Your Guide To Mastering Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)

Kelly McCann, MD

Hi, Laura. Thank you for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, it’s my pleasure to bring you back and you are a massive expert in this field. So I’m really excited to have this conversation with you. You’re also a functional and integrative physician. And you’re an expert not just in mast cells but all things environmental toxins as well. In fact, on the last summit that I interviewed you on we had a great talk all about toxins. And I’m thrilled to bring you back again as we continue this conversation on root causes of inflammation in the body. And specifically today we’re covering the root of mast cell activation syndrome, otherwise known as MCAS. So we’ll jump right in. What exactly is mast cell activation syndrome and how does it relate to inflammation and development? Let’s just kind of break that down. Because I bet there are people who may have the symptoms of it and have not put a name to it yet. There’s probably going to be some aha moments right here in these first five minutes.

Kelly McCann, MD

Absolutely. There are many people who realize that they’ve been struggling with symptoms for years and those light bulbs start going on. So mast cells are normal cells in our immune system and their job is to fight foreign invaders. And they are born in the bone marrow, they move to the periphery and they line the areas between ourselves and the outside world. So they’re in our upper respiratory tract, in our sinuses, they are in our mouth, entire gastrointestinal tract. They’re on the skin. They love the nerve cells and they hang out around the periphery. There’s some in the brain. In fact, there are mast cells in every tissue of the body except the retina. And what they are, they’re filled with all these chemical messengers called mediators, which are the cytokines and histamine, serotonin, heparin, and lots of different enzymes. And when they perceive a threat, real or imagined, they will release their little packets of mediators. And everybody’s packets of mediators are different. Everybody’s mast cells are different.

But they will release their inflammatory mediators and then the idea is that those mast cells are causing inflammation and calling to other parts of your immune system to come in and help mobilize to deal with that threat. And then that means that we get lots of different symptoms. So we’ve all heard about the cytokine storm with COVID. The cytokine storm is an inflammatory response to the foreign invader COVID. And people would have a massive inflammation. And oftentimes this is mediated by those mast cells. And that’s what they’re supposed to do. We want them to have an inflammatory response because that’s how the body deals with threats, deals with these different invasions, infections, etc… The problem comes when our mast cells get hypersensitive and turned on. They’re like trigger-happy little guys, right? And now they are misperceiving threats in our environment. Like the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, different scents and chemicals, and sometimes temperature, and pressure. And the symptoms that show up, I call them multi-symptom, multisystem allergic inflammatory symptoms.

So when you have a variety of different systems that are involved where you’ve got inflammation or allergic-type symptoms, oftentimes that is consistent with mast cell activation. So think about your head, nose, and throat system. So if you have clogged sinuses, post nasal drip, and a burning mouth. If you have headaches, if you have palpitations, and you kind of go through this checklist and there are many systems involved. It’s quite likely that you could have mast cell activation. Other symptoms would be fatigue, palpitations, chest pain, and lots of gastrointestinal symptoms from anywhere from heartburn to gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, alternating diarrhea, and constipation. Women may have menstrual irregularities or PMS pain. You can get interstitial cystitis along with mast cell activation. Fibromyalgia symptoms, and migraines. You know, kind of go through the checklist from head to toe and you can think of all the inflammatory symptoms that can show up.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It sounds like it’s like all the other diseases and conditions. So how do you know it’s mast cell versus not, with it affecting every part of the body? What leads us down that path of diagnosing it?

Kelly McCann, MD

Very good question. I think it’s in the history and it’s in the presentation. So oftentimes I’ll see that people have gotten progressively worse. Maybe they were an allergic kid, maybe they had eczema or they had asthma. And then over time, they add on more and more symptoms, more and more labels. And usually, there is an inflammatory component. And when we talk about root causes, we can see then why there is an exposure and an exacerbation of symptoms, another exposure of something else, an exacerbation of symptoms. And so things kind of step up until the point where you’re eating five foods and you’re taking lots of allergy medicines and everything bothers you. You can’t walk down the detergent aisle in the grocery store without having a migraine. You can’t go to Yankee Candle anymore because the scents just drive you crazy. More and more symptoms.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And wear perfume.

Kelly McCann, MD

Can’t wear perfume, can’t go out to lunch with your friends who wear lots of perfume and personal care products that smell. So it becomes very restrictive. And it started out as a protective mechanism and now it’s just gone array.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I bet you there’s a lot of, just as I’m thinking about this. Of course, I’m sitting here diagnosing myself right now. I’m like, oh, I have this like that. But I bet there’s a spectrum. So there are people who are mild, moderate, severe. It’s the severe people whose lives become very small. Can only eat five things, and don’t ever go out in public anymore because they’re, I’m assuming that their recovery time after that, it just crashes them. They can’t be productive at work, they can’t be productive at home, and their relationships suffer. So that would be the severe spectrum. And then you’ve got this lower grade where it’s kind of an irritation and I take an antihistamine and I do okay. Is that?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, absolutely. And you may not meet all the criteria. I mean, the criteria are clinical for the most part. We do have some laboratory evaluations that we can do. They’re imperfect. So imagine that we have hundreds, if not thousands of mediators that are available in those mast cells. And we have like half a dozen that we can test, maybe 10 that we can test. So it’s a little bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. You may miss a lab value of an elevation because you don’t happen to make that. You know, if histamine is not a big prominent player in your presentation and your histamine levels are low. So the other thing with the diagnosis.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

May I ask you something real quick? So one with mast cells has a histamine issue.

Kelly McCann, MD

Correct. Correct. Very important to realize that. Because I definitely have patients who have lots of fatigue, and lots of other symptoms but no allergy symptoms. And so they think, oh, well, I don’t have mast cell. And that’s not necessarily true.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, well, can you shed some light on, you know, we’re going to get into this as we talk on this and this summit is all about the root causes of many health conditions. And we’re going to get into the root causes of this. And this happens to be another area of your expertise. But in relating mast cell activation syndrome to inflammation and the development of chronic disease, why is this important to do something about this?

Kelly McCann, MD

Besides the fact that your life gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

If that isn’t enough? 

Kelly McCann, MD

If that isn’t enough, right? We know that inflammation oxidative stress underlie all major chronic illnesses. And, you know, you might not have to have mast cell activation to have inflammation due to mold exposure, for example, but it can be causing cardiovascular disease and you don’t even know about it or can be causing hypercoagulability and you don’t know about it. So if there is inflammation in the body, it’s really important to understand not all or to not only get that under control but to understand where it’s coming from. Because only when you understand where it’s coming from can you intervene.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So mast cell activation syndrome drives this inflammation in the body that then drives the development of chronic disease. Do we have that?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, I would say. I would say that’s the trajectory.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Okay.

Kelly McCann, MD

It doesn’t mean that everyone who has mast cell activation is going to get cardiovascular disease or cancer or, you know, Alzheimer’s. But we all got something. Right? So you look at the genetics, you look at the family history. You take as a practitioner, I’m taking all of these things into consideration when I’m trying to help lower that inflammation and prevent ongoing health challenges down the road.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. So we talked about what symptoms people have, right? They’re reactive to things. And then their bodies have all these symptoms ranging from things that seem like common allergies all the way to pain and fatigue. But, so what’s actually underlying the triggering of mast cell activation? Why does this happen to people?

Kelly McCann, MD

I think about it in terms of total load, right? So the mast cells are there to protect us. But in some lucky people, the genetics of which haven’t been completely worked out, they can get tripped into becoming hyper-responsive. You know, we want our mast cells, if we get the flu, if we get COVID, we want our muscles to have a reaction so that. Because that’s how we fight things. There are only so many mechanisms that the body has to fight the things that are exposed to in the world. And so we want some reaction. We just don’t want a hyper reaction, we don’t want an overreaction. And that’s really the difference between a normal immune system and normal mast cell behavior and abnormal mast cell behavior, which is this activation piece. Now, I think I’ve forgotten your question.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, I was talking about, you know, because there’s so much. So what triggers? Let me just trigger your memory. We’re talking about what triggers this to happen in the first place.

Kelly McCann, MD

Sure. So total load. We all are born with environmental toxins from our mom. So we’re born with a certain amount of things in our bucket, if our body is a bucket. And then every time we get exposed to something we get more stuff in our bucket. Hopefully, we can drain the bucket but sometimes we can’t. I find that some of the biggest triggers are mold, chronic infections, like lyme, bartonella, babesia, and environmental chemicals are big one. There was a condition that was talked about in environmental medicine called multiple chemical sensitivity, and multiple chemical sensitivity has been around for decades. Dr. William Rae, who founded the American Academy of Environmental Health Medicine, had a clinic in Dallas, and he wrote a four-volume book on multiple chemical sensitivity. That’s mast cell activation. That’s a reaction to chemicals. 

That’s mast cell. So this is something that we’ve known about, we just didn’t give it that name. And it wasn’t really until 2007, 2008, when the first case studies came out that we were starting to understand the clinical picture of multiple chemical sensitivity was actually mast cell activation. So environmental chemicals, any exposure to environmental chemicals, particularly solvents, can drive mast cell activation. EMF is a huge driver. So electrical magnetic frequencies are huge drivers for mast cell activation. And then I see a lot of patients who have adverse childhood events and different kinds of traumas. Those things can add to mast cell activation. Stress itself can trigger mast cell activation. So there are many things that will trigger and exacerbate unruly mast cells

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so we have about five minutes remaining on this first portion of our talk here. So let’s see. Let’s talk about, can you talk a little bit more about chronic hidden infections. You mentioned Lyme. You know, we deal with, you know, people I think they think of infections being in their gut because it’s just a place that we can test when we think about eating bad food and getting. But really, infections can be anywhere in your body. They can be in your sinuses. They can be, you know, in your lungs. They can be in your bloodstream. They can be in your pancreas, they can be in your urinary tract. We can be colonized all over the body. So could you shed a little light on your work around hidden infections in mast cells and what you’ve discovered?

Kelly McCann, MD

Sure. I will actually talk about the bladder because that’s been my new exciting thing to talk about. We can go back and talk about Lyme and Bartonella in the next segment. But so in terms of the bladder, we used to think that the bladder was sterile. And you have burning pain when you urinate. You go to the doctor. They do a culture. They take the urine, they plate it out on a special petri dish and they watch it grow and then we identify what bacteria grow. This technology is 40 years old. What the heck, right? We can map the entire genome but we can’t come up with a better thing than a culture to identify that somebody has a UTI. That’s just sad. So there are companies out there that have much better technology. There’s a company called MicroGenDX, and they do what’s called next generation sequencing. And so they have a library of 70,000 different organisms, bacteria, and fungi. And they can take the sample and match the DNA strands of the organisms that are in the sample to their library and figure out exactly what is there. And what’s amazing is that, and that conventional medicine also doesn’t really understand but we know in functional medicine is that bacteria create biofilms. Just like the bacteria in the gut create biofilm so do bacteria everywhere in the body. So if you have bacterial colonization in your sinuses, in your bladder, there is a biofilm.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I want to help people understand what biofilms are because this is like this big question mark. What is a biofilm? So if you have a pet, and the slime that builds up on their water dish, you can think of that. That is a biofilm. That’s like bacteria from the animal’s mouth creating this little nasty environment where it’s going to hang out and colonize, and the slime builds over the top of it so that it protects it. And if you don’t know that, you’re not paying attention to your animals’ water bowl.

Kelly McCann, MD

You can also think about like the plaque on your teeth, right? That’s a biofilm. If you’ve ever seen the scum on a pond, that’s a biofilm. If you ever leave a glass of water out and the water evaporates, and there’s that like crusty ring. That’s the remnants of a biofilm. That is the structure of the biofilm, that’s the scaffolding. Right. But it’s this mucous membrane protective shield. I call it a force field. But it’s not always this glob. It actually can exist in layers. And so when we’re talking about a biofilm in a bladder, for example, say somebody has nighttime urination, you’re getting up two, three, or four times a night to urinate or you have a urinary frequency. I had a firefighter and he used to have to keep a soda bottle in his truck all the time because he never knew when he was going to have to have some urgency and have to go to the bathroom. He’s 50 years old. That’s not normal for a 50-year-old, right? He had a biofilm colonization in his bladder. So you’re able, were able to take supplements to break down the biofilm and then see what’s underneath. So I think about it a little bit more like a lasagna, right? So you’ve got your biofilm. And then you have the meats and cheese, sauce, and then you’ve got another layer of biofilm which is the lasagna. So as we uncover and break through that biofilm we can see different layers of bacteria. And these layers have been built up over quite a long period of time in somebody’s bladder. But the amazing thing is, as we start to kill off these bacteria and lower the inflammatory burden that they’re having on the body, the symptoms get better.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s the mast cell symptoms get better.

Kelly McCann, MD

All of the symptoms get better. Because the total body inflammation is less. I have a woman in her seventies, and you know, we’re doing a lot of these tests and a lot of these treatments. So we were on like round eight, nine of testing and treating. She’s 80% better. All of her symptoms. She used to have rashes all the time, fatigue, and joint pain. She’s so much better for having identified these bacterial biofilm colonizers in their bladder and treating them.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

My own example, I have been colonized with bacteria in my bladder most of my life. I had my first UTI as a teenager and I had UTIs. That was before I was sexually active. I can still remember my mom taking me to the ER and they and she’s, you know, they’re going to ask you and I was mortified, like why would they ask me that? You know, and I wasn’t sexually active. I got a UTI with other cause like young girls or young teenagers. And most of my life into my thirties I had chronic UTIs and into my forties as well. It wasn’t until I started working on my gut health and working on breaking down biofilms in my body and breaking down biofilms in my gut. They’re going to break down other places too. You know, I finally solved the chronic UTI problem. It was those biofilms.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, it is. And what we can talk about in the next segment is how people who have biofilms in the body often have an issue with coagulation. So we can talk about that too.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Dr. McCann. I want to thank you so much for joining us today for this talk on mast cell activation syndrome. To our audience. I hope you found this first part of our conversation insightful, helpful. If you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here, because we’re about to dive even deeper into this discussion. And if you’re not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. Now, in the next segment here, we’re going to go into the intervention and treatments for mast cell. We’re going to talk about dietary and lifestyle changes. So come back and watch the rest of it and we’ll be happy to continue this conversation. If you’re watching this continuation of my talk with Dr. McCann. Thank you for being a valuable member of our community. And now let’s dive right back in. So, Dr. McCann, we just got done talking about biofilms in the bladder. Such a fascinating discussion in how you have this patient that got better once you got rid of these biofilms. So anything else you want to say about infections in the body before we start talking about some solutions here?

Kelly McCann, MD

Sure. A couple of things I did mention coagulation at the end of our last segment, and that’s super important because what happens in people who have a predisposition is that fibrin, which is a building block of clot gets incorporated into the biofilm. And it makes it that much more difficult to break down and your standard enzymes don’t necessarily break that down. There are only specific fiber analytical enzymes that you have to use in those cases. And one of my mentors, Ruth Kris, has really learned that people who have biofilms like you do, Laura, probably also have a coagulation issue. And there are a couple of genetics that will show up. There’s one called the Plasminogen activator inhibitor and I’ve been finding that in 85, 90% of my patients.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So of course, I have a question. Is that hyper or hypo coagulation that occurs?

Kelly McCann, MD

It’s hypercoagulation. And this particular gene is on the breakdown of clot side. So insufficiency of breaking down clots, not necessarily making clots. So oftentimes the family history is not pulmonary embolism or DVT. It’s like heart attacks or strokes. So it’s more of a breakdown of clot. But in getting back to your other question about the other infections. So I think Bartonella is one of the bigger drivers of mast cell activation probably much more so than Lyme. Bartonella is otherwise known as Cat Scratch Fever for those of you who remember that song, of that Sammy Hagar song. 

So Bartonella can be transmitted by a tick. It can also be transmitted by a cat bite or a cat scratch. It can be transmitted by all sorts of different insects, mosquitoes, mites, and its worldwide distribution very common infection. And it often becomes chronic. Not everybody has a literal cat scratch, and a fever, and a known acute infection. More often than not, these are chronic smoldering infections. And they can manifest in all the symptoms that people have mast cell activation. So it makes it very difficult to tell. Is it mold? Is it Lyme? Is it Bartonella? Is it a mast cell? Is it all of the above? And in my experience, it’s often multiple factorials like that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m assuming you’re doing some lab testing to figure this out.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, we really have to do some labs. It depends on the presentation, right. So most people come in and they have all these symptoms and I’m ruling out mold and having conversations about whether or not we need to evaluate for chronic infections. Where did you grow up? Where did you vacation? Do you have a recollection of a tick bite? Have you ever had a mosquito bite? I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. So a lot of these infections like Babesia and Bartonella, they can be transmitted by mosquito bites. And you think nothing of it, right? Especially if it happens in Southern California in the fall?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, I will tell you, what runs through my head is which is the lesser of two evils. The mosquitoes on my property or hiring the pesticide company to spray for them. Which one is going to cause more damage in my body? The co-infections from the mosquito bite or the toxins in the insecticide? That’s where I’m at with my question about me. Because we have a problem now down in Southern California that we never used to have. It’s a problem now. I think the whole thing stemmed from the housing crisis when people’s homes were left kind of abandoned, and swimming pools were abandoned and just people weren’t taking care of their homes and it just was a breeding ground. I mean, that kind of was a catalyst that got it going and it’s just been a problem ever since.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, I’d probably air on the side of avoiding the pesticides.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Go for the infections instead.

Kelly McCann, MD

Well, I mean, I think you just have to be smart about it because not all insects are infected. But we know that across the board the pesticides are going to be damaging. But if you’re somebody who already has an infection, you have a compromised immune system, you don’t have this robust constitution. You may want to make a different choice that, you know, pick your poison. 

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Now, we talked about how symptoms of mast cell can vary from person to person and how people have, you know, different packages is what you said. There are packages of these cytokines and histamines and enzymes and everything that comes out to solve the problem. Can you talk about how the interventions or treatments to manage this? How do you execute them? Obviously, I’m thinking part of the answer is already you’ve already shared with us, which is to get rid of the infections and the biofilms, but there’s more to it. So what do you do to solve this for people? Because this is really your specialty. I mean, day in and day out, you’re helping people with chronic mast cells in your practice.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, I am. Everybody is unique and how we move forward with the treatment really depends on where people are at. You know, for some people we can do some dietary interventions and we can talk more about that. For some people, dietary interventions don’t really help very much. For some people, they’re willing to do antihistamines. And then there are a number of different pharmaceuticals that I use on a regular basis that can be helpful. And I have my tools and I kind of go down the list depending upon the symptoms and what tool I think might be useful. And then what was the patient is willing to do? Like, I tried that and that didn’t work and I tried that and that didn’t work. And I want to do herbs only, I want to do. So it’s a dialog, it’s a conversation. When I did my research for my summit last year, in 2022 there were at least 65 different nutraceuticals that one can use for mast cell stabilization and reducing inflammation. So there is a ton of tools in the tool kit, right? And that’s not talking about all these combo things that we can do. So there’s a ton of nutraceuticals, herbs, and supplements that can be helpful and a whole variety of medications. The important thing is to find what works for each individual. So we might go through the H1 blockers, Zyrtec, Claritin, Allegra, Xyzol. Which one works, and which one works best? I might do H2 blockers. If people don’t have a lot of histamine presentation we might skip over the antihistamines or they may be surprised they may really help. 

Cromolyn is another favorite of mine. Chromium Sodium can be administered in a nasal spray, in a nebulizer and can also be taken orally to really calm down and be a block between the mast cells and people’s food that they ingest. Which then triggers the mast cells. Ketotifen is a compounded mast cell stabilizer that I love to use to, particularly with really sensitive people because it has to be compounded so it’s really clean. And then in terms of supplements, Quercetin is probably the most famous one that people use. Budiolind is another one in that same family. I love resveratrol, turmeric, pycnogenol, Pramin, Boswellia, Bromelain, Panadolex, or Butterbur, and it just goes on and on and on of the things that can be helpful for people. And honestly, because there are so many different choices, I actually teach people how to mast cell test. Because I can use my own intuition and my medical experience. But really what I want to do is empower each person to not only take an active participation in their healing, but I think some of what happens when we get sick is that we stop believing in ourselves. We lose our connection with our bodies. We feel like our bodies are against us. We lose our connection with our intuition, we don’t trust ourselves anymore. And part of the whole healing journey in my experience is learning how to reestablish that connection and that faith in yourself, and your ability to make healthy choices for yourself. So I use the tool of mast cell testing first with supplements, but then we can use it for other things too.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Do you teach your clients to mast cell test themselves? Wow, look at you.

Kelly McCann, MD

I know. Me with my medical degree, teaching people to mast cell tests.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Energy medicine. I’m telling you it’s good stuff. It’s good stuff. Sounds like there’s a lot of different treatments. What about dietary and lifestyle changes that can also help give people some relief?

Kelly McCann, MD

Absolutely. So some people do really well on a low histamine diet. And so I would give them the information about that. You know, try it for a couple of weeks, and see if you notice any benefits. I don’t personally. So I don’t have to eat a low histamine diet but many people do have an amazing response to a low histamine diet. In terms of lifestyle, it’s all about learning how to feel safe again in your body. And so what happens as I talked about these mast cells and the dysregulated nervous system, the body is in fight or flight all the time or probably freeze. So we’ve got our sympathetic nervous system. You can be fight or flight or freeze. We’ll just talk about it that way. And most people when they’re chronically ill they’re either in fight or flight or they’re frozen. And by freeze, I mean that overwhelm, that inability to move forward, that feeling stuck, depressed, like they’re immobile. And that’s a response to stress. Like when you get scared, what do you do? Frozen. So in order to heal we have to get over here to parasympathetic.

So any lifestyle thing that is going to help shift the body from sympathetic overdrive, fight or flight, or freeze into parasympathetic, stimulating the nervous system, the vagus nerve into parasympathetic will help with calming down that nervous system dysregulation and helping people heal. And there are lots of devices, apps, meditation, and yoga. Those lifestyle pieces that are going to help reteach people how to get over here on the parasympathetic side. And then the last piece is really the limbic system dysregulation. So the limbic system is the ancient part of the brain that takes our memories and our emotions and turns them into more concrete emotions into memory, really. And many people who have mast cell activation syndrome also have what we call limbic system activation or the limbic system the amygdala, different parts of the brain that are involved in the limbic system have become hypertrophy. They are larger, more swollen, and more activated. And what we need to do is retrain that part of the brain and reestablish that sense of safety in the world. Because until we can learn that our bodies are safe, our nervous systems are safe, and our immune systems are safe, we’re going to be stuck in this pattern of hypersensitivity and hyperarousal, hyperreaction.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What do you recommend for limbic retraining? What do you like to use?

Kelly McCann, MD

I like to encourage each person to find the program that works for them. There are a handful of programs out there. For a long time we just had two, Annie Hopper’s DNRS, or the Gupta program. I’ve had a lot of patients really love Kathleen King’s Primal Trust program. And then there are other ones there too, ANS Rewire and Re-origin. I think there are even some beyond that. There are some Christian-based ones. I mean, there are plenty of different programs out there. The most important thing is for each person to find the program, the device, the app that resonates with them that you’re going to use and recognize it. It’s not the program, it’s not the device, it’s not the supplement, the medication, it’s not even the practitioner who’s going to help you heal. It is doing the work. No supplement is going to take you from being sick to being healthy. Because remember, the mind and the body are linked. So we have to deal with things at a physical level, emotional, mental, even spiritual level to really get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And that’s what I was going to ask next was, you know, you specialize in this. You see people day in and day out. And I wanted to know where people trip up. What. So the difference between the people who resolve this and go on to get their health back, have energy, be able to eat what they want, feel balanced in their bodies, have their brain turned on and work, and have proper reactions to stress. What’s the difference between those groups of people who regain that freedom in their lives and those who stay stuck?

Kelly McCann, MD

They do the work. They do the work. So, you know, I had one patient who came in like all the other patients, with tons of symptoms. She was in her thirties and wasn’t even menstruating anymore. Had issues with oxalate and every single system and a review of systems was checked. You know, everything was out of balance. And we started really slowly. Let’s tweak the diet. Let’s take these supplements. I started her on hormone replacement to help her feel better. And slowly, slowly, not only did she start to trust me but she started to feel better. And we started working on her medical trauma. The idea that she had been gaslit for years. She’d go into a doctor’s office and they’d say, oh, you’re depressed, you just need an antidepressant. And I know people out there listening have heard this and have had this happen to them. You’re not crazy. You might not need an antidepressant just because you have all these symptoms but the symptoms are telling you something. And it’s your job to listen and to be open to the possibility of what your body, your subconscious, and your intuition are telling you about your life.

And at some point, I felt like this patient was really ready to hear this. And so I said, okay, you’re ready. It’s time, I’m going to have you read this book by my friend Amy Cher. And the book is called How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can. And essentially it was her book of how she got from a disabled chronic Lyme patient who couldn’t get out of bed, who was in pain 24 seven, to a vibrant, healthy, happy person again. And what she did was start to recognize that she was the common denominator in her relationships, and in everything in her life. And so she recognized that how she was in the world, how she was being in the world, was not serving her. Not that it was bad or wrong, but that it wasn’t serving her. I mean so many of us walk around like, I’m not good enough. I have this wall of diplomas and, you know, I’ll joke, well, that’s actually my wall of shame. And people are like, what are you talking about? Right. That wall of diplomas was because I didn’t feel good enough. So I had to go prove to myself in the world that I’m okay. And then I got a master’s in spiritual psychology and I work through all that stuff.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I love this.

Kelly McCann, MD

But the idea is that how we are in the world has served us up unto a point. How we’ve coped, the things that we tell ourselves, all of that. But at some point, it stops working and at some point, our bodies and our subconscious are trying to tell us something. And the only way that it can speak to us is through messages in the body. And if we had the willingness to listen rather than blame the body, you know, feel like a victim, get angry at our bodies, the more we’re able to say, okay, this is where I am and I know that this is not where I want to be. So what do I have to do? How do I have to see how I am in the world and shift that, that you start to make a different life for yourself? That you start to make different choices for yourself.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is the biggest pearl of information that you just shared. And I know so many people want a supplement to take this away. And they want a bacteria or parasite protocol to take this away. And they want, you know, they want to identify that toxic and that forever chemical. Get it out of their body, and the glyphosate, and the mold, and they’re doing all the things. And if you don’t do this emotional piece, if you don’t reset the limbic system, if you don’t do the parasympathetic work, if you don’t face yourself. And you know that piece of you’re playing the game, you’re winning. And some people are more committed to their sickness and their wellness because they’re winning at that. There’s a payoff for that. And I mean, some people may be listening to this right now going, I can’t believe she just said that. I don’t want that. But there is a payoff there, if you haven’t figured out how to get out of it, there’s something about being in that sick space that is, there’s a gain somewhere. That’s a hard thing to face. And look at. You know it because you’ve done this type of work. But the gain might be I don’t have to be responsible for X, Y or Z when I’m not feeling good. I can rely on others to take care of that.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That may be the gain.

Kelly McCann, MD

So I have a great example of that. I had a young man come in and he was mold exposed and at the time he finally found me he was very sick. Emaciated, to the point where he looked gray and gaunt. He had scabs on his head because he was so malnourished. And, you know, was suicidally depressed. Very severe mast cell activation, mold exposure, you know, the whole thing. And he worked really hard. He was a very diligent patient. He did all the protocols and he would come every month and check in. And we got him to the point after about a year and a half, now he’s running, you know, seven and ten miles a day and going to three-hour yoga classes. And he looks healthy and vibrant and he’s starting to date and he’s feeling great. And he went back to work. And then it started raining and he was working in a building that was moldy. And he got super sick again and his mast cells flared. And all of a sudden he had to quit work. He had to leave his apartment. Now he’s living in a tent in his backyard, in his parent’s backyard, and depressed again. Can’t believe that he’s back in the same place. And I had to have that conversation with him like, look, you did the physical work last time and you got your physical health back. But we never addressed the emotional stuff. We never addressed the trauma that you experienced as a young person or the desire that you just want to be taken care of. I mean, he would actually come out and say that, I just want somebody to take care of me. Is there a place where I can go? Is there a hospital? Is there a facility where I can just go and they can cook my meals and I don’t have to worry about being an adult? Adulting is hard, right? Don’t we? We would all love to just be taken care of. And now that he’s recognized that he has to do this internal work and, you know, the path by which everyone gets there is a little bit different. But he’s making strides and he’s happier and he feels more hopeful. His depression is lifted like things are moving in the right direction because he’s doing that internal work.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

When you get to the point where you do the internal work and then let’s say you get exposed to mold down the road, your body can actually handle it. You don’t get a mast cell activation.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s what I needed to hear. Because I know people are watching this right now thinking, no, it’s not the emotional work. It’s not the traumas. It’s the mold. It’s the bacteria, it’s the forever chemicals, it’s the glyphosate, it’s the heavy metals. But when you have those traumas and when you have unresolved, just emotional patterns, maybe unhealthy emotional patterns that we create then it makes it much harder to handle those things. And when you do create that resilient, that emotional resiliency and strength that you resolve and forgive and clear these things out. When you do get exposed to toxins and metals your body can handle it better. Not to say that, you know, we’re going to have to detox the rest of our lives living on planet Earth. I mean, we’re going to have to get those metals out of your body for the rest of your life. You’ve got to have some kind of maintenance plan. But maybe, you can just be like a normal person exposed and not completely drop your entire health from an exposure.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right? Right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow, so incredible. So glad we went this deep in this talk, Kelly.

Kelly McCann, MD

I would be doing a disservice to everyone out there if I didn’t bring this message, because I think it’s really important. You know, and I’m not blaming, nobody is blaming you. Nobody is saying you’re, you know, you’re causing your illnesses. It’s not that simple. It’s really about unhealthy patterns on ways of showing up for yourself. And if we think about it, I mean, I really want people to come away with this idea that your body is on your side, right? Your body is not against you. We learn about this in medicine when people go to the ICU because their bodies fighting an infection called sepsis. And the blood vessels get leaky and people get edematous and the blood pressure drops. These are all because the body is doing everything it can to protect itself.

There’s inflammation, there’s edema because it’s trying to flood the system and deal with the infection, the insult, the best way it can. And it’s going to do it in ICU sepsis situation and it’s going to do it every day that you’re alive, is to do the best that it can with the programming that you have given it in your early childhood, in that those early decisions. Probably that you made about, how you wanted to be in the world, even before you had the ability to speak. And so there’s no blame. There’s only the opportunity that your body is presenting yourself to say, okay, there’s a message here for me. I need to understand what it is so that I can move forward. And then there are people out there like, Amy Scher and there are many other medical intuitives that can help identify what are those blocks, what are those resistances that you might have. Or you can figure this out yourself. And that’s the whole purpose of Amy Scher’s book is to give you the tools so that you know.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can. Right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah. So that you have those tools to figure out what’s happening.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

When’s your book coming out?

Kelly McCann, MD

Oh, I. I, you know, I need to stop doing this summit so I can write by my book.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Write your memoir.

Kelly McCann, MD

No, write my book. No, it’ll. Yeah. One of these days. Hopefully soon.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Elsewhere. Tell our audience where we can find you, Kelly. Because I know there are people that are wanting to come see you right now and get help with their mast cells.

Kelly McCann, MD

So my clinic is thespringcenter.com that’s THESPRINGCENTER dot COM. My personal website is DrKellyMcCann.com. You can kind of go back and forth between those websites. So I have a how-to get your mast cell under control, an environmental Deep Dive Masterclass, and a couple of Q&A’s on my personal website as well as blogs. And then yes, you can find me at the spring center. Me and my team.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much for pouring into our audience for going to this deep place in this talk today. The people who stuck around and listened to this are in for a big treat. So thank you so much for always being a big yes and for helping humanity and just doing the hard stuff.

Kelly McCann, MD

Thank you, Laura. My pleasure.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Everyone. Take good care. Bye, now.