you here Beth so thank you for joining me today. Oh thank you so much Jill and I'm just really grateful that we can partner and support each other to get this information out because it's hard to find this kind of information that that you put out and that we put out and so I think we can do a lot for people especially in this area because it's so under-recognized but the demographics show that anywhere from 9 to 17 percent of the general population have mast cell activation syndrome one in 10 at least and then the chronically ill population it's above 50 percent so this is a huge area that needs attention. Well and I love that because what happens is there's so many silos in conventional medicine there's a rheumatologist there's a gastroenterologist there's a neurologist there's the et cetera et cetera allergist and everybody has a little tiny area of blinders and they're looking at okay you have leaky gut intestinal permeability of Crohn's or colitis or whatever it's used then you go over here and you have arthritis and osteoarthritis or you have a lupus and then you over here and you have maybe early signs of MS and really at the core mast cell activation can affect every system can it. I want to talk about symptoms but first let's tell me about your story like how did you get interested in mast cells and such a unique area that's so important. Well you know as a child I remember I was thinking about this you know thinking about doing this today and I was remembering that when I was six we had to choose what our career path would be you know it was like one of those little recital things and so I decided I was going to be a nurse and I remember my mom saying well why would me be a doctor and I didn't know any female doctors back then you know it wasn't we didn't have real models and things like that so she told that was game-changing for me so I decided I was going to be a doctor and I bring that up because I didn't just like casually decide like I dedicated my life to that and but then we moved out to the country when I was seven to this old farmhouse and we didn't know anything about mold but now we know it was totally full of toxic mold it had a crawl space entire crawl space with black from the mold and my health just went downhill there I had horrible allergy symptoms I'd had hives I had exercise induced asthma I had bad GI issues to where every morning I would be running to the bathroom just from like the stress of getting ready for school yeah but I was still like so passionate about this and I did my undergrad in pre-med and by the time I got to my junior year I realized I was so sick there was no way I was going to make it I knew if I could make it through the four years of study I would never do the 80 hour week residency because I was already crashing so I had a full scholarship to med school and I had to turn it down which was just devastating and I became a chronically ill patient instead and exactly what you were describing I had an allergist I had a GI person I had primary care I saw the metologist I had all these misdiagnoses I was even sent to a psychiatrist at one point I was sent to counseling I was told I was crazy because I've got incredibly sensitive to where if I just did a little sprinkle of curcumin which should have helped the inflammation I was just like couldn't sit down anxious and couldn't sleep and I was by the time I was 28 I had to walk through the cane so my friends were out dancing and having a great time and I could barely hobble across the room to the bathroom because my joints felt like brown glass and I wanted to give up because I had seen at one point over 50 different practitioners and I saw the best functional medicine practitioner I could get access to before we had telemedicine and I remember we worked together for two years I tried everything you told me to try and I remember him telling me I don't know what else to do we reached the end of the road and I I just cried the holy home because it took me an hour to drive there and it took me three days to work up the energy and it would take me three days to recover from that drive but I learned about histamine intolerance right around that time and then it was a person Yasminah Kalinstone who's got NASA activation syndrome and she literally saved my life and we had this small community online of people that were like her first followers so that's how I found oh wow it's that all of like everything finally fit and it was such a relief because I had started to think I was crazy because I didn't know anybody that was that sensitive and that was that sick other than some people I had met online and Yasminah so she kind of got me started and then I got into the genetics and I started putting pieces together that oh it was emethylated I had significant glutamate variants so that made sense with all the anxiety and just sleeping and just piece by piece I was doing like a tiny sprinkle of the gentlest things every third day worked myself still didn't know anything about mold but started to get my health back then learned about mold and I had Lyme and Bartonella and Babesia and I grew up in the country we got bit by chicks all the time but everything finally started making sense and I got my life back and then I got to go back to graduate school so I did first thing I did was a master's in psychology and that's always been one of my loves and how really how our nervous system affects our immune system so I did my research in that area on mast cell activation and then I went on and got a doctorate in functional naturopathy so I didn't become the traditional neurologist that was my dream but I got to come full circle in a different way and I'm just so grateful to have my life back I went hiking I just did I've been building up my aerobics and I just did like 130 beats a minute today on the treadmill for 15 minutes which for me is huge for somebody who yes struggle to walk one block wow wow Beth I knew I liked you but now I even love you more with your story I mean I could almost cry hearing that because I had such a similar I didn't know that I am chester histamine the farmhouse mold cancer at 25 and I think about like getting through medical school in a way you were so blessed because I did try to do it and I got cancer through it because it was so hard I remember like literally thinking how I don't know if I can do this you know it was so brutal and the hours in that so you kind of saved yourself and I literally looked back some like I don't know how I made it I really really don't I really truly don't accept God has his hand on my life and like protected me and guided me and I know that it was his grace it allowed me to get through but gosh I have so much compassion for your story it's not identical to mine but I know suffering and I know that feeling of like I have to find the answers because nobody out there really understands I've been there right feeling so alone and yes that's what drew me to you too was I knew you had gone through this and just that courage to get through the that darkness yeah that's what drives me is I felt so alone and I don't want people to have to feel alone going through this and so I work with people that are just so so sensitive but we can pull it together it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of work but we can do it and then people can actually live their lives and have fun with the kids and get to travel and all those things instead of just spending life on the counter yes I love and I love that you're here as a living example and me too and it's still I still have a bubble I still have to be really careful what I do how much I do and I'm sure you're the same so I love that we're here talking to people listening out there that have maybe given up hope or been like so feeling isolated or sensitive and there is hope that guys to travel every other week it seemed like and that would have been a crazy imagination you know before when I wasn't feeling well so that it is possible it is possible to get less sensitive and yet we still have to be really really careful don't we I do I still have to take my supplements yeah I will never be fast I always say it's like we're walking on a tight rope still and the slightest wind still bumps us off and we get back up and get on that tight rope and that's just like we were I feel like that's part of our calling is we are going to be and you know I just read some work on Elaine Aaron and the highly sensitive person and it's about like the emotional sensitivity but I realized wow a lot of these people it's a full spectrum it's this chemical environmental their systems are over reactive and on the other side of it they actually have a gift of intuition and sensitivity to the human race and the compassion for suffering in that as well so it's kind of this double-edged sword um let's dive into like what does it look like for people who might be out there and wondering if they have MCAS or histamine intolerance let's talk about kind of like what what would it look like I know it's so variable but give us a little bit of symptomatology kind of outline on what we might see for patients yeah let's talk about the classic and then let's talk about what really happens okay the classic is going to be those allergic type symptoms food allergies hives itching watery eyes flushing congestions kinds of things so people end up with an allergies this is one of the places so many people are falling through the cracks because that the skin presentations only happen in a percentage of people with mast cell involvement and unfortunately a lot of allergists and immunologists have been educated to think that if you don't have flushing itching hives you can't have mast cell activation I could so many people come in and to my practice and say hey I was told that there's no way I could have this but then they have all of the other pieces so I have a person that she doesn't have the skin symptom she doesn't flush but she has acid reflux she has diarrhea she has sleep issues she has anxiety so there you've got the gut and the nervous system the brain pieces and then she gets trouble breathing so it's like her chest gets tight with the wrong foods yeah and then I have other people that have like the urinary burning they have endometriosis they've got big hormone imbalances really painful periods and that's kind of it's that area that shows up for them so we've got to be thinking about that in different areas and I actually took the research on the symptoms that have been associated and put it together in a symptom survey for people so if they want to find that we have that on the website and they can take a look and kind of score themselves on those and see if this might be in the ballpark for them but you said it exactly earlier that it's two two systems or more are where we have symptoms and some people have eye symptoms it's like their eyes get red and painful or you know they'll have the sinus decline they'll have ear issues and ear pain or ear ringing sometimes respiratory low blood pressure very common but I have some people with high blood pressure because of other issues hypermobilities associated always that's such a big one with more because the mold toxins and bartonella ate away at our connective tissue so that the what I tell people is think about are you a mystery person are you falling through the cracks do you think you've been misdiagnosed I was misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis even though I didn't have any elevations on the autoimmune markers they just said well that's gotta be what it is with your joint pain and then I had somebody wanted to exploratory surgery on my knees and I'm like oh not without a theory of what we're looking for yeah but that's this is kind of that common story of like I've seen five people already or 10 people already that's when I tell people to start to think about sensitivities sensitivities to chemicals to foods to supplements that's the classic great overview and some of the things that came to mind that patients maybe have been told they have or they're mysterious that I think and I want to check in with you on the mast cell but interstitial cystitis which is an inflammation of the bladder there's a high histamine component with that you mentioned some of the other female and hormonal symptoms but what about vulvodynia and the burning tongue I think sometimes those can be histamine related is that right um so glad you brought the burning tongue and the burning mouth that's also really classic with mast cell not everybody has these one of the things that group members people are going to have like a subset but on the vulvodynia and the interstitial cystitis there's this triad with that in fibromyalgia and we often find at the core of that oxalates which are those little I know you know but for people who don't know what oxalates are that they're little crystals in crystal structures and plants like sweet potatoes and spinach and rhubarb and chard and almonds very high and they're sharp like glass and that's exactly what caused my joint pain oxalates are a big mast cell trigger and we know molds produce oxalates in our body and mold is just the number one trigger I'm seeing in my practice so are we seeing that you are like one in a million to put that together because there's so few people to understand just in case you didn't hear that I wanted to just review and then give it right back to you Beth basically mold will cause your body to produce more oxalates and some people have trouble breaking them down or if they're eating a lot of so there's a lot of different sources not just the mold but if you have aspergillus exposure or candida it will often make more oxalates and then if you have trouble breaking it down or you have too much food sources of oxalates and like Beth said these are sharp and jagged and they can cause pain anywhere in the body but especially the vaginal pain vulvodynia burning for no reason interstitial cystitis which is bladder irritation and then you mentioned the fibromyalgia the chronic pain all over your body very very common so thanks for bringing that together because people've heard all the bits and pieces but it is important to understand mold is a big part of that and joint joint pain so they can lock people so we think about oxalates and kidney stones but I've learned from Emily give laboratory of life healthy as an oxalate expert that kidney stones are only 0.5 percent of oxalate issues so kidney stones are actually rare in the oxalate problems and then those oxalates will trigger the mast cell activation so we'll trigger that inflammation so that's what we have with the interstitial cystitis the burning and I had all of that going on well I already had mold so the mold that colonized my body was producing oxalates and then when I went gluten free which was the first thing I tried to do when I decided I had to work more holistically I was replacing wheat with almond flour yes loads of sweet potatoes lots of beats lots of Swiss chard and it was just I really that's why it felt like ground glass in my joints and it was triggering all this mast cell activation so that was one piece of the puzzle of this multi-piece puzzle of putting it together so there's such a good overview of symptoms and again there's many more one thing you mentioned too that I thought so interesting a lot of patients I have I should say a lot but there's a small percentage of patients I have that just going into moldy building the main symptom they'll get is heartburn and I think that the connection there is probably the mast cell activation from the mold and triggering that reflex potentially but it's kind of an unusual thing but they're classic they know every time they get into moldy building they have heartburn yeah that's interesting yeah I've heard you talk about chat a group yeah yeah that that you feel so sleepy and I know right away because I start to get brain fogged and spacey and I just like I'm gonna slide to the floor so we were house hunting last year we looked over 50 houses and I could walk in and within a minute I we like nope turn around walk out and we found there was one house out of all of this we looked at that did not have moved unbelievable I have a funny story too I've been looking at new properties just thinking about maybe expanding the clinic and we're probably not going to this year with COVID but when I did this months ago I looked at this old bank property and I went in there and looked around it's beautiful and then I left and I was going back to the office to do some charting and I wasn't seeing patients that day so but I got to the office and I like I was so confused I couldn't find my keys I literally called from the parking lot up to the office um guys I think I got a mold hit I don't think it's a good idea for me to come in right now to do charts but is that confusion and feeling like I don't even know where my keys are I better not go do patients yeah yeah it's amazing and I think a lot of people have these mold sensitivities and we're not aware of them so often I'll ask and then first thing I talk about with people is they ever lived anywhere that was musty anywhere they were crawl space we worked any place where people were sick did you work in a school or I did kids then and the kids get so much exposure in the schools yes and people are in schools public buildings are horrendous they're all flat roads and they're usually not well maintained so sadly government buildings and schools are not the best for mold and people think they often tell me like either they absolutely know or they absolutely think they don't have mold exposure and they'll say well no I've never had mold exposure but we start digging in it and it's just it just fits and so I think part of what's happening is the mass cells in the traditional medicine community are kind of getting a bad rap and it's like well we've got to knock them down if we do a lot of antihistamines we'll calm it down that'll handle the symptoms and that's what happened with me so by the time I was 12 I was in six different medications and it did calm my symptoms down and it made me more comfortable and I could function better so I because I was like itching so bad I was scratching my skin at night and bleeding and and but then what happened is those mass cells are like the frontline defenders of our immune system so I think of them like the guards in castle p8 and they're there to keep bad things out and let the good things in well if we put them to sleep they can't keep the bad things out anymore and then all the mold and the lime and the bartone on the Bija had free reign in my body and I think that's why I got so so sick yeah so I think there's definitely a time and a place for calming those mass cells down but then we've got to go what's happening underneath and that's how I got well was well what's really triggering it why are the mass cells on you know sounding the the alarm yeah and then what do we do listen to those mass cells and deal with what's causing them to sound the alarms instead of just trying to knock them out on the place and so I love that let's talk next about triggers but just to reiterate what you said both of us love functional medicine the reason is we don't just want to give a diagnostic code and then say here's a med for that code or even five meds for that code for that for that matter that might work for the short term but the real healing comes from both of our lives and what we've been through in going deeper and saying what actually was the root cause and or causes so let's talk just a little bit about Beth we've talked about mold clearly mold is a big maybe the biggest trigger to mass selectivation what are some of the other triggers that you see for mass selectivation well definitely lime and lime has become a big issue honestly I think lime has become one of the reasons I think and you probably have some ideas I would thought of too one of the reasons I think it's such a big issue is because the mold has become such a big issue so when we get mold toxicity it like knocks out our pathogen killing side of our immune system and then takes that chronic inflammatory side which is the mass cell side up and so we're in this I can't kill off viruses and bacteria and I'm really really really inflamed so I do see quite a lot of mold and lime and then one of the things I look at that I don't think a lot of people think about is airway and we have this kind of generational lack of nutrition which causes our dental arches to get smaller and smaller which is why I have braces because mine was so small my tongue was falling back in my throat and I felt anxious during the day and had all this muscle tension because my body was just struggling to keep open so it's been a game changer to get that widened I don't tell people to do that in the beginning because it's not pleasant or fun but sometimes that can help to make sure we have enough oxygen and sleep it can help with sleep estrogen dominance is a big trigger so estrogen triggers mass cells progesterone calms mass cells so that's one of them that I often often see and I've seen a lot of food triggers especially once the muscles get dysregulated then we get this immune triggering of things like I had food immuno IgG's to broccoli and flax seed like things you know it makes sense like okay corn wheat dairy but broccoli and flax seeds I had to stop eating those for six months and let that calm down so those are some of the really big ones my favorite one that we always underestimate is stress and trauma yes and I found that about 60 percent of people in my practice have had early childhood trauma and trauma can even be that we've experienced abuse but even witnessing you know if we at six years old we watch somebody die and we don't understand or we see something terrible happen I get people from different countries and they've lived through a war as a child and sometimes it's not even that severe sometimes it's having a surgery at five six seven years old and we just don't understand what's happening and then that affects our nervous system immune system development so that's why I have people start with your system rebalancing and it's huge yeah I really want to dive into that topic because I know you have some resources and so much knowledge on that so love love love where you're going with this and all the important information you're bringing up because it really is this very broad spectrum and many many many triggers and I you didn't mention EMFs electromagnetic frequency but what I see is that like adds on to the burden right and not everybody yeah go ahead solid research on that now there's any question at all solid research have 20 studies on the website oh wow this is all on your website too you said right okay oh that's such a great resource for people and yet Lyme is becoming epidemic and so this toxic burden I always say in a real simple way if you've listened you've probably heard me say this before but at the very core function medicine besides looking for the root triggers it's usually toxic load and infectious burden and these two things create inflammation and create other things like mass cell activation but at the core Beth and I are usually looking for what toxic load might be there like mold or chemicals or metals or EMFs and what infections like old viruses that are reactivated Lyme, Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia or Lickia etc all these tick-borne or or lice-borne infections that can really wreak havoc on the body so thanks for bringing that up let's talk a little about treatment and I know you mentioned in our email before the the call like ordering things is important I'd love to know a little bit about how you like to address that in order order of operations so the first thing I do is is the analysis to see you know what what's this person dealing with and then the first thing I actually recommend people do are nervous system supports and this is because there's this access to psychoneuro-endocrinot immunological access so when when I took classes I don't know if this was the same for you in medical school but we had here's the immune system here's the nervous system psychology is on a whole different campus and then we've got you know our endocrinohomine system but the truth is they're interwoven and we really need to be teaching them in terms of how they're all interwoven and signaling so our muscles react within seconds to our thoughts to our stress and I've done experiments on myself so one of my first swellings of a big symptom mass activation too and that's one of my first symptoms so I know I've gotten the wrong food or an in mold because my knuckles on my hands will start to swell and my hands can go from looking like somebody in their 40s to really looking like a 70 or 80 year old person from the swelling and I've done experiments where I've just started to spiral on something to see what would happen and within two minutes my hands will swell it's like this immediate and so I really studied this and did a whole thesis on this axis and mass cell activation and it's critical one of the stories I like to share several years ago I walked into a hotel my husband and I were out traveling to see his son and his grandbaby and we had went to the hotel we walked in put our bags down and noticed that it smelled really strong in there but I thought well probably air out and we left we went to there came back in so I'd already had the first exposure second time in I had this massive asthma attack and I not had asthma in years so I didn't even carry a rescue hand and so I went to the front desk and like gasping trying my words out told her that I was couldn't breathe and she said they just shampooed the carpets in the hotel so there was the fragrance from the cleaner and then all of the mold activation yeah all the scores in the top so I went to the car my husband's like working with him to try to get us to another hotel and I thought I'm gonna have to go to the ER I don't want to go to the ER just then I'm gonna have all the smells and these other triggers all I had was breathing practices and I actually had eucalyptus essential oil which is okay for me not for everybody but I breathed for 30 minutes and I consciously worked on calming myself time myself I'm okay positive self-talk and I got that asthma attack to stop and this was like an ER class and I don't tell everybody to do that if you need to you go to the ER but I know my body well enough to know but that's the power of our thoughts and breathing and being able to manage our stress wow I just had a thought it sounds like you needed tears of when my little brother so we both grew up on the same farm and he's nine years younger than me but he had horrible asthma no doubt there was mold and exposure and of course corn and beans were the the crops and they were loaded with mold so all of the dust and everything on our farm I'm sure it was just a petri dish of mold for me bottom line though same thing with you though going to a hotel I remember when he was probably two or three and I was the older sister and he had a horrible asthma attack in this hotel and I remember like sitting with him and breathing with him and like talking to him that before my parents took him to the ER and and he did he was able to start to breathe a little bit better but I remember like I didn't know anything but mom was like you know talk to him and breathe and and us talking together and I think my mom was right there with us and that like what until we can get the ambulance there that breathing really did make a difference you know and so it was like all that we could do right then but it was pretty powerful like I really remember that when you talked about that at a visceral level I'm like I remember my little brother and I was afraid he was going to die well I don't know you know I mean my mom was right there with me but it's so interesting because I remember so clearly how powerful that was even now like the power of thought and prayer and intention and it calms him down yeah yeah so this is something I have all of my clients who come in work one and we identify which specific strategies are going to work best for them and it's something that's so overlooked and I overlooked it even having done research in it I was like well I can do a couple breathing practices and I had been a yoga therapist so I know how to breathe I know how to do yoga but it wasn't enough and I had to really beef that up and I'd had some childhood traumas and some major stresses as a child and it made the world of difference it was the missing piece it's like I had all the foods right I had the supplements right but I tell people now it's 50% of the healing process is we've got to calm the nervous system because of that interconnection there with the mast cells yeah so what do you start with do you have a program do you have a handout do you have a like what how do you how do people get to know more about this or or see you for it or what would you recommend for people listening well we did a whole blog on kind of the background and one of the programs I really love people to do goop to program or dnrs one of those that appeals to them so that helps with the limbic system the fear and emotion part of the nervous system then we have to work on the structural part of the vagal nerve and we have to work on the signaling the nerve signaling and so there's some different things with that that I'm going to really get into to help people decide which ones are right for them so we're going to do that in a class that I've got coming up so I'm trying to put together these online classes so people have access to some lower cost offerings so everybody can afford to work with somebody like you and me it's expensive and then that way they can step themselves through and then take it to their practitioner too oh how exciting well you'll be sure and share that because we will share it with everybody that's a super exciting and super practical so to start with the nervous system totally couldn't agree more as I got into mold and Lyme and the infections and I'm definitely doing mcasts in my practice because it's prevalent it's not my number one focus but it's really there as a number one thing but what I was going to say is what I realized just like you mentioned is I can't really heal those infections and toxins until I address the limbic system and this over activation so I love that a couple things that I've learned so the dnrs you mentioned the gupta program fantastic way to start there's a book called how to heal the vagus nerve I believe that I've recommended to patients and then there's a couple things I think passively so if you're type A like me and you get one more program to do there's a little bit of it that's like feels like oh no one more thing I have to do right and so then for me that stresses me out so I wanted to include some passive things and I found by urinal beats just listening to these changes and it's really calming to the nervous system and I if I go on my walk often I'll put on my headphones and listen to those and then cranial sacral therapy or integrative manual physical therapy some of these therapists that really work with the nervous system and I like that because if you just want to go and receive if you're all stressed out it's some other options in there that you can do to help with that nervous system when it's so wonderful too because when you've been chronically ill and as sick as you and I have been and as probably a lot of people listening have been then you start to feel not safe in your own body it just doesn't feel like a safe place to be and you can't get in a skid for them so to have somebody just hold you and hold that space and help you feel safe and your own body is huge so I love cranial sacral as well exactly for that reason yeah and then there's certain actual points that I'm going to teach in that class that people can work with and that's a free easy thing that people can do as well to help calm the nervous system I love that so let's talk about I mean there are some great supplements out there and things I do start with meds do you start with supplements what's kind of the approach of the direction of treating this once you get the nervous system a little bit under control yeah it depends on how ill people are how reactive they are and if they're functional or not so see a lot of people that just aren't functioning or barely making it through the day if they can work or they can't work and sometimes meds are necessary but the GI symptoms I found that often from on sodium is a game changer sometimes people can do catatophen and that can help calm things down sometimes some h1 and h2 blockers especially if there's massive sleep issues people just can't sleep at all sometimes something like hydroxazine can kind of break that cycle so those are some options on that side and then sometimes people aren't tolerating those meds and one of the problems is other than prom on sodium and then catatophen of course has to be compounded here in the US but all of the other muscle stabilizing and antihistamine medications have muscle triggers in the inactive ingredients like titanium dioxide these colors so many times people think they're reacting to the med but they're reacting to that so trying something compound this is really clean can help and then on the supplement side I love so my top two are perillocid extract and then the bacon and the Chinese skullcap extract and the perillocid extract is so gentle and I've found most people tolerated but I've got so many super sensitive people I don't have a single thing everybody can do even baking soda and water I have people some people can't do it so I never say like everybody can do something but and then that bacon and Chinese skullcap extract not only supports muscle calming but it has an effect on the nervous system too and that nervous system calming so those are usually the first two I'll try with people and baking soda baking soda and water on an empty stomach there's something maybe you know the action I know that when we go into flares sodium dumps out of the body so if somebody doesn't have the high blood pressure they can try the baking soda there's something with the bicarbonate that I have not found the mechanism for do you do you know I wonder I don't know for sure but I wonder it's similar to the alka cells for gold which is a very chemical version of that I'd be like the similar that if someone's having a really bad herksin sensitivity which is probably mast cell you know it's it's like magic it's like this wet blanket on the system and I think it's because it alkalinizes the system pretty immediately and when you turn from acidic to alkaline everything changes and shifts enzymatically so I don't know for sure but I'm guessing that the alkalinity shifts the mast cell in some way and I wonder now some of these herbs and things that we use the two you mentioned I love skullcap I have not used the perilla seed so that's a real that's a game changer to know that from you and of course like quercetin and those but those can have their other issues but I wonder if some of those herbs actually have a more alkaline effect too it's it'd be interesting to see what I do have the studies on how they affect the receptors one of the things that's so fascinating to me about mast cells is they have over a thousand mediators and then hundreds of receptors on the outside so they can respond to so many different things and that's part of what makes them perfect for that kind of frontline cell but also why we often need this multifactorial approach it's not simple because they're those cells are complex and then this whole condition is very complex oh that's great and then so you've really given us a great overview um do you find I find just hydration and water and ivy fluids can be game changers as silly as that sounds probably along the lines the alkalinity because water is the most natural anti-histamine out there I'm so glad you brought that up yeah absolutely and it's so funny because people are usually pretty well educated by the time they find me they've done a lot of reading they've tried a lot of things and I'd say about 25 of people that when I do a case review they're not drinking enough water and they just haven't thought about that so they're trying they're getting like two cups of water in a day yeah and like at least half of our body weight announces I do a gallon a day just because I'm naturally thirsty probably because of the I'm still right here me too I'm just encouraged because I do decent but I need to do more so that's an encouragement so we talk supplements um targeted binders okay this is a little shift because this is more related to mold but any sort of trigger that could be a toxin you did some work recently with Emily Gibbler and Neil Nathan on the targets of the binders and stuff I'd love to hear a little bit about your research there and what you found yeah for sure well when we're talking about kind of big picture order of operation so we've got nervous system we've got muscle calming and then if there's mold toxicity that's absolutely step three it no matter what else is happening unless it's of course acute or an emergency issue got to deal with the mold toxicity and where we start is elimination right so we start we have maybe sure we're having the bound movements drinking up water you've got this amazing coffee in a my cat where you actually got me to try it for the first time because I had been intimidated and afraid to try it but your cat made it so easy so we have those steps and then we bring the binders in now I'm I always want to be really transparent I did the phase two detox research I didn't do the binder research but we know now that there are specific binders that have more affinity to specific mold toxins and we can really make this quite a bit more targeted so for example like charcoal is often used for mold toxins and it's a great binder for things like ochre toxin and it's a great binder for trichococene but it doesn't really bind gliotoxin so what do we use for that well we can use saccharomyces blarty actually binds gliotoxin which I find really fascinating and then in acetyl cysteine will bind gliotoxin I don't have a lot of people in my practice that can take that because they're very sensitive and they usually have iron dysregulation and there's a problem that can happen there but it is a binder and then another great one for gliotoxin is chlorella and so no chlorella is aflatoxin so we have the saccharomyces we have the benzenite plague for the gliotoxin so it's like we can really hone this in and I'm getting so much better outcomes with that inflammation yeah this is fantastic and I don't know if you have any do you have that up on your I know Dr. Nathan has it I think on his website and do you have it on yours as well where people could find I did I made a really big blog post it's a lot of info but I wanted to show people the whole overview so that you can step yourself through so it really has it's like this toxin these binders this toxin these binders and then the phase two supports and then just shows how you need to go through stage by stage by stage and then the antifungals and the biofine so be sure and share that with me email text whatever I'll make sure it's on here so you guys listening I'll make sure it's on your YouTube and I'll make sure that it is shared with all my listeners because that's just such a great resource that you always put together I know I as a clinician will be what you know I've I've known a lot of the nuances but it's so nice to have it in one place so thanks for all your work on that absolutely um so after the mold what else would you say what are the is there any other order of things or things that we're missing on the healing these patients helping them to heal yeah so well one thing that keeps popping in my head that what we talked about symptoms we didn't talk about and when you weave it back in for a second is autoimmunity yeah and mast cells are often kind of the base of autoimmunity so once people have mast cell activation there's so much more predisposition towards autoimmune conditions because we get that increased chronic inflammation that teach to response and then that can take us over into autoimmunity so somebody has autoimmunity that almost every autoimmune condition has been linked in their research to mast cell activation so something to think about and we know mold toxins are a big trigger of that too and then in terms of after that I have this image that I like to use of one of those Jenga games and with the blocks and the bottom block in this image there's only one block on the bottom and it says mold and then if you pull that out part of the tower is going to fall down and then we see what's left because the mold toxins are going to dysregulate a hormone balance or methylation the gut is so hard to address SIBO or SIFO when we've got mold toxins that have been addressed but generally I in the mold toxin protocol when we get to the antimicrobial phase then I like to start weaving in the gut supports if there's dysregosis or SIBO or SIFO start to work with that and if somebody does have active Lyme Bartonella then I'll refer them to somebody that really works with one because I have my area but that's all referred to somebody like you or somebody in their area that can help them with that piece and then we can start on things like the hormone balancing see if there are still methylation issues all along the way I'm working with people on your foods and so I really encourage people to do low histamine and a low lectin trial and because lectins trigger muscles and they actually have what's called a C-type lectin receptor for mold and other fungal species that also these lectin foods like potatoes and corn and wheat can trigger and even our splashes like butternut squash and butchernum but I haven't do that for 68 weeks see what calms down and then not everybody has histamine and tolerance though with mass activation so it doesn't make any difference then we might ditch it but for most people I see that it makes a difference we might have to work with the oxalates but that's gotta be that's a little tricky people it is when you throw all day so I love that you said that and I want to talk just a little specific so if you're listening you are like well what histamine foods my own experience was before there was lots of blogs on histamine and I remember being like bone broth everybody says it's good but I don't do well in it uh kombucha everybody says it's good but I do horrible on it uh fermented foods they're supposed to be good for your gut but I don't do well so of course this is a list of histamine containing foods and clearly I had histamine issues but I was like why in the world these are good foods so and they are good foods for some people but it's funny because things like bone broth things like especially collagenous bone broth things like um anything fermented um any sort of like those jerky bars that are so popular with the paleo diets any sort of meat or protein that's been aged or fermented or dried uh so you might be surprised at some of these supposedly good foods and then lectins you mentioned a few um is there any other like um common lectins that people might might be aware of because they're pretty common yeah well gosh corn's a big one and I had even after I could walk and my joints were better it's still having joint burning and I finally realized it was the corn and the butternut squash oh so those are some big ones anything in the night shade family so the eggplants the tomatoes um sunflower seeds so cucumbers even but if you peel and seed the cucumbers that's going to take it down okay and I think that's a key for people to look at I have the same problem with the histamines my I when I'm into something I'm all in so laboratory with my kombucha and like cultured veggies and everything happening and I was just itching head to toe and I couldn't sleep yeah that's what led me to the histamine intolerance oh that's we just did a whole thing on these unhealthy foods and that aren't healthy if you have mass activation of histamine intolerance and oh that's a good one because I feel all the time is so proud of their bone broth or kombucha and they have histamine issues and I'm like oh sorry those are not gonna go so well but they're I mean because it's not really out there um public I mean it is out there with your information in mind but not as common because people just think of them as like bone broth it's like this right with celery juice is a big one yes so I just need get to 16 ounces so yeah it's really really high oxalate and I have people come in and they're having terrible memory burning and joint pain and it's that celery juice so but you have to step it down slow you don't want to stop those oxalate school turkey okay this is really important I'm so glad in green juices and things a lot of kales and spinnishes and things have higher oxalates especially spinach so blueberry spinach almonds these wonderful foods I remember maybe 12 months ago I tried something with more almond flour and then I was eating it regularly and also my lips got really dry and broken out and it was I'm sure it was oxalates because it was but um these are oxalates are good foods they're amazingly healthy foods so you're you do have to sometimes take those and like Beth said you maybe start with the lectins and the histamine and don't worry so much about oxalates but what you mentioned I wanted to reiterate is that if you do think you have oxalate issues you don't want to go from 100 miles an hour to zero in one day because you will dump oxalates and you will it's very very painful you'll actually flare and it's not good so it's pretty important if you do think you have oxalate issues to diminish the level um and I always say you know you're going to have to kind of titrate so that you have a pretty normal level every day a lower level maybe than what you used to but you don't necessarily want to go zero oxalates and you also don't want to go down quickly right and I I think um most people if they have an oxalate issue they can just worry about the big five the beads the spinach the fish chard rhubarb almonds I think I cover spinach um those are the major ones but the other thing I tell people is that these often aren't for life so yes I've gotten so much more histamine tolerance I can have a fourth of an avocado which is so amazing now and I can have small amounts of some of these foods and often when we address the mold and we heal the gut we get much more oxalate tolerance back we may not be eating sweet potatoes every day but we can really improve our ability to handle those foods I love that because we get these people that I always say it's like your box is getting smaller and smaller and you come in with four foods that you can eat and you still can't eat those every day so you're really really limited and I'm always like first thing when I think of that is of course the mast cell and mold because they will make the box smaller you're going to be more sensitive and part of this is because oxalates histamine mold and many other things but those are huge ones will all increase your intestinal permeability so all of a sudden you have swiss cheese for guts and you have these holes all over in your gut and then everything you're eating goes right into the bloodstream and creates more you know antigenic effect so part of it is uh you can have healing I'm like you I used to be on you know maybe 10 foods and now I can be I'm still very strict with my diet but I can eat a lot like grains I used to not be able to touch any grains I can eat quinoa and a little bit of white rice if I need to no problem at all and that was not tolerable before so a lot of times your box is getting smaller and our job Beth and I we don't want to make your box any smaller but temporarily while you're healing you might pull that in and be very restrictive so that you can lower that histamine load and inflammation and then our goal is to expand that box for you yeah exactly and I tell people if you at all can think about replacing not removing yes so let's replace spinach and let's replace spinach with curly kale with things like the flat leaf kale arugula is a huge super food for people with mast cell issues there's just so many oh I love that and I love I did not know that the curly kale for some reason I gravitate towards a dinosaur the flat kale but I didn't know the curly is more histamine is that right or more oxalates thank you yeah yeah very interesting gosh I could talk to you forever Beth this has been so fun I would love to make sure people know we talked about your website but where can they find you and how can they get involved and know when your course is coming out oh thank you Jill so we've got a website at mastcell360.com and it's M as in Mary A S T as in Tom C ELL360.com we've got a great Facebook community as well and we do free Facebook lives for people something different about mass activation every week if people are ready to jump in I've got free root causes report where people get more in depth because there was no way to cover them all the day but they can start to check off what they think they have and make sure it's being addressed we've got a supplements class and mass activation their nervous system class is going to happen November 2nd so or sorry November 10 so if people get on the email list they'll get all of that info well thank you for all the wonderful resources you provide and just all your work and I know it comes I just want to acknowledge like this comes from a very deep level of your suffering and you're overcoming and I love that you've used that to catapult you into being an expert in this and even today all the listeners and I'm sure we're going to have many more than all that you're doing thank you thank you thank you Beth for the great work that you're doing thank you and I just love that we can team up like this and really help people not have to suffer like we had to exactly exactly all right everyone well thank you for joining us this will be live recorded and then it'll be on the youtube channel so we hope to see you at an upcoming facebook live soon take care