Why So Many Sick with Mast Cell Activation, Histamine

Introduction to Beth O'Hara 0:00

For the. Hey everybody. Welcome back to this episode of the Reversing Marcel Activation Syndrome and Histamine Intolerance Summit. I'm your co-host, doctor Tom Moorcroft, and I'm really excited. Today is going to be a great conversation because I get to hang out and chat with, my really great friend and our host, Beth O'Hara, and, before we start chatting with Beth, because I know you've seen her in so many amazing interviews, I thought it'd be nice to give you a little bit about her background.

Beth is a functional naturopathy consultant who specializes in complex, chronic cases of mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance, and mold toxicity. She's the founder and clinical director of Mast Cell 360, a functional naturopathy practice designed to look at all those factors that are surrounding health conditions from genetic and epigenetic, psychosocial, environmental, biochemical and, you know, most importantly, probably in my mind, the emotional component to that brings that completeness.

She does hold a doctorate in functional naturopathy, a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, and I find it so interesting. I love all the bios we get to read about people like we have doctors as sexology and masters in marriage and family therapy, and so much of what I know about Beth is it brings it back the human side of things. So it's really cool to learn that about your background and the importance of family and self care. So, she designed Marcel 360 to be a kind of a practice that she wished existed when she was severely ill with mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance, muscle toxicity, neuroinflammation, Lyme, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue.

Our paths are very similar here. So but she has the Mk 360 method, which is used exclusively by practitioners at Marcel 360 to build personalized, effective roadmaps for healing. And so, Beth, this has been such an honor to do this whole thing with you. So I'm glad that I get to chat with you today. Oh, I'm so excited. And you have just wonderful energy. And it's always feeds me to get to talk to you. Thank you for doing this interview. Yeah, I'm excited. Like, I'm reading through everything. I'm like, oh my God.

Like, we all have so many similar overlapping paths and some that are a bit different. And I, I'm, I'm really interested. I mean, I know that, like, we listed off some of the things you experienced, but, you know, I'm interested in, like, you know, what got you into this stuff, like what's sort of the backstory and then, you know, and how because I think we learn so much about how effective treatments can be created by hearing what you went through and how you got here. Yeah. Well, it's been a quite a journey.

And I'll give you the short version, which leaves out a lot of details, but the big picture. So when I was seven, we moved to the country and it was an old farmhouse, and my parents had the Bob Zeller dream of rehabbing this, you know, dilapidated farmhouse and nobody knew about mold toxicity back then. Nobody had any ideas. But that house was full of mold. And we also spent a lot of time playing outside, which felt like a great adventure. I was really into learning, was wilder, and I got to be outside, you know, and run in the fields.

And I really had free rein of the countryside. I got to run down the creeks and do you know, that was an amazing experience for me. But I had lots of tick bites, lots and lots. And we had dogs, indoor, outdoor dogs, and we had cats with fleas. And looking back, I know now that I had Lyme, Bartonella and BGA on top of the mold toxicity. I developed mast cell symptoms, pretty early and would break out head to toe in hives when I was nine. Just to add some icing to the cake. I was kicked in the head by a horse and had a severe head injury.

A pretty severe TBI. And, and, you know, country kind of hospital or, you know, more rural hospital area. Nobody knew anything about head injuries back then. And, I got stitches and sent home. And the doctors were completely shocked that my skull was not fractured. What? They didn't X-ray was the rest of my spine.

Beth's Early Illness and Environmental Exposures 4:24

And I had multiple fractures through my spine that were found until I was in my 20s. But I had severe chronic pain that started at that age. So I insomnia, anxiety, quite, quite severe anxiety. I haven't shared this part of my story much, but I'll I'm ready to share it on the summit. I also developed, autism type symptoms. After that, I could not read and I really clicked. When I heard your story about I couldn't read facial expressions anymore. I couldn't tell intentions. I didn't know what people needed and I couldn't monitor.

And I had this deep empathy, but I couldn't bridge it out and I couldn't communicate my world. So my world became very small. It was a hard childhood. And then it continued, I, you know, we went doctor to doctor. They gave me a lot of antihistamines that help short term, and they shut down the hives. I had severe asthma. We improved the asthma and my big drive, so I was on the Asperger's side. I still identify some with being on the other side of the spectrum, which surprises a lot of people. But it did take me about ten years of working with different practitioners to develop facial expression and voice modulation.

And so all of that, I've been through a good bit. And when I was a young person, I sat at six years old, I was going to go to medical school, and I the reason where this ties in with being on the Asperger side of the spectrum is if I decide I'm going to get into something, I am 100% all in. I am all in 16. I wanted Gray's Anatomy for my birthday. That's all I wanted. Just give me a copy of Gray's Anatomy so I can study. And I think it's pretty hardcore. It's pretty hardcore. And out in the country, you know, animals die, bands get bleach.

So bring these bags of bleached bones home and reassemble them in the backyard to learn the bone structure. So that was that was my, geeky childhood and all I wanted to do. And when I got into college, my chronic fatigue and the pain, the fibromyalgia and I started to get joint pain, brain fog was worsening. Looking back, I was never out of mold and just went from moldy place to moldy place to moldy place because there all these low income places. And, by the time I hit, I had multiple scholarship offers for college and by the time that it was time to go, I had multiple scholarship offers for medical school and a scholarship for undergrad.

But for medical school was really hard to get. No kid. And but I had to turn them down. I was too sick, I couldn't go, and it just still is one of the most devastating things in my life. But it was a crossroads and I wanted to go into neurology, and I really wanted to be a brain surgeon. I loved dissection, I loved certain, you know, anything surgery, loved watching surgery videos. But I would have been a very traditional medicine doctor, and I don't think I might have deviated off of that. My path when I couldn't go and figure out what else to do, and I became a chronically ill patient.

But the other game changer in my life was at 19, when I was in college. I needed two credits, and I was too ill to do almost everything that they offered. Right. I didn't have the cognitive ability or the spatial awareness to do billiards. That was one of my possibilities. There was no way I could do basketball or things like that. I just I couldn't not happen. I could hardly walk a three blocks. But, I saw yoga. And growing up in the country, I didn't know what yoga was. So I thought that yoga was sitting on a mat chanting om for an hour and taking a nap so that I could do this.

That's awesome. And when, I got into the class, fortunately for me, the teacher was an incredible anger yoga teacher, and this was her life path. She was dedicated to it as a spiritual practice, and it opened a whole world. I had no idea that existed because I had really fostered my, left brain. And I had all this early sensitivity to things, and I'd shut it all down because I didn't know how to explain it. In terms of experiencing things, sensing things. And it opened that back up for me and, and what's possible.

I also couldn't touch the blocks, and I had severe hypermobility and such severe muscle spasm that I was so tight I couldn't bend over the basketball and football players were more flexible than I was. Oh my gosh. So, all of that kind of led me by the time I was in my late 20s, the, the Lyme, the, oxalate issues, the mast cell issues, the histamine issues had led to where I could barely walk. I had to use a cane to just hobble to the bathroom, had to wear orthopedic shoes, which as a woman, my friends were going out clubbing plateaus.

I was wearing Doc Martens and, with a dress because that's all I could do. And I, I had a horrific panic attacks, insomnia. I didn't sleep for four years. There were many times where I wanted to quit and give up, and I had yoga. Saved my life. I in college, I was self-medicating with alcohol, at a very high level, at a dangerous level. And, yoga got me paying attention to my body. What I was eating, what I was, the effects of the alcohol. So this path to healing has taken so much to become from so many angles.

And the spiritual and emotional journey has been a huge piece of it. And the physical journey and figuring out the mass helps. Then the mold toxicity, because I couldn't tolerate the Lyme treatments, right. I'm just thinking like, it's so interesting that like, you were going to go like for me too. I was like looking at conventional medicine. I'm like, but it's it's cool, but it's super, like cognitively like addicting. Like you're like, oh my God, I can and, you know, do this and do that and check out the anatomy and surgery as if.

But like you said, it's just like there was like crossroads and where you're like, I can't imagine the world without you doing this, you know? Right. Well, it's you're welcome. And it's true. It's like, you know, if you were just we need brain surgeons, right? But we also need a lot more people who are looking at really in the non acute phase. How do we how do we get over all these things. And it's just interesting to hear about like the the journey with as you were talking about yoga and I mean everyone will you know learn how it kind of that works in my background as well.

But you said like yoga saved you essentially it's but I'm thinking like, but wait, you wouldn't even have known about yoga. Probably unless you got sick. Yeah, I wouldn't have learned it opens. I would have been running or anything like that. I would never have taken that course because I thought it was woowoo and stupid. I mean, literally, that's what I thought, right? And I thought it was I was going to breeze through it. It was actually the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. Yeah. I was so used to going into anything that was academic, excelling and not having to work hard.

Or if I worked hard, it was fun and I enjoyed it and I could not figure out what is this yoga thing and how do I get good at it? How do I work hard at it to win? I couldn't win, I know I couldn't win, it was it was one the hardest things I'd ever done. And it completely changed me, completely changed me. And I actually ended up training and becoming a medical yoga therapist while I was sick. Because I thought that that would open up avenues for my healing. And I did that for a while. Then, you know, kind of moving along.

I actually cleared the Lyme, the Bartonella, and the area. I was a lot of herbs once. I tolerate supplements again. But I did get so sensitive. I was down to ten foods, and I couldn't even do a sprinkle of, curcumin. I couldn't just sprinkle quercetin. It would just set my insomnia and my anxiety off. My nervous system was a wreck. Just a complete wreck. Had hallucinations I had I mean, it was horrible time.

Yoga, Healing, and the Shift in Perspective 13:00

I wouldn't wish it on anybody. But we're here treating those folks because we now, I, I just want to interject a quick question, though, because I bet that comes to mind as you're saying this. Like, there's so many of us where chronic illness, attempts and or we have the ability for it to kind of, redefine us, in a positive or negative way and take away some of the things where we've identified ourselves when you're talking about, like, every, like that kind of typical, type A easy left brain achievement, or if it's hard, it's fun.

Hard. Especially since I'm kind of winning. Do you see like. And then then the yoga. Like yoga. From my experience, you can't you can do it regularly, but you just have to be humble with the result in order for it to work. Do you see kind of parallels between like, you know, DC, certain groups of patients or clients who do really like, who try to overachieve, and does that help or hinder their progress? Or what about the person who's a little more humble in the process? I mean, does that help accelerate healing or slow it down?

Oh my gosh, absolutely. I'm so glad you asked this. And I ran myself into the brick wall so many times thinking I was going to power through. I was just going to get it done. You know, learning over and over. No, that you don't start with a whole tablet or whole capsule, no matter what they tell you. This always backfires. And a sixth of the capsule backfires. And I had to. I didn't know anybody else. Who sensitive, Tom. I just like so many other people we talked to. I never met a single person in their life who was dealing with what I was dealing with.

I thought I was the only one. I thought that I, I thought for a while, I finally kind of took in what I was told and thought I was crazy at one point, and that there was still this slight glimmer that knew, you know, this is real and there's a way out of it. But I had to shift out of being there, and I'm still very driven. And I'm very passion driven now and mission driven. And I have to watch that to not overdo. But I've come to a place now where I've got the balance of the right and the left brain, if we want to call it that, or the, the research, the knowledge, but that intuition.

And that's what being sick required me to develop, was that intuitive side. And I would not have given it the credence. And I was the little kid that three years old I still remember well. My earliest memories was sitting with ants and having a relationship with the aunts and being so happy to be in this communion with these ants on the sidewalk. But then I got something made me shut all that down. So this made me open it back up and it's, it it greatly improved my healing to go to have that balance and I think it brings a different skill set for the clients that we work with to, to be able to be very receptive in what's happening for them and listening to them and picking up.

And it's like, because of what I've gone through, I can actually smell mold through that, right through it. I can smell it when it's in their house. I know, I just, I feel it and I had to shut all that down. But I'm not special in this. We all have these capacities. It's whether we've, been receptive and open to them and worked with them because it's not like, oh, it's just on or off. It's it's a development. But I think that that's what it's like, so powerful about what you're talking about is that so many of us like, experienced chronic illness and our sensitivity is just blown open.

Right? But it was really similar. I went to an osteopathic training, my first sort of like cranial, osteopathic course, and I was already feeling a lot of stuff. I was sensitive going in, but it was like the floodgates opened. And then somebody told me, like, okay, you know, it's here, but now you need to turn it off. And I was like, that doesn't seem right. But others of our mentors are like, you. You learn when the kind of how to adjust it. And I think that that's one of the gifts I'm hearing from you.

It's like you got this intuition and the thing I want to reflect back that I heard from you, too, is that not only coming in with empathy and compassion because you've been there with your clients, but there's and then there's that intuition of of the gestalt of what's going on and maybe that mold in the home or whatever. But I just it dawned on me, it's like one of the things that so many of us are looking for is this, a sense of being validated. That's what's going on, is real. There's something going on that, I need connection and community.

And I just feel like energetically when, when I, when we speak, I get that connection right. And I can imagine sitting in your chair because I know people reflect this to me, that that being heard for the first time, even though they've told the story to everybody, but truly as a human being in their soul being heard. So I just really wanted to punctuate that. The intuition allows such a deeper connection. And you also can learn, like we said, the control that. Yeah, it's it's really important that people feel safe with the provider for them to heal, whether, you know, whether it's a an osteopath, an MD, whether it's a physical therapist, it's a, you know, massage therapist, that that safety is necessary for us to be able to to relax in the nervous system and allow themselves to calm down, just that peace.

And that's what we've gone back to again and again in the summit. Is that the role of of safety, the role of the nervous system, the role of our relationships with other people, our relationships with ourselves and developing that and something that has so what's happening with all of us, with chronic illness is not about any one of us individually. It's really about what's happening in our world. And we've shifted out of I mean, I really think about how a lot of tribes, in in this country, in the US, a lot of native people, when the Europeans came over said, these people are crazy, right.

And and I don't mean anyone who's sick. I'm saying our culture, the culture, there's an illness in terms of the culture and there's an illness in terms of if we want to think of it that way. And as an illness of what has happened environmentally, and this is what's happening in mass oxidation, but also mold toxicity in line is what is going on around us. And those of us with these sensitivities, with mast cell activation syndrome, even those of us who are presenting with mold toxicity with Lyme, because, you know, just looking at studies were like, what, 60.5% of the world's population has been exposed to Lyme, right?

But not everybody has is symptomatic. Those of us that are symptomatic are the canaries in the coal mine where the first warning bells saying this world, the way what we're doing to this world cannot continue, you know, the mass production of plastic. Now we're all eating the up to 52 credit cards worth of plastic a year, you know, up to a week, a credit card, a week worth of plastic in our water. We're absorbing it through the polyester fibers. It's the the what's happened with the food supply.

It's what's happened with conventional farming and how horrifically the animals are treated. And those of us who are sensitive since the year that you know, that we feel it. I absolutely feel the difference between, you know, my husband jokes a little bit about with our meat, the the bison or the cows or the chickens are tucked in the bed at night, but it's it's a huge difference in terms of where these animals pumped through growth hormones, antibiotics, where they pumped up with stress hormones when they went to slaughter.

And, you know, and then the difference with that, and the difference with an animal that's been treated with fat and kindness, and I would love to be a vegetarian, but it doesn't. I was for six years and it doesn't work for my body. And I feel, oh my God, that's crazy. Me too. Same thing. I tried so hard. The thing is. So I think that like one of the important parts is like, it's like your relationship with the environment and the global relationship with the human relationship with the human environment is like it's being lost.

I mean, it's while we're going through a shift, I hope I don't want it. Like I always try to be careful with my words, like it's not being lost, it's changing. And it's an opportunity for some of us to lead who are intuitive like this. And one of the things I do is like, just look at I say thank you to the to the meat, to the animal that the meat came from, even to the plants, because a lot of times they're like, oh, it's good to be a vegetarian. We forget the plants are energetic beings. Oh my gosh.

I'm reading this book called The Hidden Life of Trees and Trees have an analog to our nervous system and they feel pain. All plants feel pain. So when I go out even to pick the herbs, I grow a lot of my own herbs. And I'm really in connection with the herbs that I'm growing and making into tea. And it's like healing herbs. I say thank you to the plant and I ask the plant watch, which can I pick what's okay? And I give a message of this is the need for now. Thank you so much for supporting me. And this is what I really want to share with people is that we're dealing with mass activation syndrome.

So toxicity, tickborne infections, whatever kind of load you're dealing with. I know, at least from my own experience, I slid into why did this happen to me? Why is this happening to me and nobody else? Why am I having to deal with this? Why is my life so horrible? And there's absolutely a truth to that. And what I've shifted to is going, and I still do maintenance on my health. It's not like I don't taking supplements. I mean, I still have health maintenance and, my body has I have severe chronic injuries, and it takes a lot of work to keep my body functioning.

Well, my body has high needs, and I take good care of my body, but what I've shifted to is instead saying this is an opportunity for all of us. Who are these frontline alarm bells, frontline canaries in the coal mine, to be leaders in this and be leaders and saying, you know, those of us who have to buy water filters, we've got to get air purifiers and we have to get clean meat that was frozen after slaughter. We've got to buy organic. It's not just like, oh, I've got to sink all this money into it.

It's like we need to live cleanly and we need to live in connection with this earth that we're on. Because as, someone who I daily respect has worked with says this is the only home we have. Yeah, this is it. This is all we have. So we're not going to go set up a colony on Mars and be okay. We're going to set up a colony, Mars, and be really sick because we are beings of this Earth.

Safety, Intuition, and the Role of Chronic Illness 24:36

And we we are the leaders in this. And I hope that people can take away that as much work as it takes to heal that we are empowered and making these changes for ourselves, for our children, our grandchildren and future generations to come and the world so badly needs those of us who are awake to this and experiencing this. Yeah, it's just so beautifully sad. And you know, I totally agree. And you look at it and it's like the other part I see is like when you're investing in the food, the air purifiers and stuff, you're that's one other way where you're saying, hey, my, I'm putting myself and the needs of my self first, and then it's like the universe or life force God, whatever you want to call it, reward. Is that right?

And it's like if you get 5% improvement in your health and you cherish it and you are so happy about it, and you recognize that it's not a pain in the ass to get the special food and then take the supplements a certain way. But it but every time you take that action you're symbolizing, you're reminding yourself how important you are to yourself and that you are worthy to receive that. Like we've been talking about, it's like you can just shift every little thing you're doing is actually in support of your body thriving.

So I just I just love the message and certainly my background. I love talking about like that connection to Mother Earth and everything because it's so powerful, you know? And it's so real. I mean, it's it's like we've just sort of tried to make it not there, but the planet is making us remember that we're connected. And, you know, I'm not worried, Tom, about the nature surviving. I'm not worried about the planet surviving. I'm worried about humans being okay. And, we're we're at a real precipice where we've got to make some big changes.

I love the word you used. Invest. We're investing. And I want to say to people, too, that I have been very low income and very sick. And I know, you know, when when you don't have much funds and you're really sick, you can't go spend $50,000 on a mold remediation. I get it, and it's about making the incremental changes every day, the choices every day. So when I was in poverty, I chose I followed the clean 15 Dirty Dozen list and everything I could buy organic that I that had high pesticides. I would go, I would go to the farmers market.

I would talk with them and I would ask them, do you have any produce that's just misshapen that you can't sell? But was grown without pesticides and I would buy those so I would find those ways. And, and that's not to say I always had this bright optimism through it all. And, you know, I had so many meltdowns. I had so many times I wanted to throw in the towel. And you said in your interview something you have to have something to live for. Yeah. And I tell you, as sick as I was, I, I didn't want to hurt myself, but I didn't want to live.

And what kept me going was always remembering. I would always make myself think about my husband having to live without me. I would think about my best friend having to be without me. I would think about my dog. I would think about my my stepdaughter and that was my why. And if anybody wants to know whether they have a Y, just look at Beth right down. I mean, you can feel and see the emotion. And that's so critical is like in chronic illness, so many of us, because it's front and center in our mind, in our face, all day long, every day, all night long.

We we we can sometimes get into that habitual thinking of that being the most important thing. And it's like, that's just another part of your day. Like breathing air or eating food at the right time. It's it may be less pleasant than breathing air and eating food, but it's just part of your day, you know, and but then you can have that other part where your focus and what I love, what you had mentioned a moment ago, is that this is going back to yoga is really interesting. In meditation, we took a lot of people to look for a guru, right?

The guru and the master and whatever, and they're the one who's been so successful. These people, everyone I've ever talked to, who knows a master or is a master, gets the only difference between me and everybody else is that I notice that I fall off the wagon, that I start acting or thinking in a way that I don't like quicker, and I get back on my path quicker. So what you said is like, it wasn't like you were never having meltdowns. It wasn't like you weren't never having days where you're emotionally overwhelmed.

But you were saying, okay, I noticed I was off track. Now I'm back on track and every time I come off, I focus back. Well, here's the question I would ask myself, at the end of the meltdown, which is sometimes less often because sometimes lasted several days, and at the end of every meltdown, I would ask myself, what else are you going to do? You can't tolerate bonbons. You can't tolerate opioids, you don't tolerate alcohol anymore. What else are you going to do? It's sit in it and suffer or keep finding another step forward.

And I tell you, I have so many dead ends. And I stopped counting at 75 practitioners who had no idea what to do with me. I good number. And I sat up and, I poured every penny into my health because I knew if I got my health back that I could go back to school and I could become a practitioner, and I, I stopped counting it. Over $350,000 was probably over half a million now. Now, most people don't have to spend that much. I just didn't know where to go. I didn't have the tools and nobody had the tools.

I mean, we're talking 20 years ago. We didn't. We were just in the infancy of functional medicine. Mold toxicity wasn't on the radar line, was barely on people's radars. So where we are today is light years ahead. And every year, I mean, I'm always drinking from the firehose. I know you're drinking my hair combs, and it's like, every year we get better and we get better, and we get better and we get faster, and we can do this for less money and so much easier. And what drives me now is if I can take all that I went through and go, can I help just one more person make this easier and just supports them, make this cost them less, make this doable for not that I make it, but offer ways to help them.

Then there was meaning and what what I you went through and what I suffered. And the other piece I want to add to it one of the other most important things. So the question what else am I going to do? And then somebody said to me, no one else, no one else can heal you, but you. And I was like, what? I don't know what to do. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what my root causes are. And I had to really noodle that. And I do try to stay open when I get these, like, Cohen kind of things that make me go.

And then sometimes people say things that are don't resonate. But something in that resonated. And I realized I needed guides, but only I could choose who the right next person was, whether this protocol was right for me, whether I was ready for this supplement, at what amount to start. And this is how I landed on opening these capsules, doing the tiniest somebody might one of my clients this week gave me the phrase, I really like dusting. I've been using sprinkles, but dusting in water and starting there to get my limbic system used to things, and I built myself up from there.

Now I can start most things with the whole capsule, and I still very sensitive energetically, but I'm not sensitive to foods and supplements like I was. Yeah, it's through that, that journey. But I love like that. Like you're the you're the one in charge of your health. You need the like. I mean, it resonates so much with me that you need the guides, but you're the one ultimately in charge in it. And the objectivity of what is a good choice versus a fearful choice really comes out of being in touch with a lot of what our chronic illnesses

What Mast Cell Activation Syndrome Is 33:00

allow us, for us to become more in touch with, which is our intuition. One of the things that you were saying is like, and I know that we wanted to really touch on and is I love how it's like you spent all this time and money and personal journey, which included some, significant suffering and now turned it into applying it with the latest, greatest research to make it more streamlined so that other people's success like for me, it was like 12.5 years from start of illness to the end to get better.

And it sounds like your your whole journey was even longer. How do we shortcut all this? And so one of the things I also like is that we wanted to touch on a little bit on what is Marcus, what is histamine intolerance kind of in the in a basic easy way because I think that I've heard a lot of crazy ass definitions and most people don't know what they're talking like. They're overdoing it. And I think that our whole theme is simplifying these things and getting back to the root of everything. I think if you have a better understanding of what it is, you can also understand what it is not.

And then all this mindset we're stuff we're talking about is a little easier to apply. Yeah. What are these things that we have this whole summit about anyway? Marcel activation syndrome is where the mast cells, which are the main sensing defending cells out here, both of the external world and the internal. So this something every molecule of air, everything we swallow, every little molecule they're sensing, every hormone, everything that goes through the bloodstream, every neurotransmitter. So, so literally sensing every thought, every feeling, every little stressor, they're sensing absolutely everything.

And they sit in every tissue in the body except the retina has found to have mast cells, including inside the brain. Used to be thought they weren't in the brain. Now, that's been disproven that they're also in the brain. And then they migrate in huge numbers in the brain when we have, brain inflammation. But the mast cells job is to keep us safe, to monitor what's happening. And then if we're not safe to create inflammation to protect us. And inflammation is usually is meant to be protective and healing response.

What's happening in mass activation syndrome is we have been overloaded with too many toxins, too many pathogens, too many stressors. Any combination there and stressors can be a stressful job, a trauma, a car accident, an injury, whatever. Just a stressful internal dialog, but that overwhelms them to the point where they lose their fine tuning and they become over responsive, and they become overly sensitive to things that normally would not be triggering them. There's always a reason why, there are some rare genetic mass cell activation, disorders.

But even in those, the mast cells are being bombarded by things and you can calm that down. The real key to getting out of this is addressing what's keeping you unsafe the toxins, the pathogens, the stressors, and the way that we start to do that is by what we've been talking about. And I call it the stabilization phase. We start with stabilization. We look at what's happening on a mental, emotional level, what's happening with the nervous system and how do we calm it down. What's happening with the environmental triggers is your is your water full of toxins?

How are you eating most of the people who come in and see me, or are you very well educated and eating fairly clean, but sometimes people are still eating, you know, foods that are highly processed and have toxins in them. We take a look at that, those things, and we settle the system down before we start going after these pathogens. Because most of people there, there are plenty of people out there can jump right into Lyme treatment and they're fine. But those are the people that make their way over to to life and the next people on our doorstep.

Yeah. And so we have to go at it differently, and we have to look at the reason I called it mast cell 360. And the reason the method is Mk3 60 is because it's about the 360 degree view of who we are. And the more that we address people as a whole being, the faster the easier it is, the better outcomes they get. And that's not to say people are done in 3 or 6 months. It takes time and it takes dedication and it takes patience. And then for the vast majority of people will go to working with mold toxicity, get that huge load out because it has such an impact on the immune system, on the nervous system, and then the immune system can wake up and then you can go after those, tick borne pathogens at that level.

But this is what works for 99% of people that we see. It's not for everybody. And I'm never going to say this is the only way. There are thousands of ways. But this is what we do with sensitive people. That has worked really well. And it kind of comes out of this whole, background that I've been laying out. Yeah. I mean, I just it's so interesting to think about, you know, the settle the system down and actually like, prepare it to like, receive healing. I mean, like, like so many people do just drop the hammer and, you know, you can do that.

And it works for some people. And to me, in my training, the more acute someone is like, you come in with like a heart block from Lyme disease. Well, I'm probably not going to spend time, you know, settling their nervous system down. I'm going to load them full of antibiotic and put them in the critical care unit because it's like life limb dependent. But and so much of that, so many of the people I see like that, it's a great I love the 360 because I think of like there's a lot of Lyme blinders and mold blinders and mixed blinders.

And if I take it off because I feel like I don't really care what's wrong with the people who come to see me, like, people know me for Lyme and mold, but like, it doesn't matter to me. I just wanna find out what it is and help them get better. And if it's some, parasitic infection or if it's a food thing, or if it's just a, you know, they need an exorcism, let's find out. And let's just address it without the label. So I love the 360 view. I mean, if there's something in like, what is the thing that makes the mass?

So just so I mean, because like in my training, like I did Lyme and tick borne infection because then it was like, oh, mold came up. And then it's like, what about all these sensitive Lyme in mold people? Oh, it's this em casting. I'm like, God damn it, I'm I thought I was done with mast cells in medical school. Like what? Why are it seems like mast cells in their role are almost like the final common endpoint of immune or nervous system irritation from a myriad of different causes. So, I mean, I you've said mold a lot, but what do you see as like major causes and also like why is the mast cell, this thing that seems to be activated by everything?

Good questions being the biggest root cause that we see of people that come in is mold toxicity. And that's not to say they don't have tick borne illness. Most do. But the mold toxicity is, a heavier hitter. I would actually personally rather have Lyme again than the level of mold toxicity that I had, because and as Jill Krista says, mold decomposes the tissues when it's growing inside of us. It has to get nutrients. It feeds us. Tick borne diseases weaken us. Mold is decomposing us from the inside is a big deal.

And that's mast cells have very specific receptors for these. So if you're being exposed on from the inside yeah your body is going to make a massive amount of information just right to keep you alive and protect you. So the mast cells are protecting us. The other biggest thing that I see is the the stressors, the toxic relationships, the lifestyle that we live. And I'm guilty of this, and I work every day to slow myself down because I, I move quick and I want to go, go, go. But when we're going from the alarm goes off at 630, I gotta get up.

I get to get the kids to breakfast, I get to get them off to school, and then I get to go run these three errands, and I get you to an appointment, and I gotta get to work, and I gotta work, and I gotta get dinner on the table. And then I get the kid's homework done, and I go get the kids in bed, and.

Whole-Person Treatment and Closing Reflections 42:00

Where did they go? I didn't even get to take a breath. And that's how most people live their lives, and it's not healthy. It's normal. It's normalized, but it's not healthy. And that's another thing that's so critical that we we use this opportunity to shift that. And I hope we can shift that culturally on a bigger level. Covid gave us an opportunity and a lot of people there. Oh my gosh, I don't like how I was living in me to give me a good opportunity. And I've been trying to hold on to it. And I hope a lot of people try to hold on to let's slow down.

Our our lives are not sustainable, but let's go to some healthier. That's like an external application of what you've and I have been talking about internally. Is that shift to say, I'm not saying COVID's good, but there's something I can learn from it, and maybe I'm going to bring that last piece of learning forward with me. And that's the beauty of this mindset shift that you and I talk about in chronic illness. And I'm just so glad you brought that up, because it's there. And, you know, so I just think it's, it's so incredible to have the opportunity to, chat about things in this way and to have a summit where you're doing all this.

And I think, for me, one of the greatest explanations of Marcel's I've ever heard is from I listen to a podcast with you a while back, and it was like the mask self. The mask cells are the sentinels that are protecting us, right? The difference is they're never off and so the more and more toxins you're getting is they're never off. So someone may be saying, hey, you know that I hear you. It's mold. Toxins are so much more important than my stressful lifestyle. And I would say, well, the thing is like, yes, maybe mold toxins is 18 hours of your day, but that other six hours that are left over.

Now, maybe we want to de-stress a little so that the Sentinels can actually calm down a little bit. And everything I've heard you say is make incremental changes. So I just wanted to summarize that for everyone and say, I'm just so thankful for the approach that you bring, the fact that you've brought the summit together and allowed me to be part of it, and wanted to say thank you for a chance to be able to chat with you and to be part of this, because this is just such a major movement that needed to happen right now.

Oh, thank you so much, Tom. Yeah, so everyone, thanks so much for joining us for this conversation. It's such an honor to me to be part of this summit with, Beth. So again, Beth, thank you again and everyone. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the reversing methyl Activation Syndrome and Histamine Intolerance Summit. And we'll see you in the next interview.