Uncover The Histamine & Inflammation Secret Connection

Introduction to Histamine and Inflammation 0:00

Welcome to the conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. I'm your host, Dr. David Jockers. And today, I have the honor of interviewing Dr. Meg Mill. And we're talking about how to unravel the histamine inflammation connection. We know histamine plays a critical role in the inflammatory process. And some individuals are not able to metabolize histamine. And so they end up with a condition called histamine intolerance. And even worse, mast cell activation syndrome. It may be at the root of a number of different health conditions, including, gut issues, hormonal imbalances, allergies, skin conditions, migraines and mood imbalances, as well as many other different things.

And so Dr. Meg Mill is a functional medicine practitioner. She's bestselling author, speaker, and podcast host. She runs a virtual functional medicine practice, working with people worldwide to heal the root causes of seemingly unrelated health struggles through advanced diagnostic testing and personalized support. Dr. Mill's pioneered solutions for the missing link to resolving many chronic health conditions by reversing histamine intolerance and mast cell activation syndrome with her revolutionary eat eat method.

And you can find her at Megmill.com And you guys are going to really enjoy this interview. And you're gonna learn all about histamine, all about mast cell activation syndrome and its connection with chronic inflammation. So without further ado, let's go into the interview. Well, Dr. Meg Mill, great to connect with you. And I know you're an expert when it comes to histamine and mast cell activation syndrome. So I'm really excited about this interview

How Histamine Is Broken Down 1:52

because I have so many listeners that are asking me questions. Are I you know, they're coming to my my community asking questions about histamine intolerance, about mast cell activation syndrome. So I want to do a deep dive here today. And let's start with just what is histamine and how does it relate to inflammation. Yes, you know I feel like histamine is one of those things that gets a bad rap. It's sort of like cortisol because there's so many like negative effects that come from it, but actually does have a purpose.

So when the immune system detects an allergen or an invader, it releases histamine primarily from the mast cells and the base of cells as part of our immune response. So what it does is it increases the permeability of our blood vessels, and it allows our immune cells to reach those affected areas more quickly. And it really helps us with, you know, a lot of different things in the body that we'll discuss. So we see it with immune defense. So it helps protect against those harmful pathogens that we see.

It actually helps regulate our gastric acid secretion. So it can help us a break down our food and aid in our digestion. It can affect neurotransmitter activity. So it actually can affect things like norepinephrine serotonin, acetylcholine. So it's involved in our wakefulness, our alertness, our cognitive function, our brain, our mood. It also we think of it a lot with allergic responses. So it can help us get those harmful allergens out of the body. We see it actually dilate our our airways so it can work in broncho constriction to actually expel and prevent those harmful airborne things coming into our lungs in a deeper way.

And then we're going to talk about what we are. And our main thing is the inflammatory response. So it actually is a process in our inflammatory response that's actually needed. It recruits immune cells to the site of infection or injury to increase the vascular permeability and blood flow. So it helps actually get to that area. But it becomes a problem when it actually we get it in excess and it just starts to create all of these symptoms. And we have four different types of histamine receptors in our body.

So when you think about it it's all over our body. So a lot of times when we're starting to get this excess histamine, it's when we're going when we're sensitive to everything and we're going to the doctor and we're saying we have all of these symptoms and we're you know, we're a lot of times being told, oh, you're fine because we're not seeing these clear markers because it's but it's affecting more than one symptom. So we think of things like the nasal congestion and the asthma. But it also is actually a huge contributor to headaches.

And migraines. We see it with fatigue, anxiety, dizziness, heart palpitations. We can have difficulty concentrating PMS, irregular periods, flushing, joint pain, sleep disturbances. We can see high and low blood pressure, hives, rashes. So it's really this overall body effect where sometimes histamines, the underlying problem when it's out of balance and you're not knowing that. Yeah important to know. And histamine obviously is an important compound in the body. But if it builds up in excess that's when we start to have these issues.

Now how do how do we typically metabolize histamine. Because obviously not everybody has this issue. And so how does it start to build up in our system. Yeah. So you know I'd like to think of this analogy like a bucket analogy. So when you think of your body, let's picture your body as a bucket. And you have all of these things that are pouring into the bucket over and over again, and then you have holes in the bucket. So as long as those holes are as long as we're draining, we're filling up, we're draining, we're filling up or draining, we're fine and we can tolerate histamine.

It's not an issue, but we have two different things that dysregulated.

Gut Dysbiosis and Histamine-Producing Foods 5:32

So we either get let's say clogs, which we'll talk about how we break down in the bottom of the bucket so we can't drain or we get too much histamine coming in or a combination of both. We see a lot of times, and that's when we start to see all of these effects and the really affecting people. So the way we break down histamine in our body are from two different pathways. We have one that's our primary pathway in our in it's actually in our gut. So it's broken down by diamine oxidase. That's the main enzyme responsible for breaking down histamine in our intestinal tract.

And it can become compromised from several reasons. We can see genetic variants. So some people are just born with a genetic variability and, you know, have a snip with the dot enzyme. So that can lead to just a natural predisposition to a lower enzyme function. But you know, we'll talk a little bit later about you don't usually see these things coming on right from birth. So it's usually kind of this combination of factors. We also what we often see one of the biggest things is an imbalance in gut bacteria. And when that starts to happen that can impact the production of the dough.

Because the dough is produced in the lining of our intestine. So we start to see this compromised enzyme function. We also need certain nutrients to actually make DHEA. So we need things like B6, copper, vitamin C for optimal activities. And then we also can see start some of the dietary factors when we're just eating a lot. An overload of these histamine rich foods which we can get into start to just overwhelm that enzyme. And we can't break it down. We also see medications. So certain medications like Nsaids, some antidepressants, some immune modulators can actually affect this enzyme.

And then we actually also see hormones. So estrogen can actually lower Dao activity also. So when and actually progesterone helps it. So when we start to see this high estrogen low progesterone this hormone balance where we start to see estrogen dominance, that can be another place where we start to see this imbalance in that enzyme. Yeah. That's important for women because we know when women are under a lot of stress, they're gonna that's going to lower their progesterone particularly their progesterone release.

So chronic stress can play a role can tie into that. Absolutely. And so and I think a lot of people don't even they're not thinking about histamine. You know we think about okay my hormones are out of balance and I have migraines. And I you know, I'm anxious all the time and I have all these symptoms. And sometimes we need to, you know, trace it back to. Okay. Yes. They're all happening. What's connecting them. And sometimes once we, you know, it's like connecting like we do connecting all the dots is where we see we start to get these answers.

And this can be a string. And sometimes connecting a lot of those things. Yeah. And it affects so many different conditions in the body. Like you were talking about migraines, mood issues digestive issues, skin issues, a lot of people dealing with skin issues, you know, even like sun sensitivities or some people that are like, you know, I'm allergic to the sun. I remember, you know, years ago somebody told me that I'm like, how can somebody be allergic? I mean, I understand getting sunburnt, but how can you be allergic?

Like, you go out in the sun and all of a sudden he gets rashes and, you know, hives on his skin, right? Yeah. And this has to do with histamine. Yeah. I had someone recently who was like for 20 years. Every time he went out, he's like, I can't go to the beach, I can't take. And he's like, I can't be in the sun. And and we just did some gut healing work. We did some, you know, the immune modulating. And within three weeks he's like, I don't you know, I don't have this anymore. And it would be heat and sun.

And so it, it was like working out or going to the beach where. But no other time. So it's really. Yeah. It's hard. It's a lot of times it's hard to pinpoint some of these issues because they're, they're so broad. Yeah. All that's a sign that the immune system is so imbalanced and dysfunctional and fragile and so the body can't handle, you know, basically getting in the sun, even though it's obviously extraordinarily healthy. It's a it's a stressor. It's a mild stressor hormedic stressor, kind of like exercise or anything like that.

And that could push somebody like that individual. And the individual I talked with, you know, or it just pushes them over their limit, overloads their system, and they have, you know, some sort of symptoms that are related with that. Yeah. Yeah. And another, another way we break down the histamine is actually we see a lot of people with the genetic variant too. And that's becoming more known more common. So histamine and methyltransferase is another way we break down histamine in our cells. So sometimes when you have a genetic variant there you can also have some issues breaking down the histamine.

Like we also see you need CMMi. And you actually need again like B6, B12, folate. So it's getting all of those nutrients to that can be really important for the breakdown. Yeah. Super key. And so you mentioned gut dysbiosis. There are certain gut bacteria that produce more histamine I know I believe Klebsiella would be one of them. Are you familiar with some of the others. Yeah. So we have more. So actually this is what gets what gets tricky because yeah, we have, you know, a lot of things that we do for gut healing are wonder.

We need to heal the gut, but we need to do it in a way that works with histamine.

Low-Histamine Eating and Food Triggers 10:46

Because even some strains of lactobacillus can be histamine producing. So you have to be really careful with probiotics even because, you know, we're mentioned foods are high in histamine. We season lactobacillus. So we see things like Lactobacillus, morgane, Ella, Pseudomonas which are back to our Klebsiella. And Dr. Baxter or those are all Proteus. Those are all histamine producing bacteria. So it's you know, we always talk about how our microbiome is what's controlling us, how are we controlling our microbiome, or does it all us and and sometimes even if you're if you don't have the enzyme deficiency, if you're not eating high has maybe done these other insults on your body, if you're producing this back, if you have this bacteria and you have it in high levels, it can be producing histamine without any of the other things that you're doing.

And that's a really important factor because I don't know that everyone's really paying attention to this factor when they're having these symptoms and they're working on gut health. That's so important because a lot of this standard advice for healing gut issues, right? Using bone broth, apple cider vinegar, fermented foods, a lot of these things that have helped many individuals are not going to work for somebody that has histamine intolerance or mast cell activation syndrome. They're going to say, you know what?

In fact, there are people out there that will say, I actually feel better when I eat bat, you know, like when I, when I eat healthy, I feel worse, right? When I eat unhealthy, I feel better. And so a lot of times that can be related to perhaps, you know, Fodmap issues can sometimes be the issue, like they're eating a lot of broccoli and stuff like that, and they're getting more bloating. And then also histamine issues where they're, when they consume a lot of these, you know, foods that many health influencers, including myself, have promoted, they feel worse because it's overloading their histamine system.

And let's talk about some of those high, higher histamine foods. Yeah. So we're going to look at, you know, that big one that we're talking about with gut health that is you know, everyone's talking about our fermented foods. So we really have to watch fermented foods. So we're going to actually there are different things. So there's foods that are high in histamine. There's foods that liberate histamine. And then there's foods that limit Dao. So it gets confusing because you know when I'm talking with people and I'm giving them these lists explaining, okay, these all have or have different effects.

So when we're talking about high histamine foods, we're talking about things like aged cheeses, fermented foods, cured meats, alcohol. So you know, that's why if you have a glass of wine, you can say, okay, a lot of these symptoms. I had alcohol the night before. You know that that can be histamine trigger. And we have some of the histamine liberating foods. And these are a little bit more tricky. So we have things like strawberries tomatoes, bananas. Those are things that you're thinking okay those are healthy.

I'm not maybe expecting those foods to be in there. And then we can even have like tea is something that can inhibit the day and limit the domain, enzymes. So we have to really look the other the other actually there's two, two other things. One of the other things is that you also have to be really careful of leftovers. And I think that that's another tricky thing when you're someone, especially who meal preps because histamine can grow in foods. So if you're cooking, even if you're eating something, you know, let's say you're cooking chicken. It's fresh.

You know, it's a lower histamine food, but you're letting it sit in the refrigerator, you know, meal prepping for the week, and you're letting sit in the refrigerator for three, four days. You could still be getting histamine from foods that actually aren't high in histamine. So you have to be careful. I always recommend if you're someone who really, you know, meal prep and can be essential for some people just for their schedules. So if you're doing that flash, freeze your food. So cook it, freeze it right away to limit that histamine growth, because that that's something that I think can be difficult to really look at.

Yeah. The longer it sits out, even if it's in the refrigerator, the more histamine it's accumulating. So yeah super key. So that's a great tip. you know, and there's lists of different types of foods. And you know, most of them are healthier foods, right? They tend to be healthier, nutrient dense foods. So it makes it harder. What are some of the key foods, that people can be focusing on if they are dealing with histamine intolerance, mast cell activation syndrome? What are some of the lower histamine foods you mentioned?

Chicken. Yeah, chicken. You want to make sure like when you're getting your meat that you're getting it, you know the freshness. So that can be you know, if you can get it from a butcher that's that's close to you, that you know that it's more fresh, that can be, you know, something that's good. We can look at things like blueberries, apples, pears, mangoes, those are all things a lot. Most vegetables are safe. So most of the vegetables, you know, we want to be careful of some. Sometimes the tomatoes, the nightshades, the olives, pickles, sauerkraut those would be the avoids.

But other than that, you're pretty safe on vegetables. You can think of rice, quinoa, things like that can be, good go to you can go to, extra virgin olive oil for cooking. We have ghee is something that most people can tolerate. so we're looking at and you also want to a keeping a log and a journal can be helpful. So because, for example, you might not everybody responds to every food. So it's, it is an individual thing where some people I'm working with say, okay, you know what? Bananas don't seem to bother me, but I can't eat avocados.

Let's say, or which really can be individual. So really, looking at your foods and doing it more in a discovery, I want to point out that I feel like the low histamine diet isn't the end all be all for long term. So because we're, as we're short to a lot of nutrient dense foods on there, but it's it's an investigative piece when you're, you're saying, okay, do these foods bother me really pinpointing those foods while you're working on the gut health, while you're doing the other things to reduce your load, and then hopefully you can tolerate more things?

Yeah. That's key. And what are some of the other steps other than trying to remove some of these histamine high histamine foods and focusing on the lower histamine foods. And you don't have to get all the histamine out of your system. In fact, that's pretty pretty much impossible. You're just looking for the major food triggers and the overall histamine load that you're consuming, right? So you might be able to even

Healing the Gut and Calming Mast Cells 16:58

one person might be able to consume a quarter of an avocado. But if they add the quarter of the avocado with the banana, right, or half an avocado, it's going to exceed their threshold. So just kind of understanding that it's it's like a threshold idea. Like you can handle a certain amount, but once you exceed that threshold and it overwhelms your system. Yes. Yeah. So you know, the first thing that that I like to do with people is work on gut health. Like I said, really get that, get the diamine oxidase firing at all cylinders, really getting the ability to break down food, taking out all of those invaders.

We talked about the, you know, the ones that are histamine producing. But then really like, do you have parasites, do you have yeast? Do you have other things that are assaulting your body that is causing this inflammatory response and things to get out of control? We look at leaky gut because once you break that intestinal barrier, then histamines being released into the bloodstream, which is causing more reactions. So we need to really start to focus on that. And in in our immune system is part of our gut.

So we, you know, that can create the immune response. So it's all these interconnected things. But then I move on to really working on some nervous system work and some stress reduction. So stress can actually also, you know, release it can cause release of histamine from mast cells. It can affect the the Dom enzyme function. Two it affects our gut. It's you know, so really working on your stress levels, your cortisol bringing some of those things down. You know, one of the reasons that we start to have this histamine issue can be mast cell activation syndrome.

And so when that happens usually there's all these other things that are going on. You have underlying gut infections. You might have you might have mold illness. You might have line, you might have, you know, viruses. All these things are starting to assault your immune system. And basically your mast cells go haywire and they start just acting crazy with everything you know, your food, your air, your emfs, or, you know, you start just reacting to everything around you. And so we need to sometimes calm if that's one of the factors, we need to also calm work on calming the nervous system down, calming the immune system down, and actually rewiring that so that you're not as reactive.

So sometimes it takes some of that work to not react to everything and really start to calm your your system down. Yeah, it's a great reminder. And I know you have your eat method eat method. Can you explain that and how you approach that. Yeah. So first of all with the eat method we work on enlightening you. So right we're working in some of these conversations were enlightened ourselves on what is what's triggering us what's causing this. And so we want to look at okay, all the factors and we combine everything.

And then we work on aligning. So the next part is we need to, you know, really align the body, align the nervous system, align the immune system. You know, balance your hormone, work on your gut health. Do get it. Work on your environmental factors. All of the things that we need to do to bring your body back into balance. And then the last part is we set you up to thrive. And in some sometimes in that we also do need to move into some detoxing and removing some of the toxins, the toxin overload.

And then what are all of those foundational pieces? All of the nutrients, all of the things you need to do to thrive going forward. Because that's what we're trying to get. Yeah, I like that. So enlightening, aligning and then thriving. So you're kind of going through those phases. But there's a lot of details within each phase. Let's talk about some of the key supplements that you use to help people down regulate, histamine and help help them, deal with histamine intolerance more effectively. Yeah.

So, you know, quercetin is a great one. So we, you know, we want to do things that are going to stable, you know, do some things that are going to stabilize the mast cells. We want to do things that natural and histamine. So I do a lot of course often I actually use a combination I like a combination supplement called digest that I'll use that I've had a lot of success with that with people. just really I've seen people go from actually, you know, we're working on all of the other things, but yeah, people will come to me on three different zero tech like taking three.

You mean the zero tech daily dose is one a day? Yeah, three Zyrtec a day. And not being in control under control. And so we just work on these. XR tech is an antihistamine mega-popular. It's a job medication. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. You got a pharmacy background. So you're used to talking. I'm sorry. I know this cover. Yeah. So their tag is a is an antihistamine medication. So you know that can lower it. Antihistamines can lower but they also have side effects. So and then people are having to take them with the side effects.

And as we're saying you know some of these receptors we have four different histamine receptors. And that's why you can also feel tired when you're taking them. You can have some of these other effects. So so they'll be taking that. So sometimes over you know, dosing basically on antihistamines. And then we can bring them back into doing something much more natural and really stabilize. But we're also working on the other. Yeah I got a little off track there. And so you. Mentioned you mentioned quercetin and just bio flavonoids in general.

What what kind of dosage do you typically see being most clinically beneficial for people as far as like utilizing quercetin or other bio flab and weights? You know, that's a little bit with this population. Hard to say because people are very sensitive. So I see a lot of times when we usually have to build like build up in dosing. So that's like another, I guess point to bring up that sometimes when you're having histamine reactions, you're actually reacting to everything. And so you don't feel like you can even take supplements because you could be reacting to supplements. You could be.

So I actually usually will start someone on a lower dose and build up as tolerated. Sometimes when people are more sensitive to they'll actually respond to a lower dose due to the sensitivity to things. So it's not necessarily that you're not getting any effect from it, but you sometimes have to go slow and build and build up. It just depends on where your level of sensitivity is. But people can be starting to react to that, and that's something that people start to feel like my body's against me.

I react to everything. I can't take everything. But just my message to you is be patient, because if you it's so worth it. When you do take that time, you can even break things. Some of them open. We take that time and we just increase. The other one is to actually add the enzyme. So you can add a diamine oxidase enzyme to your meals. So whenever you know you're looking at breaking down histamine, can you add that enzyme and see if that's going to make a difference. And especially I tell people to take one when they go out to dinner because you don't always know what's in your meal, especially then.

Yeah. So the enzymes as well as those bio flavonoids, how about vitamin C.

The EAT Method and Supportive Supplements 23:58

Are you seeing that that can help people as well. Yeah. Yes. Yep I use a lot of vitamin C. And again you can you know it that that will vary. You know you also want to use we're doing vitamin C. We can do zinc too. And like I was saying even even doing some things like some B we have to have B vitamins to get that. You know we're methylated that histamine and methyltransferase. So we're using some B vitamins. So it's really putting in all the pieces and really looking at that person. And what are their unique deficiencies and then supporting them in those places.

Yeah I found resveratrol can also be really helpful for a lot of these individuals. Yeah. And yeah. And like some sort of a binder like it could be an amino globulin product. For example, there's bovine serum. immunoglobulin C. So, you know, there's one called Mega IgG. There's a bunch of different brands out there that have those. I found those to be real effective to, you know, for, for helping a lot of individuals with that. They helped pull out a lot of endotoxins, LPs and different endotoxins in the gut and help to basically remove some of that high histamine bacteria in the system.

So that can be helpful. Yes. Yeah, I use as a lot to yes. Binders and and then, you know, even making sure that you're getting the binders and getting the all of your drainage pathways open before, you know, before you're doing any detoxing to. What do you like to do to help, help open up those drainage pathways. Yeah, it's a it we do a lot I do binders, we do I like to use I use infrared sauna. If you can tolerate the sauna. Yeah. We do a lot of that. We can do some Epsom salt baths, some cat. We did do some castor oil packs.

We do, you know, just different things that are opening up some of those pathways and getting you ready to actually start to, to detox. Good hydration. You know, you got to pee and keep your weight to good health, right? Yes. Yeah. Hydration for sure. Our basics. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Have you noticed, have you noticed correlation are a lot of people that deal with histamine intolerance, mast cell activation having constipation or sluggish bowel movements? I do find that very common. So that getting the bowel movements as a regular, you know, having at least one formed bowel movement every day is really a general first step that we do.

So that's when we're getting some of these prepared because you need to be able to eliminate, you have to be able to eliminate the toxins, or there's no sense in doing any of the other work because you're just going to reabsorb it. So we have to make sure that that pathway is open. So yes, absolutely. And then we another thing is also looking at your environment and pulling out what are your environmental exposures. Because when we're talking about you know, we talked about plugging, you know unclogging the pathways.

But then what's going in that bucket. So what are you exposed to. Or do you have allergens in your home. Do you put air purifiers maybe start in your bedroom. Are you you know, are you using a lot of plastics? Do you have all of these things that could be assaulting your body in different ways in your environment? So we start to clean up the environment and kind of look at, you know, heavy metals. Is there mold in your house when we have mold that's going to be assaulting our body all the time? Yeah.

It's key. I mean, a really to break it down you have to think about all of us are consuming toxins in the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the food that we eat more. We can clean those areas up and consume less toxins. We have less coming in and then open up all of our drainage pathways so more toxins are higher. Affinity of the toxins we consume are leaving our body, are being eliminated. That's going to keep our body in balance going to help us be more resilient, when we're accumulating those toxins because we're bringing in so much and we're not able to, eliminate them effectively, then our system gets overburdened and that's going to trigger that immune system.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes it's hard to associate some of that because it's about make you have to make changes in your environment, which isn't easy. I mean, especially when we're talking about mold. If if you have mold in your house, it can feel, especially when you're not feeling well, it can feel very overwhelming. And how do you get it checked properly? What do you do? Do you have to make it can be an investment? It can. But if you're going to ignore some of these things, then you and you wonder why you can't feel better.

It's, you know, it's it's the chicken or the egg. And so sometimes just actually stepping back and thinking, okay, what am I willing to do to feel better? And that can be later. So sometimes it can be very quick layers that change things fast. And other times we just have to be patient when we're talking about people particularly, you know, when you get to that point where your mast cells are overreacting, when we're really, you know, what do you need to do? Do you need to take tiny like little tiny doses to get to a full capsule?

Do you need to look at your environment? Do you need to, you know, maybe have some mold remediation done? Look deeper. There may be steps. And sometimes when you don't feel well, it's hard to take those steps. So just having faith that it will get better, that there are things that you can do to feel better. Because a lot of people have been told, a lot of people in this place have one kind of feel like their bodies can be against them. And then I also have been told that there's nothing wrong with them when they feel terrible.

And I think it's just really a hard place to be when you're feeling defeated because you're you have all of these symptoms and no one can give you any answers. Yeah, absolutely. What are you using to determine if somebody has histamine intolerance or mast cell. Are there specific lab tests you look at. Are there symptom questionnaires. Somebody comes into you. They're dealing with let's say migraines. you know hot flashes or whatever. What how do you break down and determine, okay, this this person's really dealing with histamine intolerance here.

usually we start with. So when I have people before we even meet the first time, do very detailed intake questionnaires and symptom questionnaire. So we really get their whole health history, their lifestyle, their symptoms. And then I review that before we even meet the first time. And then we do a 90 minute intake consultation where we do a deep dive into all of their symptoms. And I really would say for that, I start by connecting the dots, because I'm not I'm not at a point where this is all like I, you know, I see people for all sorts of different reasons gut health issues, migraines, hormones, all people are coming to me.

So it's not like, oh, you've been diagnosed, now you're here as much. It's like we're figuring you have. To figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be oxalate issues.

Testing, Lifestyle Factors, and Root Causes 30:48

It could be unrelated, you know, Sibo unrelated to histamine or a parasite unrelated to histamine. Like you don't know when they first come in. So there's a process you gotta go through in order to, to figure this out. Yes. And so once I start to see this combination of, you know, symptoms, then we will start to do some testing. So it really will depend on a lot of times for me, it will just depend on what is the person's biggest complaint. what's bothering them the most. And then we really peel the onion back.

So we'll, I'll start them as we're doing some of the testing. We'll start them on a low histamine diet to start. Because I do think if you're listening to this and you're questioning, hey, is this me? You know, really just starting on that to see, okay, is this something when I'm bringing these foods down, do I notice a difference? You know, if you're starting something like that, some of the supplements that we were talking, like the quercetin, an overall or combination product or vitamin C, and your you're also doing a low histamine diet.

Are you feeling a little bit better? And like we said, that's not long term. But it can give us some insight into we're bringing that histamine that low down. Can we tell the difference. And so we're we I usually we'll start with that for an investigative piece. And then I have people tracking what their you know what they're eating when their symptoms happen. And it's amazing when you start to notice the symptoms, things you never thought you would pick out before start to appear. And you probably see this too.

And it's like once people are paying attention, it's like, oh, I ate that, and my face turned bright red, or my nose ran, or my nose was like, I, you know, I looked like Rudolph after I ate or had rice and things that they weren't even paying attention to start to become noticeable to them, you know, because they're actually identifying the foods and be able to make that association. So we're looking at that and then we start doing the testing based on, you know, what kind of what their symptomatology is.

And what we need to do. And I say in something like this, it's peeling the layers back as we talked about, there's a lot of different connections here. And it's like, okay, well where is that? Where is your main part, that point that we need to start and where do we need to peel the layers back to bring everything back and balance. So you start bringing in some dietary trials, right. Because they're just basically doing elimination diets, trying different things out, kind of figuring out what patterns that you're looking at.

Yep. Yep. We're doing that while we are while we're then we start doing some of the testing and some, you know, the investigative work that way. But I'm, I start them on the low histamine diet at first and another thing is you know when you make sure that when you're following a low histamine diet, that you actually get it from someone who actually works with histamine, because there are a lot of variation out there, and sometimes there's a lot of confusion. People say, and it might be you mentioned oxalate, so it may for you go beyond histamine.

There could be oxalates, it could be salicylates, there could be others FODMAPs that we mentioned, you know, there could be. Makes it super hard because there's so many foods that overlap there. But, you kind of have to figure out where are the main triggers. And a lot of times people that have histamine issues. Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to, confuse the listeners here. But a lot of times people that have histamine issues have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And these higher Fodmap foods like broccoli or it should be a lower histamine food trigger more symptoms for that individual.

Right. Because it overloads their system. They get more endotoxin release triggers their immune system. So yeah, there's a lot of you know, this is where working with a practitioner, you know, some of these things, you could trial a short diet trial on your own and see what you notice by working with a great practitioner. Right. Like Doctor Meg here. It can be really helpful. quick question are is there any markers that you look at on blood work, like maybe basophils if you're looking at white blood cells?

are you looking at like, I know there's precision point diagnostics and all if you're familiar with them. Yeah. So we'll look at we can look at you can actually get tests that measure histamine levels in your blood. So you can, you know, we can look at histamine levels and we can actually look at deer enzyme levels. And beyond that we can actually also look at the genetic factors too. So a lot of times I'll do genetic testing on people and see okay. Because there's you know, do you have a pro density to not be able to break down histamine as well.

And so we'll look at some of those genetic tests. You know, we can look at some of those levels. We can look at the genetic test. We can look at things like that that start to show us okay. What what's your picture here. And so you know we we brought in methyl you know, are you methylated. Do you have a genetic propensity for the not to process do. And you may be that this is where it can get complicated because your DNA levels actually may be fine. You may have I mean I, I we start there. That's one of the things we look at.

But when we're looking at it it's complicated. So it's like where for you is the unique imbalance. Is it something you mentioned Sibo. Do you could you have a parasite. Could you have the H. Pylori. Could you have these things that are assaulting you? Could you have a dysregulated nervous system. It's putting all of those pieces together and really working on them all at the same time. I mean, even things like making lifestyle modifications, we didn't really get into that. But, you know, how is your stress management?

Are you are you sleeping? Let's go back to the basics. Do you drink water like you mentioned and do you sleep. And so we, you know, even some of the foundational pieces getting into that. Are you exercising. Do you move you know, do you move. Do you have lymph drainage. Do you have different things that are putting everything into place? And I think when you're working with a practitioner, then you also can have the tools to just have everything to track it. So we can make it easy for you in a way that's not guesswork.

I think sometimes when we're looking at all of these things and it's like, oh, I'm learning this from this person, I'm learning this from this person and this person's. And it can be contradictory. And so it's it's getting that clear picture saying, okay, what what is going on? We're putting these pieces together. And do I have a system that I can follow that that makes it easy for me when we're working on some bringing down some of these things, you know, and really, what are all the pieces? Yeah, it's really good.

I like I really like this precision point diagnostics. you know, I've used that on, on different individuals where you're looking at

Working with Dr. Meg Mill and Hope for Recovery 37:28

DAO levels, you're looking at histamine. The DAO to histamine ratio really gives you a lot of good information there and also looks at endotoxin LPs, which, you know, can be coming from H. Pylori in your stomach. It could be coming from, oral bacteria. A lot of times people have gingivitis or poor oral microbiome and they're swallowing all of this endotoxin and whatnot that's getting into their system. Right. And and driving up their immune system. So there's a lot, a lot of a lot of nuances with this.

It's a complex condition. We've touched on a lot of this. I would definitely recommend checking out Dr. Meg's website. Dr. Meg mill you know, especially if you feel like any of this really resonated with you, with maybe symptoms you're dealing with or a family member. Check out MegMill.com and, you've got a great website over there, some really great information, and you're working one on one with a lot of these clients as well. What does that look like for somebody? you mentioned like a long consultation symptom questionnaire.

anything else to touch on there. Yeah. So we do I do usually with this population I will do six months because it does take some time. So we'll do a 90 minute consult. And then you get actually it's a concierge service that you get for six months. And we're really working on in depth, peeling the onion back and getting all of these things. We're going to work on the testing. We're going to work on the diet, on your lifestyle, on, you know, nervous system regulation, all of all of the things you you get me taking you on these I absolutely yeah.

And it's a full like it's a full approach and that's what I think sometimes if you need to get the results. But I'm very results focused. So that's that's my goal. I want I want to get results. Yeah absolutely. And you know beyond histamine intolerance is this condition of mast cell activation syndrome, which is kind of like you're basically your system is super sensitive at this point in the mainstream medical system. They'll kind of tell you, you just need to be on medications for the rest of your life.

But I know you've worked with people, you know they're dealing with this is there hope for for people that are listening that perhaps were diagnosed with that? Yes. And I think that the key point there is patients, so it's really being patient and taking that time to like I said, people can be so hyper reactive that they feel like they can't take anything. And so we can't move the needle if you can't take anything. But if you actually take the time and you will do those small doses, we will do little things and we just we just take big.

You know, I always say one step forward. It's just a baby step, a baby step. As long as you're taking that one step forward and I just had someone recently. Who was it? She went to a, you know, because you may have seen other functional medicine practitioners or people in the natural space that that just still like, you feel like I'm not going to get answers because I still haven't. And she went to one of the biggest functional medicine well known clinics in the in the U.S and she was like, I just couldn't do anything.

I was reacting everything and I'm you know, I'm never going to. And I said, well, let's work. Here's what we're going to do. And she has, you know, she's tolerating supplement. She's feeling amazing. It just took longer. And it just the patience to say, okay, we're going to stick with this. It might be a longer journey. It's a marathon not a race. But if we do these, if we look into all of the reasons that are assaulting your immune system, if we slowly go through, then there is hope and we can. We see it every day.

But but it is a journey. And and you do have to be ready to. Okay. Maybe I do need to make some changes. Yeah, absolutely. And if that's the case, you really want to work with a very patient, compassionate and empathetic practitioner that's also very analytical. And I think that's kind of your skill set is combining all of that, together because it's a long journey. And that's why six months in a sense, you need that because there's going to be a lot of little short term trials, things like that, to kind of help you move, take that one baby step at a time to the point where you know you've got your life back.

So really key, Meg, thanks so much for your time, guys. Check her out. Megmill.com. And, we'll see you guys in a future interview. Be blessed everybody.