Mast Cells Explained: Biohacking Inflammation, Allergies, and Brain Fog : 1322

The only reason biohacking exists is because I was really sick with a chronic illness and no one could help. In my early 20s, I hit 300 pounds. I had arthritis in both knees since I was 14. And this long list of things wrong that no doctor could fix. There's something I became aware of about five years ago called MCAS or mast cell activation syndrome. And it is a uniting element across many of the things that are wrong with people today. That means if you're a mold person, you have the same is the person who had Epstein Barr, who had fibromyalgia or CFS. Dr. Tanya Dempsey is a world renowned physician exposing the hidden epidemics of chronic illness and mast cell activation syndrome. She's giving a voice to patients who've been ignored for years and revealing the root causes that can make or break a life.

There was a study that showed that 1 in 17% of the population has MCAs. I would argue that number is much higher now. So one in five people or more have this disorder.

I can't see shades of gray, my eyes are bugging out or I have a headach or I'm throwing up or my knees hurt. Why do the symptoms vary so much with mast cell syndrome? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. This is an episode that I've wanted to do for a while and it's about what you might think is a complex topic, but it's not really. And it's really personal for me. It's personal because in my. If you, if you don't know my story, stick with me for a second here. I was really sick as a late teen. In my early 20s, I hit 300 pounds. I had arthritis in both knees since I was 14 and this long list of things wrong that no doctor could fix. I ended up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars before I was 30, first on fixing it and then on extending human performance and cognition and consciousness and, you know, living longer, all that stuff. But the only reason biohacking exists is because I was really sick with a chronic illness and no one could help and I had to do something about it. And I gave up on medicine when my doctor told me vitamin C would kill me. And a few years later, I found the right kind of doctor who really did help me. But it wasn't just medicine. It was environmental and a whole bunch of things. So what was behind chronic fatigue syndrome and all my weird symptoms? Why did I have brain fog and just all the pain and just feeling like crap? Well, since that time, I Would say mitochondria, mitochondria, mitochondria. And a couple New York Times books about mitochondria later. I'm right. Except it's not that simple. And if it was, it would be pretty easy. There's something I became aware of about five years ago called mcas, or mast cell activation syndrome, and it is a uniting element across many, many, many of the things that are wrong day. And we're going to go deeper into this. But if you've had Lyme disease or identify as having had Lyme disease, I'm highly skeptical of that. Or toxic mold or long Covid. Or this long list of unexplained things that just don't make sense. It does start with mitochondria, but there's another layer, and we have one of the world's top experts in this specific thing called MCAs. So stay tuned, and you're going to learn how your immune system works. Tanya?

Yes.

Why are people so sick today?

Well, listen, it does start from the environment. It does start. We are living in a toxic world. The last 50 years, the last 20 years, right? It's everywhere. It's the pesticides, it's the glyphosate, it's the plastics, it's. You name it, right? And infections and all that. And what has happened is our bodies, which are designed to deal with the environment, we have an immune system that helps us deal with the environment, has really gone awry. It just can't handle the onslaught like it did 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And there's a part of the immune system that I'm particularly interested in, and that is what we call the innate immune system, or the primitive immune system, where the mast cells reside. And these mast cells are. They're white blood cells, and they're your front line to protect yourself from the environment. And the environment includes not just what's outside your body, but also what's inside.

Hold on a second.

Yeah.

The definition of biohacking. Change the environment around you and inside of you to have full control of your state or of your biology or.

Aligned 100%.

Okay, keep going.

Yeah, exactly.

Caught my attention there.

Exactly. No, that's a. That's a really great observation. So these mast cells, right, are there to protect you. Okay. They've been. They've been evolutionarily present probably for millions of years in different organisms. And the way they protect us is that they. They sort of explode. I like to use this sor. I'm a very visual person. So I like to think about the cell with lots of different granules inside that are chemicals and they explode and they try to release these chemicals to kill whatever they're trying to protect us from.

Wow.

And what happens though is that instead of killing the thing that they're trying to protect us from, and really evolutionarily, they were probably designed to help us with infection primarily and parasites would be the top of my list. But now we have more than just infection and parasites. We all this other stuff. And so what happens is they release these chemicals and the chemicals which are being released in our body, in our tissue gets damaged, our body starts to get damaged, the chemicals cause an inflammatory reaction. So what I say is that mast cell activation syndrome is primarily an inflammatory syndrome that where the mast cells have gone awry rather than doing what they're supposed to do, now they're, they're acting inappropriately and doing too much.

And this is different than something like allergies, where those are different parts of your immune system. Although some things like hives would be mast cell related.

Yeah. Allergy is a mast cell syndrome or disease process. But this is different. This is where allergies like, okay, here's a, you know, pollen and you react to the pollen or cat hair or something. This is where in mast cell activation syndrome, the body, the mast cells start to react even be they even know what they're reacting to.

I have lived for the past 25 years since I started to understand my immune system was not always working the way it should. In fact, a lot of my body doesn't. So I've just lived with a boot on the neck of my immune system so that I can control my inflammation levels consciously and intentionally. And controlling inflammation is a part of all biohackers abilities because some, sometimes you overstimulate yourself and you don't want to have the inflammatory response. And that can save your life in situations like, oh, I had a stroke, let's not let the inflammatory response take out my brain or even a heart attack. Like, so there are many things that could just be athletic, could be medical, if you understand inflammation. But there's different kinds of inflammation. And this mast cell thing, I look at it maybe because, I don't know, more testosterone or something. They're not cells about, they're landmines and they're supposed to blow up when a tank is over them and instead they blow up when the wind blows and then they make more wind and then the one down next to it blows up. So you get these cascading effects.

Correct.

And we know that histamine is a trigger, but they release hundreds of other inflammatory. They're called cytokines. A lot of listeners have come across things like IL6 during the. Yeah. And during the pandemic, I wrote an article about how to use herbs to stop IL6, because most inflammatory viral things are that, like, even if you don't know what it is, you could at least make sure. I got a special award from the regulatory authorities for that blog post. All right. How dare I talk about that? So now we understand there's these landmines, these mast cells that are exploding, and it's happening more often than before. And we believe it's external and internal environment. What do we do about it?

So, you know, the number one thing is always to think about what they're actually responding to. So if you're living in a moldy place, you've got to take care of the mold. Otherwise there's really almost nothing you can do to calm these mast cells down. They' continue to react. Right.

Oh, so you're saying mast cell activation syndrome is behind long term inflammation from toxic mold like I had?

Correct.

Oh, that would have been helpful to know. Okay, that's important.

And you know, some people have heard this term sirs.

Yeah, Very old term, right?

It's an old term, but I don't really think it's sirs. I think it's. It's mcas.

Can I high five you right now?

Yes, let's do it.

You guys heard that this old thing called C I R S or sirs, which was popularized in the late 90s. It's not what the guy who invented it thinks it is. It is mast cell activation syndrome. And that means if you're a mold person, you have the same thing as the person who had Epstein Barr, who had fibromyalgia or cfs. All of these things I've been diagnosed with. Right. And long Covid or Sorry, I'm using the wrong words, COVID Vaccine injury is a better description there. So. Wow. Now we understand that we can take these things that old school medicine think these are very different conditions. And we can look at chronic things like bartonella, Lyme, co infections, which. I got one of those from a vampire bat. Did you not?

I know, okay. You told me that once.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. Okay. This is a new paradigm for functional medicine. And for anyone listening where nothing works. How would you know that it's mast cells that are your problem instead of just low thyroid, low testosterone and zinc deficiency? Or something.

Well, all those things are important, right? And you know, I cast a wide net with my patients, right. I want to make sure I'm not miss something that could be easy, relatively easy to solve. But there are some key features of patients with mast cell activation syndrome. They often have symptoms that span different parts of their body in ways that don't make sense to the medical establishment, let's say, right? Why do you have knee pain and brain fog and penis whatever, right? So that doesn't make sense to the doctors, right? So they go to one specialist and the next specialist, but no one's looking at that big picture, right? So when I. When I see different symptoms, different parts of the body that come and go, waxing and waning very often, sometimes lasting for weeks, months, years, sometimes shorter intervals, it raises my suspicion. And because there was a study that showed that 1 in 17% of the population has MCAs. And I think that. And that that was published in 2017, and I would argue since COVID and COVID vaccinations and all these other things that we're seeing, I would arg. That number is much higher now. So 1 in 20 or more, 1 in 5 people or more have this disorder. I think it's sort of not. Not a bad idea for me when a patient comes in to have that on my radar.

Every functional medicine doctor should have a full understanding of mast cell activation syndrome because it makes your job easier. One of the things I learned when I filmed moldy movie, and this is moldymovie.com it is totally free, but it's a professional, hundreds of thousands of dollars documentary just to say toxic mold illness is real. And my friend Daniel Amen's in it, and many other experts as well as people who are affected by mold. And what stands out, all of them have mastel syndrome. Now, they understand what it is, but they all had radically different symptoms. So one person, oh my gosh, it's neurological. It's cognitive. It's my visuals. If I can't see shades of gray, my eyes are bugging out or I have a headache or I'm throwing up or my knees hurt. Why do the symptoms vary so much with mast cell syndrome?

And that's the most difficult piece of it. And that's where it is really hard for patients to understand and definitely for their doctors. Right? And that's because mast cells are really right. They're in all your tissue organs. And if you have a set of mast cells that are more dysfunctional in one part of the body, but somebody else has mast cells that are more dysfunctional in another part of their body. Right. You're going to have completely different symptoms. And there's something about the genetics of the mast cells themselves that dictates what they're actually producing, which mediators or cytokines are they producing. So if the mast cells are making more histamine, you might have a set of symptoms related to histamine if the mast cells are making more heparin. And we know that heparin, which is a blood thinner, is made in the body by mast cells. And so when I see a woman, for instance, who has dysfunctional uterine bleeding, excessive bleeding, and I think she has mast cell activation syndrome, I'm going to be suspicious because I'm looking at the excessive blood loss. So. So the. So the. The factors are parts of the body and what the mast cells are actually producing.

This puts so many puzzle pieces together, and I think it will for lots of people listening. For me, when I was young, I lived in a basement that had toxic mold in the walls. We didn't know it at the time. This is the 80s or something. We had no clue.

I did, too, by the way.

Okay, so you know what it's like. And I used to carry a little bottle of Afrin nasal spray and Kleenex in my pocket all of the time. The reason I would carry that is because I would get 10 nosebleeds a day. I had my nose cauterized two times, probably for eighth grade, with, like, electricity in my nose. It was super traumatic. And it's because of heparin, which is a blood thinner. So I would have a mast cell response in my nose from toxic mold. And of course, then, oh, boom, gushing nosebleeds. And it was just a part of life. So the reason that I carried Afrin, and if you get chronic nosebleeds, a, you should know it's heparin, and B, you should know Afrin will shrink those blood vessels and stop a nosebleed almost instantly. I remember prom night, like, going to the bathroom, bleeding all over. I'm like, damn it. Like, this isn't good in a tuxedo. And people like, who'd you get in a fight with? I'm like, it's not that. Not that, dude. So this stuff will sound really familiar to some people. And other people say, dave, you're just weird. But there's another group of people who have cognitive symptoms or GI symptoms, or their skin's always inflamed. And I've seen mast cell activation Syndrome ruin relationships. And one person has all these symptoms, the other one doesn't have them, or they have different ones and they think the other one's crazy.

Absolutely.

What are we going to do about this?

Well, what we're going to do is we're going to continue to do the work that I'm trying to do, which is publish research and continue to find ways to treat patients. Right. And this is what I love about the biohacking community because I think that there are a lot of tools there that are going to help us in the mast cell chronic illness world and hopefully actually vice versa. Right. I think there may be tools that can help in the biohacking community, but I think we have to continue to push the AR envelope here. We have to continue to search because the answers are there. That's one part, right. How do we help the patients themselves? But the other part is how do we help this world?

I mean, not just environmentally.

Environmentally.

Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure if we can just get rid of nature entirely, we'll be fine. Right?

Right? Yeah.

Yeah. The concern I have is that even if we reduce toxins from mother nature or from man made toxins, it doesn't mean the mast cells are going to stop being hyper reactive. During. During COVID I published my long COVID protocol, which involved a whole bunch of supplements that are mostly mast cell active. And I talked about a couple pharmaceuticals and I am actually a huge friend of pharmaceuticals. I don't like big pharma. I think they're dirtbags who run those companies and some of them should be prosecuted, others are just, just doing their best. But Pepcid and Claritin Love, they block two of the three histamine receptors in the body. And histamine is a primary mast cell thing. So I found like 80% of people, if they did one in the morning, one at night of both of those for six months, the mast cells would basically age out and new ones would come back calmer. But during that time, you're ruining your digestion with the pepsids. You have to take betaine and you uptake enzymes. It's kind of complex. It helped me substantially. For me, I get it. Get sinuses, eyes, some lungs will make me cough sometimes. And I used to get tons in my gut. As long as I know what to eat, I don't get the gut issues anymore. But if I eat the wrong stuff and it's very well managed, I don't have arthritis anymore. That's more oxalates. Oh, wait, do oxalates from food trigger mast cells?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, they do. And histamine from food, does it trigger mast cells?

Yes. And salicylates is another plant compound. Well, salicylates, you know, aspirin is part of the salicylate family, but there are that contain higher levels. Often those foods also have histamine. Some don't, but there's some overlap. But the salicylates are for mast cells. Interesting, because aspirin could theoretically be a mast cell stabilizer. It also could be the worst thing for the mast cell and cause a severe, you know, anaphylactic reaction or other. So salicylase in food could theoretically do the same thing.

It's funny, there are other plant toxins besides the ones I talk about a lot like oxalates and lectins and, and phenols, which generally polyphenols are good for you, but phenols can cause reactivity and salicylates can cause reactivity. And for me, low dose aspirin works. In fact, for most people who don't have MCAs, low dose aspirin probably is good for longevity and studies. Do you agree with that?

I agree.

What about the gastric bleeding potential for that?

Right. Well that's the problem. Right. So there are different ways to dose it.

Okay.

Different ways. Some people take it, you know, a few times a week rather than every day. Some people will take a Pepcid.

That's what I do.

I love this and I, and I think I honestly have saved a lot of lives that way.

So what should people do if they're going to take an aspirin occasionally to protect their gut?

Always take Pepcid with aspirin because it protects the gut, decreases histamine in the gut and decreases the risk of bleeding from it.

Wow. So you can protect your gut from aspirin bleeding, get the longevity effects of aspirin, but won't it turn off your stomach acid? What do I do about that?

But you know what, it really doesn't that much compared to let's say the PPI category, the proton pump inhibitors. I just try to avoid them at all cost. Those shut down everything issue blockers are actually pretty short lived. They can't shut down enough. That's the problem actually.

Wow. So it's okay to take Pepcid and maybe not take a stomach acid enhancer with it?

Yeah, I mean I think think most of my patients are fine. If you wanted to take a little betaine with a meal just in case. Sure. That might help with absorption of certain nutrients. But the majority of patients, I don't see a huge difference.

Oh, in their acid levels. That is so helpful. Thank you. And that matches my experience, now that I think about it. I've been pretty religious about taking something called betaine hcl, and I'm mentioning it for listeners. As you age, your stomach acid production goes down and then you don't absorb things. So it's a good idea to take some with meals, especially lots of protein. And if you don't have enough stomach acid, what are the symptoms you'll notice in your GI tract?

If you don't have enough acid, believe it or not, you'll get reflux. So a lot of people think reflux is too much acid, but not that very often. I should say it's because there's not enough stomach acid to break down proteins and other foods. So reflux, Digestive issues of all kinds. If you don't have enough acid, like.

Room clearing gas because you have rotting food in your gut. Right.

Constipation, you know, even diarrhea, you know, you could see a lot of bowel issues. I think the bowels are really like. Or the GI tract is really like the heart of the body in some ways.

Yeah.

A lot of disease processes sort of start there.

You're like Johns Hopkins trained. And the bowel and heart are not the same thing. Tanya.

I know.

I tell my professors, my liver, my liver. That was a Beavis and Butthead reference, the liver thing. You ever see that episode? No, I didn't peg you for that.

Sorry.

This is kind of a different dad joke thing, but I have to share it. So there's an episode where they decide they're going to do insurance fraud, and so they, you know, beat each other up. And then one of them stands up and holds his head and goes, my liver, my liver. Because he doesn't know where his liver is. I showed my kids that, and they still say my liver to this day, but I love it. Like the bowels, the heart of the body is funny from an immune perspective. We've all heard of leaky gut. If you have mast cell syndrome, which, like I said, maybe a third of people do, then when things go through the lining of the gut, something happens. What is going through the lining of the gut that's making our mast cells so pissed off?

Well, first off, the mast cells themselves are responsible for the leakiness. Right? Then they're seeing food particles, lipopolysaccharides, endotoxins, and all these other things that are then penetrating into the body. Right. And now it's like a perfect storm, really. You know, of. Of. Of dangerous chemicals that now the body has to take care of.

Right.

And so you wonder why people are sick.

It feels like there's two kinds of heartburn. There's a kind of heartburn that you get from what feels like too much stomach acid, but it's not having enough stomach acid, and that comes on a while after you eat.

Correct.

And there's another kind of heartburn that happens when you eat something and pretty quickly, like within 30 seconds of a bite, suddenly you get. What's the difference between those two? Because they're not caused by the same thing.

No. The second one, the latter, is caused by probably mast cell activation. Exactly. Nobody knows this because the reaction time of a mast cell is so fast. Milliseconds sometimes. So you can get that reaction quickly. It doesn't even make sense. Like, doctors will say, well, how is that even possible? How can you get a reaction in a second, two seconds, 30 seconds, whatever. But that's because the mast cells release these chemicals so quickly.

Those same doctors who say it doesn't make sense, have they not worked in an ER like, if you sprain your ankle, it's gonna swell up, like, really, really, really fast. That's also mast cells. Right.

That's also mast cells.

Okay, so we know the body can be really fast, or you can have a response two days later. They're different parts of the immune system.

Well, that's right. And that's what I think. Again, it's confusing for a lot of people because some people will eat something, think they're fine, two days later, they're in a flare.

Yeah.

And then I say to them, well, what happens? Did you. You know, we'll go through the history. What did you eat? No, no, it can't be, because I didn't eat anything today. Today I was. You know, I ate all my normal stuff. But no, let's go back in time. Two days, three days.

You know, that is such wisdom. And this is why a cheat day is the dumbest thing you could ever do.

I don't recommend it.

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Week.

I'm like, Friday night I'm just going to have whatever I want and I'm going to have this weird dessert that's got like cheesecake and chocolate mousse and chocolate cake covered in chocolate. And only on Friday night, right? So I'm like, that's my cheat. Like this was really a common thing. And some people still advocate for a cheat day where you see whatever crap you want. And then the next day on Saturday, I was totally fine. Maybe I'd have a little gas, whatever. But like, okay, I'm good. But Monday was trash. And it took me two years of tracking what I ate to realize I had a 48 hour delayed reaction to gluten. Gluten. And some shorter term ones as well. So it could be up to four days, right?

It could be.

Okay, yeah. And the effects we talked about earlier, they can be short term. But one of the old books in my library downstairs is talk about environmental illness. This has to be from the 70s or something. And this was a psychiatrist who had people who thought they were Jesus and he put them on a super clean diet, clean air, clean everything. And. And then they're fine. And then it exposes them to secondhand smoke. And then boom, they think they're Jesus again for 10 or 12 days and then they're in a clean environment and suddenly these cells calm down. So could be neuro, could be psychiatric, could be gi, could be arthritis, could be skin. What else could hormonal. Oh, so how would mast cells affect testosterone and estrogen?

So it's actually vice versa. Those hormones actually bind to mast cells. Mast cells have testosterone receptors, progesterone receptors, estrogen receptors. And so fluctuations in hormones can then affect how these mast cells react. Turns out that testosterone may be a mast cell stabilizer.

So maybe that's why everyone has mast cell. Maybe it wasn't just Covid. Maybe it's because there's an epidemic of low testosterone everywhere.

Could absolutely, really be a contributing factor.

On the flip side, tell us what estrogen does to mast cells.

Right, so on the flip side, estrogen can be a activator, could be a mast cell destabilizer.

Oh, flushing during high estrogen periods of perimenopause. Could be a mast cell thing.

Yeah, I believe perimenopause, pmdd. A lot of these conditions Dysfunctional uterine bleeding, other things like painful periods, ovarian cysts, polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis. I could just keep going and going and going. They're all rooted in mast cell activation syndrome. Now, I will say that a lot of people. You know, there's a lot of noise on Instagram right now, but good noise about perimenopause and about, you know, the need for women to be treated with hormones and.

God. Yeah.

I mean, there's no. No question in my mind. But the only thing that I would add is that for the sensitive patient, the patient who has mast cell activation syndrome, we just have to be a little more cautious. Now, it turns out that estrogen may not be bad for mast cells if it's a steady state estrogen. Where the problem lies is the spikes in perimenopause, where it goes super high and then crashes.

Oh. So soy and flax, which are exceptional high estrogen, estrogen foods that also set off mast cells for a lot of people, might be doing it because of estrogen.

Might.

Did you just say that women who are having issues with perimenopause might not want to live on soy and flax?

Yeah, Well, I would. I would say they need to avoid it. Yes.

I would say the same thing. So, guys, if you still think those are superfoods, stop punching yourself in the mast cells.

Yeah. And if you know how they're made, actually, or processed, it will. It's appalling.

So the comment about estrogen is interesting because having no estrogen in men or women is also maybe not good for us. Why is that?

Well, low estrogen obviously affects the bones, affects the heart, affects so many other things.

Blood vessels, libido, even. Men need estrogen, right?

That's correct. Yeah. And I really am against this sort of philosophy of blocking estrogen for men who are on testosterone. I don't think it's a good, good idea because I think men need that estrogen as well.

Unless they're growing boobs, maybe. Well, yeah, Well, I used to have that kind of a problem, but I got over it, so.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, there's always case by case. Right. But the reality is that it's about balance. It's about making sure that everyone's hormones are imbalanced, and that's where really people thrive.

Powering all of these mast cells is mitochondria. The mitochondria are stressed. When they're not making energy, well, they make inflammatory cytokines which directly cause mast cells to activate Right, Yeah, that's.

That's one way. Yeah.

It's not the only way they activate, but, you know, they get a signal.

Absolutely.

So I'm still. Mitochondria are very foundational and right above them in my stack of what's wrong with this person that they can hack would be mast cells. Because we just figured out almost every intervention that works for biohacking also has a mast cell effect. And when I've worked on my own long list of symptoms or I've worked with lots and lots of people helping them crack their own code, it's always stuff that affects mast cells and things we don't even know. What about thyroid? What's the interaction there?

So it's an interesting, actually, interaction. So a lot of people have heard of Hashimoto's. Let's take Hashimoto's. First diagnosed at 26, it's presumably an autoimmune condition. I would argue that it's not just autoimmune, but it is rooted in mast cell activation. And that's because the way I look at it is a lot of people have antibodies. They have antibodies to the thyroid. They have, let's say, a positive ana, a positive rheumatoid factor. There are lots of these antibodies. And then the doctors, you go to a specialist and they want to diagnose you with an autoimmune condition. And for a lot of patients, the reason those antibodies are being made is because the mast cell is actually telling the cells in the body that make antibodies to make antibodies inappropriately. So some people with Hashimoto's don't actually have Hashimoto's. Okay. There's a subset that have antibodies, but the antibodies are actually like. Well, I would call them mimicking antibodies. They're actually not doing. But there are other conditions or other circumstances where the mast cells, the antibodies may not be doing much, but the mast cells are causing, let's say, damage to the thyroid, affecting its ability to make the thyroid hormones. More importantly, what I see in mast cell activation syndrome is the inability. So the thyroid is actually not that bad. But the ability to convert T4 to T3 is impaired.

And that's because of mast cells.

I think it's because of the strain on the body. Mitochondrial strain, mitochondrial strain, mast cell activation strain on the adrenal glands really does lead to. So that's the primary thyroid condition that I see is this poor conversion of T4 to T3 when you do thyroid levels. Thyroid looks okay. TSH looks okay. You might have some thyroid antibodies if you take thyroid hormone, yeah. Some of those antibodies might go down, but you may not be fixing the problem if you're not attending to it correctly.

That makes so much sense. And when I talk with entry level biohackers, I'm like, guys, look at your inflammation markers. Look at your thyroid. Look at your sex hormones, Testosterone and then estrogen. And if you get those right, many, many problems go away, but not all of them. So those are. Are although somehow linked to mast cells and mitochondria.

Yeah. I look at it, you know, as. You can go at it from a slightly different angle. Right. You can say, look, maybe the mast cells will calm down, function a little better if the thyroid and the testosterone and the hormones are all controlled. Right. And sometimes that's the path we go in. Sometimes we have to go the other direction, and we have to go in from the mast cell piece to calm down the hormones, hormones, and. And all the other things. Right.

I've learned how to navigate my biology in a. A different way. And to be really clear, different people have different biology. So if you're listening to this, don't do what I do unless it sounds like it might work for you. If I eat something that triggers an immediate burning in my esophagus, I know that's mast cells. If I eat it and my nose starts running, that's mast cells. So I will microdose, penetrate. I'll take a little Benjamin. I'll, like, just nibble off the edge of it, and it makes your tongue go numb for a minute, but it'll immediately stop the burning. If I take a quarter Benadryl, I'm going to get tired because it. It drugs you out. And maybe people have heard the latest things. Benadryl. If you take it all the time or take it for sleep, it really increases your risk of cognitive dysfunction and dementia later in life because of what it does to your acetylcholine receptors. But microdosing it to stop mast cells, I feel like that's probably an appropriate use.

Yeah, no, absolutely. But I'd like to argue that study.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's argue a little bit.

Okay. The problem with a lot of these studies about Benadryl is that they're looking at a population that may already have risk for dementia and cognitive issues, and that those patients who are taking Benadryl to sleep, et cetera, probably have. Have mast cell activation syndrome. And I would argue that mast cell activation syndrome is a risk for cognitive dysfunction.

Wait a minute. Are you saying it's just a correlation Not a causation with Benadryl. Correct.

That's what I believe.

You make so much sense. Anyone with a lifetime of mast cell activation that is not well managed or just turned off, which can happen, has higher risk of every disease of aging.

Absolutely.

In fact, I would argue that is my biggest risk. Risk? I was highly obese when I was young. I was pre diabetic, and I have this long list of things, and I know that that did some damage, and I think I can probably reverse that stuff. But if I continue to immerse myself in things that trigger my mast cells and I don't manage them well, Chronic inflammation over time, inflammaging is a thing, right?

Right.

That's a mast cell effect in the brain, right?

Yes.

So, in fact, I'm going to ask him about mast cells causing Alzheimer's. That'll be fun, right?

Could I be a fly on the wall?

Totally. You can hang out in the studio if you want, you know, if you have time. And it's. It's one of these things where every now and then when you're working on, you know, managing your biology and you're saying, I want to have my energy or muscle or, you know, I want to feel a certain way, and it feels like, hopeless. You're working on this one problem, and then you realize that there's something that connects all of the things. And for me, it's definitely mitochondria number one. It's mast cells number two. Because now I can take four people with totally different symptoms and totally different stories. Oh, for me, I had Epstein Barr virus. And another person, oh, I got a vaccination for Covid against my will and against the law, and they both have exactly the same thing. Something didn't ever work again after that. And now, instead of being separate populations, they're the same population. Some environmental insult turned on my mast cells. Now they're oversensitized and random shit happens in my biology. Good theory.

I think you nailed it. So good. I would argue, though, add one thing. Not argue, but let's argue. No, no, let's argue.

Come on. You're a doctor. I'm just an unlicensed biohacker. Come on.

Yeah, but you're brilliant. But what I would say is that I think a lot of these patients, including you, probably had mast cell activation syndrome to some degree. Degree. Simmering under the surface.

Oh.

At least various triggers brought them out over time. It escalates over time. And I think by the time people got the COVID vaccine, for instance, I'VE seen patients who said, you know, I've had triathlons, triathletes. I've had various, you know, professional athletes come in with long Covid, either from the virus or the vaccine and they say, well, no, I was a high functioning professional athlete and then I got, got, you know, took the vaccine and then I can't function. But if you go back through the history, they often had symptoms that they pushed through.

Yeah.

Or they biohacked their way through. So they didn't realize that they had any, any problems.

No one.

So that straw broke the camel's back.

No one teaches that, all these things. Oh, I could get weird headaches or maybe, you know, I have really heavy flow in my period or, you know, I have for me, like this stupid joint pain all the time. And it's all related. And since you think they're separate, you've dealt with each problem separately. And from this episode now maybe you can go, if you have a lot of that stuff going on, there is something underneath it. And I'm going to say it's probably centered around mitochondria, which are also centered around mass. Mast cells, which are also centered around, around hormones. Right. And exactly how do you fix that? Well, okay, what, what does it take to herd sheep? What's the one thing? There isn't one thing. You got to have a lot of things.

Right, exactly.

So this is where a medical doctor like you is best suited to handle it. But I still want people to know, okay, this might be what's going on with me because that's a gift. Just if once, you know, you can ask chat GPT, like, hey, how would I like get some GUID guidance? How do people know when to go to you or one of the few mast cell educated doctors out there versus oh, this is just something I can handle myself.

Well, look, I think there's so much information out there. You know, as long as they're listening to experts like myself and they're getting reliable information, there's a lot that they can do to a certain, to a certain point. You know, they can certainly look at their environment and figure out what changes they can make in their environment. Environment. They can test for mold. You know, they can do things to figure that out. They can, you know, get air purifiers, they can look at their diet and there's, there's lots of information out there. I've put information out there about different diets. Right. So there's so much that patients really or people have control over for the, on their Own. And they should, they should absolutely be doing the stuff to try to figure it out. It's when they hit a wall where they've done a lot of on their own and they're just. The needle's not moving. That's when you need someone to figure out what other routes are we missing here? You know, is it an infection like Lyme or Bartonella or something like that, which very often chronically causes mast cells to continue to be activated? You know, is it that you need, you need a doctor to order the tests. You need a doctor to potentially treat. Depending, you know, if there are other, there are always other root causes that you have to look at. Parasites, triggers like Epstein Barr or Covid or whatever. Right. So you need, sometimes you need someone to help then clean the mess up. Right. Whether that's through pharmaceuticals or whether that's through some of the fun toys that I have now in my clinic, which I love. Right. Whether it's plasmapheresis or red light or ozone or.

You sound a lot like a bio doctor.

Oh my gosh, I love it.

It's kind of cool because those interventions were generally not accepted in medicine until recently.

They're still not.

Yeah, well, that's just because there's a bunch of old fashioned doctors, I would say all of the cutting edge longevity people I work with in our world, let's say. Yeah, well, just. This is the world of high performance people who live way longer than everyone else. Since everyone's going to join our world, the doctors who don't have those, they'll just have, have. Well, I guess they only have insurance company based patients. And I'm sorry if that triggered you and you're listening. If you rely on your insurance company to pay your doctor, your doctor spends half their time talking to the insurance company. Therefore you're not getting good care. Is that a true statement?

Absolutely true.

Do you take insurance?

That's why I left that, that model.

Yeah.

Was killing me and killing my patients. Okay.

That's why. And there are people who get really mad and support, well, I can't afford a few hundred dollars an hour for a doctor. And you know, they argue that it's about fairness. Well, if what you're doing kills you, and we just had a Johns Hopkins trained doctor who tells you that, and I would absolutely agree with that. In fact, it kills you to the point that we've had some people who are clearly deranged go after the executive in charge of one of the major health care companies. And no, I'm not advocating that. In the slightest. Just saying there's deep anger and resentment towards that model and hopefully Bobby Kennedy is crushing it right now. So maybe someday you will be able to take insurance. But I look at, I look at a physician who says, I will not talk to your insurance company, but I'll give you whatever, in whatever codes you want to try and build your own insurance company. I think that might be the right model. And then if you're listening to the show, take those, those diagnostic codes, IDC codes. If your doctor will give them to you and then put them in a chat GPT and tell it to just be an absolute asshole to your insurance company because they're using it against you, you can use it against them. And if you have any ability to code, then write a script that literally automates harassment of your insurance company.

It's brilliant. And I've done similar things to write letters to insurance companies and, and I was a slow adapter of AI, But I do think in this case it really does work.

If anyone wants to partner with me on a company that has a low cost service for people who have insurance policies that, that uses AI specifically to, with insurance companies, that would bring me great joy and it would probably bring peace in the world. So I would do that.

All right, so hopefully someone listening.

Right, but you're still not going to talk to the insurance company, are you?

Well, we do talk to insurance companies.

Oh, wow.

Because sometimes we just need to help the patient, right? Not, not sometimes. Always. It's always about the patient, Dave. I have to tell you, it is. I'm committed to my patients. You know, I have amazing relationships with them. I really want to help them on their journey. So let's say there's a drug. Let's take a drug like Xolair, which is a drug we see sometimes used for mast cell activation syndrome. It's extraordinarily expensive. It's ridiculously expensive. But it's used for allergies, asthma, hives, urticaria and mast cell activation syndrome. But it's not approved for mast cell activation syndrome. So if I need a patient to get this drug, I'm gonna fight with the insurance company. Cause there are very few patients who can pay $6,000 a month to guess it to pay out of pocket.

See, then it's worth your time.

Absolutely.

And that's the thing, because, you know, if you're going to save a patient 60, $70,000 a year, it's worth it. And I just, I, I've spent a lot of my life, people don't know this. You know, I started the first company that ever sold anything over the Internet because I couldn't pay my rent and my tuition. I sold a T shirt said caffeine my drug of choice. And during summers that same year, I also put auto parts and boxes in a 90 degree warehouse all summer because it paid three times more than a normal job. And I scooped ice cream at Baskin Robin sometime too. Like I was scrappy, so resourceful. I would say, well, I've been there where I don't really have enough money to do what I want to do. And we have a systemic problem. And expecting your doctor to always go to the insurance company for things, it really increases the cost of healthcare. And it means that the doctor can see half as many patients or has to hire three more nurses to deal with it. And that's why it's like, it's not that your doctors are bad people if they don't do that. It's that they're trying to allocate their time to really sick people instead of to bureaucracy. And so this is the thing, I'll.

Add one more thing because this is one of the reasons I left that model. Not only do insurance companies dictate all this stuff, but they also have, have these, they're sort of in bed with various large medical groups. And what they do is they negotiate the groups, negotiate rates and how they're reimbursed. And so they, you know, in order to get more reimbursement from insurance companies for certain visits, the insurance companies will say, hey, this is what we'll do. If you can make sure that your patients have cholesterol levels under 200, we're going to pay you more for the visit. Okay. And this is, so this is what happened to me. They came in and said your patients need to have under 200 and then a certain blood pressure reading. And if they don't, you're going to pay me, they're going to charge me. I think first it was a dollar a patient, then it was $5 a patient and then $10 a patient for every patient with a cholesterol over 200.

And of course, most doctors who are being paid that way, they don't tell their patients that.

No. So what, so what they want you to do is to write a statin. And again, there may be places for statins. I'm not, not, you know, going there. But they, they just want you to follow the numbers so that they can get paid more. And no one knows this isn't that.

Like rico Behavior like really? Hey, Bobby Kennedy and team, we have a racketeering case here. You're an attorney and these things are called PBMs.

I'm just saying, like that didn't seem right to me but. And yet, you know, the director of the clinic, clinic would, would come to me and I would get reprimanded all the time because my patients cholesterols were over 200. And I would say to them, well I don't. Why, why is that bad necessarily? Like why is a cholesterol over 200 necessarily like it's not going to kill them? Yeah, I'm doing other things to help their health. If we, if we focus on one metric, right. We're missing the big picture here. And he would say, well, too bad. Next month it goes up to $5 a patient and next month it goes up to $10 a patient.

You.

I'm out of here is what I said.

I would have made the same decision just out of integrity. If you're caring for someone, you can't do that to them. Oh, and if they're exposed to lots of these fat loving environmental toxins, isn't LDL important to help the body detox?

Clear.

Wait, you mean toxin exposure could raise LDL? So the body could clear it 100%. Have you guys heard that before?

I see it all the time. Yes, excessively high levels.

Uhhuh.

And a lot of these patients will get their calcium scores done and they'll get. And they have no, no evidence of heart disease.

Yeah.

They are just toxic.

This is so big. And it gets confusing because I've taken a lot of punches from old fashioned people in the medical field. When I talk about fat, you know, putting butter in coffee and things like that. At this point I think many millions of people have done it and it works.

Works.

But my proof point is LP PLA2.

Yeah.

It's a marker of inflammation of the line of your arteries. So if they have a problem, then if the cholesterol is causing a problem, you should see inflammation.

You should see that level go up because it says that there's plaque being built right up on the lining of the artery. That's what that marker is.

So there you go guys. If your cholesterol of 220 is really an issue, then ask your doctor around LPPLA2 and if they want run it. Okay, I gotta ask.

And an lp.

Oh yeah. Both of them. Yeah.

Would be good to have to.

Is it ethical to need a doctor's permission to get my lab tests run?

Is it Ethical.

Why can't I just order my lab tests? What do I need to pay you to do, order them?

Well, you can.

Okay, good. I know one of my companies does that, but I.

There are a lot of companies now that do it and I'm, I'm all for it. I mean, I think again, it goes back to. Patients need to take control over their health.

Yeah.

They need to be invested in their health.

Yes.

Right. But there's also a role for us. 100% work with patients.

Yeah.

On that journey. Because at some point it does become bigger than them.

You know, and, and if I can just be really clear, some of my doctor friends will jokingly call me doctor and I am so not a doctor. I don't know any of the critical care stuff that, you know, I did not go to medical school. I am a really damn good expert at chronic illness and mitochondrial function. In fact, I would argue like in the top 10% or something.

I would agree.

Right. It would have been nice if I focused that attention elsewhere. I only did this because no doctor could help me 20 years ago. And yes, it's led to the biohacking movement and I'm grateful for it. And like I. My path has been amazing and had a lot of pain and suffering and feeling like shit, but anyone listening? If you're saying I have this weird stuff going on and I've done the normal stuff, I've done the red light, I've done the hot and cold and I've taken my adaptogens and you know, run your basic labs, if it's still not working, for God's sake, you can follow my path. I spent two and a half million dollars reversing my age and about a half a million dollars getting well from mast cells. Cause no one knew what it was. And you become an expert and if that's your calling, great. If not, hire an expert. You could also, if you have a BMW W, learn how to take the engine apart. Or you could hire a mechanic. Like there's a role for professionals who really know what's going on. And if I could have called you 20 years ago and said, I have no idea what's going on, but I'm so desperate and my brain doesn't work and I have all these symptoms and no one believes me, I would have given you that $2 million just to fix me. If actually I did have 2 million back then I lost it after that. So would have been better to pay you than just lose it. So this is how it is. So guys don't underestimate going to a doctor. But now here's the question. How does someone listening who doesn't live in New York, where you practice? How do they know how to find a doctor who's going to be able to help them with this?

We're working on that. Okay. Well, we just formed a nonprofit organization called the International Society for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, or IS mcas. I'm on the executive board and acting as treasurer. And we are going to be raising funds and working on creating a educational program to train more and more doctors and med students. And we need to spread the word. Right.

Maybe I can help at the biohacking conference. Now, it's called Beyond Biohacking. We are doing that because we're doing so much longevity and consciousness. But we're, for the first time ever, including continuing education credits for medical providers. Would you be interested in giving a lecture on mast cells that allows doctors and caregivers who come to the biohacking conference to get credits for that?

I would love it.

You are officially invited. And if you're a physician listening to this, you should come to the biohacking conference. It is going to be really good.

Would.

Because now that we can do ces, we're doing an extra day for physicians where we can just go really, really deep on the stuff that you. You will not hear this at any of those old school longevity conferences. Been around for a long time because they're. They're recycling old content. And yes, bioidentical hormones are good, but we got that.

Okay. That's a church. Yeah.

So. Okay. Thank you for agreeing to it.

Love that.

Okay, so I think.

I think this is so important that I would argue it is the most important thing for doctors to learn right now.

Sometimes I think the most important thing for doctors to learn is to tell all of their patients to get dimmer switches, red lights, and there'll be some true dark glasses.

Okay. What?

Circadian biology and mast cells. Talk to me about that.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's all very, very important.

So what happens, like, if you're exposed to bright light at night? Do your mast cells hate that or is there no catch?

Absolutely. And mast cells are more active at night. There is a circadian rhythm to the mast cell. A lot of patients will tell you two o' clock in the morning or four o' clock in the afternoon. Whatever it is, they have a time when they're more likely to react. I have a patient who cannot eat all day, but can only eat food at 6 o' clock at night because that's when she's less reactive. Whatever it is, everyone's a little bit different. But honoring the circadian rhythm by blocking the red light or the blue light. Excuse me, Using red light, using all those things, can only optimize things.

Okay, now we're going to get into somewhere really interesting. We published a study with truedark glasses. This is the ones designed for sleep. And this is a company I started 10 plus years ago for circadian biology.

I have a pair, too.

Did you see the medical study we published?

Yeah.

Oh, you did?

Okay.

You're one of the few who did. So it's cool because it changes. Use brain waves to calm the nervous system. And like, we do this with EEG machines from 40 years of Zen, and we got all the data, and these things work like kind of like meditation. So there's something in the body called the cell danger response.

Yes.

And you want to chill out so you don't trigger it. What is the cell danger response and how does it connect to mast cells?

So the cell danger response is really your body's right response to danger. It's a host of, or it's a variety of different mechanisms, very often mitochondrial, that, you know, again, try to protect your body. But unfortunately, it actually goes into the body, goes into overdrive during this cell danger response. And I think the mast cells are very much integrated into that response. Even though. Even though it's not really talked about in the papers on the cell danger response, I would say that, you know, there is that integral connection.

I feel like they're plugged in. That was the picture I had.

Me too.

And there's a crosstalk because when the cell feels unsafe, and I would say straight up, cells do feel things, because you can take a bacterial cell, it'll respond to the environment, it'll move away from danger. Right. And so will the cells, even the mitochondria in our body. So when there is danger, the cell is going to. To attempt to deal with the danger via many different defense mechanisms. One of the things cell danger response does is it will create inflammatory cytokines.

That's right.

And we are, we have in studies, inflammatory cytokines being present will trigger mast cells, and different cytokines in different people trigger mast cells in different parts of the body.

That's right.

So we have a mechanistic link.

Yeah.

So what I'd say is if you're feeling emotional stress, your mast cells are going to get worse. And what do you see in patients with stress? Yeah. With emotional Stress and mast cells.

Oh. Oh.

It's, it's a trigger.

It's one of the biggest triggers, actually.

Oh.

And I would argue that that that has to be a big piece. So managing the sympathetic nervous system is, is really critical, you know, doing limbic retraining of some kind.

I'm laughing. I don't mean to interrupt you because, because you just justified. Oh. This is why biohackers, especially ones with chronic illness like meditation, one of my favorite tools is like the Zenbud vagal nerve, ultrasonic stimulator, Vaginal nerve.

Yeah.

Right. So wow. And meditation and breath work, all the things, mast cells and mitochondria, they're right in there as a core foundational element that most people don't see. And that's why I think this is such an important interview. And I'm so happy that you can go there. Yes. Sleep mast cells.

Yes.

Sympathetic nervous system, stress. And it doesn't matter if it's because of your mother in law or if it's because you're, you know, anxious about whatever you're doing at work that day. You wake up and you're puffy. Maybe it was the mold in your bedroom.

Sure.

And maybe it was the thoughts in your head.

Right, Exactly.

How do I know which one?

Well, that's where you really. I really do encourage people to start to explain. That's why you have to explore meditation or, or getting sun in the morning or grounding or what. Whatever. Whatever you can do. Right. We have these various tools. People resonate differently with these different, different things. But the more you do that, the more you'll be able to, to really connect what's really causing the problem. So for instance, if you do all this work, but every time you sleep in your bedroom you have a problem. Right. Then you're more likely to, to, to think that there is something in the, in the bedroom causing the problem. Because you've done a lot of this other work. Right. So it does help to eliminate, you know, variables.

It sure does. And for me to get to where I am now, I had to just test everything and.

Exactly.

I think the most important piece of advice I would have. You may disagree with, I don't know, Testing one variable at a time doesn't work very well because there's probably 10 things contributing to mast cells. I feel like you got it. Just do all the things you can at the same time to just see if you can finally feel good and then. Okay, which of those 10 is optional? And then you can kind of back out. Is that good advice. A lot of doctors hate that advice.

But, okay, so this is the challenge, okay? Because I'm on board with you. Because. And I think there are a lot of patients that, you know, say to me, look, I don't have time to do one thing at a time, right? I have. I've been sick. I have to move on with my life. Give me everything, right? And I have the patients that can handle that. But I do have these exquisitely sensitive patients where you don't have a choice. You really are going to do one thing at a time, and you're going to wait a few weeks, because let's give you an example. I tell them to take Claritin, right? Okay. They buy the over the counter Claritin and they react to it. So now I have to figure out, is there ingredients in Claritin that they're reacting to? They're, you know, some of the Claritins have lactose. Some Claritins have, you know, these various excipients we call them. So then that patient, right, Are they reacting to the Claritin or are they reacting to something with the Claritin? So now I may have to compound that Claritin into a compounded formulation, and then they have to try that, and then maybe that doesn't work. So for some patients. So I think it depends, right? In the perfect world, yeah, they'd be able to maximize things by doing lots of things at the same time. That's why I have these various biohacking tools in my office. Sometimes we say, look, you gotta do 10 passo zone and red light. And we have the nanov and we have the Balancer Pro. We're gonna do lymphatic drainage, and we're gonna do this all because your body is shutting down and we've got to just get it back. But there are patients who that. That approach won't work, right? And this is what I love about. That's why I called my clinic AEM center for Personalized Medicine, because it's personalized. And I think it has to be.

It has to be personalized. And this is why I've never published the complete list of all the things I take. I actually showed you my vitamin vault. I mean, it's a sizable room, but I don't publish it because I don't want people to copy me, because that's not how you do it. It has to be personalized. And this is why you'll. You'll never see me launch 55 ingredients in one longevity supplement. Because five of those are going to screw everybody up. It's just a different five for each person.

Exactly, Exactly.

I appreciate the nuances there. And my advice would still be for biohackers. If you're so sensitive that everything breaks you, then don't do everything at once. And you absolutely need to call Tanya or find the right care provider. And if you have enough resilience to do several things at once. We don't have any studies showing that a single variable will do anything. In fact, the odds are much higher that more than one variable at the same time is going to create results. And I spent two years in my 20s trying to test single variables, and I never got anywhere. And then I did the math, like, I could do one variable per month for the rest of my life, and I'm not going to make it, and I'm going to hate my life the whole time. So you can also do so much that you break yourself. And the risk is I finally, I'm free. Right. And you get your energy back, and then you immediately accelerate, and then you hit the wall again. Right. And this is why having an expert who's just seen enough patience can help you. And there's so many techniques that we won't go into on the show about increasing resilience. So you can handle things. And thanks for just calling out. There are people so sensitive.

That's my patient population. You know, it's.

They filter themselves out. Like, I have this. Like, I'll fly to New York to see Tanya because. Yeah, because you really have this. I may end up sending a couple people your way. I'm working with a couple pro athletes now where I take a history. Again, I'm just a consultant, and I'm like, you have a track record of mast cell stuff, and you have collagen disorders. And let's talk about that for just a minute.

Yeah, that's a good topic.

So many people who have a hard time with, say, joint hypermobility also have mast cells. And I don't have Ehlers Danlos syndrome, but it is one of the most common things. There's 27, 28 types of it. But I am pretty darn flexible. You know, I can. I can do things, but I wasn't flexible when I was young. I think this comes from yoga, not from weird collagen.

Oh, okay.

Right, okay. Because I don't have.

Can you. Can you.

What's this test called?

It's part of the Biden score.

Biden, but not like Joe Biden, because then it would be like biting. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get in trouble for that.

But it turns out that the. Turns out that the Biden score is not. That is not really great for adults. It's more useful for kids.

And what this is, what is the biting score? It's a measure of whether you have hypermobile joints. So if you can bend your wrist and your thumb touches your, your forearm, that's a sign.

If you do it both sides and then you take your, you take your pinky. You see if you could bend your pinky back.

Like how far back?

Well, it should go at least 90 degrees or more. Yours is.

My pinkies are double jointed a little bit.

Yeah. And then you put your elbows out and you're looking for an angle.

My son and mother have an angle like that. My mom can touch her arms behind her back. So there's something weird.

There's something.

For me, it's probably rccx, which is, is relatively unknown. But I'm just saying there are genetic associations. And if you're super bendy and hypermobile, or if your arms, if you measure your wingspan is greater than your height, your risk of having mast cell disorders is much higher, right?

Might be, yeah. I mean, I think that there's definitely this connection, right? There's a genetic EDSS or Ehlers Danlos syndrome, but there's also hypermobility syndrome. We actually don't have the genetics of. We don't know what it is genetically, but there is an association with mast cells. And what we believe is that as I said, mast cells are in all your tissue in your body and they're in abundance in your connective tissue.

Oh, this is interesting. So you have more mast cells in your connective tissue, which is why so many people, they eat the wrong thing and they get sore joints the next day, right?

Yeah, that's part.

I did not know that the density was so high. Okay.

Yeah, it's high. Yeah. And certain, like the GI tract, the skin, the connective tissue. I mean, a lot. There are a lot of other places that they're high. And, and some people have more in their connective tissue than let's say in other parts of their body. And so the mast cells, when they release their cytokines and these mediators, you know, they can release various compounds that act as like a collagenase, like an enzyme that breaks, breaks down collagen. MMP9 is another chemical we'll say, that breaks down connective tissue and collagen that can predispose people to various Joint tendon issues and ligament issues.

You're probably the only person to talk about MMP9 on the show.

Really. Okay.

And so little educational moment for our listeners. Uh, MMPs are critical causes of aging. You have high MMP, you'll age. And I've been looking for ways to lower those and it's very hard to do. So what I did, oh, two years ago I ate oysters in Las Vegas. Eating oysters in the desert is still kind of dumb.

Probably not. Yeah. I think I know where this is going.

Yeah. There's two kinds of oyster bacterial toxins. There's ones that paralyze you and kill you. And the other ones radically raise mmps. I woke up after sweating through the. The bed. Sorry, Bellagio. Wherever I was saying. And then I felt like a car hit me. I mean, every joint in my body. Horrible pain and just nasty. This is high mmps. So I took all the inflammatory, all the mast cell things and they kind of helped. But like this just sucks. And sometimes you have it for six weeks after bad. Oh, oysters. But there's a little known technology that lowers MMPs throughout the body. Can you guess what it is?

Well, like I was going to tell you about a drug that I've, that I've been interested in.

Okay. But I'll add the drug to my longevity stack. This is something that I do. Head to toe studies show that shockwave therapy. So Wasabi Method is one of my companies that has a shockwave device. I just start at the toes and go up. I went over every sore joint and I was 50% better after one treatment. And I'm not saying this treats anything. We only use it for longevity and performance. But shockwave, that technology is in studies, it lowers 19 markers of longevity, which I do. Whole body shockwave. It's a big deal.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow, that's exciting. Can I get one for my clinic?

Yeah. In fact, it's the lowest cost clinical grade out there and people who are not doctors are allowed to buy it because we need the regulatory.

So I want to talk about that later.

Sabimethod.com Anyway, tell me about the drug.

This is not the drug that you're going to want to take regularly, but just microdosing. But could be microdosing doxycycline.

There's actually really good evidence for longevity. Low dose doxy or minocycline, Right?

Correct.

So I've been thinking about doing low dose minocycline because I've read it doesn't mess up your gut Bacteria.

It doesn't affect it the same way, but it does lower the MMPs. In particular, it could be compounded maybe like low, low, low dose.

So minnow versus doxycycline, which is better.

Minnow's going to be. So doxy has more research.

Okay.

Minnow is a little easier on the GI tract.

I look back in my life at if only I would have known or we would have known. There was a time where I bought a farmhouse in Silicon Valley. It was still possible back then. And it was on four acres. And the only way I could afford this, this was in the 90s, right before everything went nuts. The house was appraised at $12,000 because there were holes in the walls. I mean, it was a hundred year old homestead house and I couldn't have. I could afford the land, but I couldn't afford to fix the house other than fix it but not tear it down. So did the best remodel I could. Maybe didn't get old permits. Sorry, guys. And when it would rain, water would pool under the house.

Oh gosh.

And I didn't know I was allergic to toxic mold. So I moved there and I was like, I just feel so bad, like something's not right. Mast cell everywhere. And I moved out of a house with Stachybotra, so it's just like bad luck because nobody knew. And there's so much water damage. So I got some kind of sinus infection and they gave me doxycycline and I took it. And I still remember standing in my kitchen that day going, oh my God, I feel so, so good. Like I want to take this antibiotic every day because this is how I'm supposed to feel. And so what was happening is I was getting mast cell activation and probably my MMP9s were high. Right. Oh my gosh, this is like 20 plus years ago.

And doxy is a mast cell stabilizer. Yeah. In addition, beyond its other effects, which is interesting. So although, yeah, there are lots of people who can't tolerate it, blah, blah, blah. But I hear these stories all the time where people are like, I took doxy and I felt incredible. Couldn't just be you were killing something. Couldn't have just been, oh, the sinus infection or lyme or whatever. Using doxy. There's another. There's another. It's a potent anti inflammatory.

My goodness. So you just put another little piece in my own personal biohacking puzzle. Okay, now I'm going to piss you off.

Uh oh, I'm ready.

I recommend you go to a functional medicine physician if you can afford one. One. And I also know a lot of people listening don't have money for that. So if you wanted to try doxycycline, you can buy it online from India and it'll go directly to you and it's more affordable. You don't have to talk to your insurance company. You don't have to pay $400 or more per hour for a permission slip to just try something once to see if it really helps you. If it does help you, maybe you want to go to the doctor and say, I noticed this helps. Why shouldn't biohackers who can't afford to go to the doctor just buy their drugs from India?

So I'm not, I'm not completely opposed to this.

Wow, okay. You're progressive.

Because I can see the utility.

Yeah.

What I would say is that the concern I would have is the quality coming from India versus somewhere else. Right. So there's that piece of it. Like, can we guarantee that what you're getting is really the drug?

And does that have heavy metals and stuff? That is an absolute risk.

Yeah. So I had a patient who had. Not getting drugs from India, but getting herbs from India.

That's risky. Yeah.

Got toxic lead levels of over 40. I don't think I've ever seen a lead level over 40.

That'll drop your IQ like no one's business. Wow.

Yeah. Probably caused her ALS. So I just worry about that type of thing. Like people are getting things from a country where it may not be regulated.

Right.

But, you know, I do think that there are things that people can try on their, on their own. I think that is they're following their, their own labs and they make sure their, you know, liver is okay. I mean, I'm not opposed to it. I still like the concept. You know, I'm really this old fashioned type of country doctor. I'm not a country doctor, but I still have this sort of mentality about having relationships with patients and discussing these things. And patients come to me all the time and they're like, well, what do you think if I try, you know, this. And maybe I never heard of it, or maybe I think it's risky and we just talk about it and then they do what they, you know, what they want ultimately. Right. I like, but I like the idea of having the relationships. But, but for those out there who don't have the ability to have a relationship with a doctor, then, yeah, you have to take things into your own hand. Hands to some Extent.

And I. I understand that that's really progressive. I think I might have some strong emotions about that because when I was somewhere in my mid-20s, I was so addled by mast cells and toxic mold and bartonella, which is a lime co infection we even talk about. I was making pretty good money, but not enough to cover all of my costs. It was extra stressor in my. The brief marriage. Had my 20s where she's like, why do you spend 20% of our monthly income on your health? I'm like, so I can keep working. And I bought disability insurance. In fact, the policy is still in effect today because all my lab tests were clear. Doctor said, there's nothing wrong with you, but I'm like, something I don't know. So I filled out all the paperwork, truthfully, and all that stuff. And they said, here's the policy. Because I'm like, well, what if something happens? Because I'm healthy by all measures, but I don't know if I'm healthy. And so there was a fear of, can I put, you know, can I put food on the table if my symptoms get worse?

That's. Yeah, that's.

Yeah.

Scary.

And for people who are listening, there are some. They're going, well, maybe I can spend 20 bucks on a box of Dr. Cycling and take a cordal tablet a day and that'll let me keep working my job so that I can take care of my family. Like, I respect that so much.

Yeah.

How much of anxiety in the world today is just caused by mast cell activation syndrome that people don't even know.

They have a lot of?

Whoa, really? How? Like half?

Yeah. Well, let's just say this, right? If 20% of the population has MCAs, a fair number of those are going to have some level of anxiety or depression or some kind of, you know, mental illness of some kind to various degrees. So maybe not half, but a good portion, I think is due to. No, maybe half of those. I have to think about the math on that. What I would say is this, that so much of what we attribute anxiety and depression to is not just the psyche. It is a physiological response. And I think that the more that psychiatrists and mental health professionals can see it, the better it is for the patients. Right. So you could use, believe it or not, Benadryl, Claritin. There are so many tools, tools for that you can use to help anxiety without having to use anxiety medication.

You're just illuminating so many things where I had almost of these pieces, but. Okay, here's how I would differentiate Whether your anxiety is trauma. And I've done huge amounts of trauma work. 40 years of Zen, you know, the whole book's about it. So that was real for. For everyone who's. Who's listening. And by the way, if that triggered you, dude, you have trauma. Okay? So I also had trauma over inflammatory responses. Because I would walk into a room that had toxic mold. My body picks up toxic mold, and this massive shift in my consciousness would happen. Sometimes it was rage, depending on the species, and sometimes it was just anxiety. My blood pressure would drop, my heart would race. And people who have taken toxic mold, they know this feeling. They call it mold brain or mold rage. And it's a. A physical anxiety response you can measure. So first I learned, well, I can consciously reduce my physical or mental anxiety with heart rate variability. And I teach people how to do that. Like, how to. How to, like, oh, look, my system's going haywire. Let's bonk. Was only later that I realized there's a protocol for what to do when your environment causes rapid onset anxiety. So if you're feeling pretty good and then you have a meal, and during the meal or half hour after the meal, you feel like you're gonna die or that everyone around you just turned into an. It's not you. It's not trauma. Most likely it is a physiological response to your environment. And then the body says, I gotta protect myself. I'm gonna look for the cause. And I think this causes a huge amount of problem in society, right, because we're all sitting in these bodies, and if your body suddenly is like, I'm gonna die, you think you're gonna die. And it was something you breathed or it was something in your food, and it was a mast cell that sat at the center of that.

Yeah. Wow. You know, when patients wake up, a lot of. A lot of patients will wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning with these anxiety attacks or panic attacks, right? And so, again, their loved ones are saying, oh, you need. You need help. You're stressed. You know, you have all this going on. And sure, they're stressed, but that type of response is physiological. And I would say the majority of what people deal with is that means.

Drop all the shame, drop all the guilt. It's not your fault. It's a hardware problem. And we can all fix hardware problems, but if it's a moral problem, then I guess you're just screwed. And so there's a lot of judgment that we may have towards other people. And if it's rapid on settings for no apparent reason. That's one thing. Like if you're, you know, a family member or a narcissist calls you and you have a panic, okay, you've been facing emotional abuse. It's another thing, though, if it just happens for what feels like no reason. And for me, the protocol was immediately up regulate mitochondrial function and downregulate histamine. So you take a little bit of Benadryl, pop a Claritin, pop a Pepcid ac, have two shots of espresso with sugar in it. It because sugar causes an anti stress response, don't take sugar all the time, it's not good for you. But you're basically telling the body, here's a lot of energy, take some ketones, take a bunch of mitochondrial stimulators, chill out by putting on true dark glasses that calm physiological stuff and change brain waves. And you can turn off the anxiety response. Yeah, right. And you might be a little tired from the Benadryl or something, but I've seen this work over and over, oh.

So many things, so many times.

Now let's talk about Ativan. What does that do for mast cells?

Well, so Ativan's in the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines. Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, Valium. Right. There are a few others. Some of them are oral iv and they're given in different ways. There are receptors on the mast cell surface for benzodiazepines. And so at a. Or Xanax or whatever can bind the MAST cell and can calm it down. So what happens to a lot of anxious people is that they are. They've given, they've been given, or people with anxiety, I should say, are given a benzodiazepine by a family doctor or a psychiatrist. And they say, oh, just take this when you're anxious. And they come in, you know, they see me and they say, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm taking this for my anxiety and it works. And I feel so much better after I take it. And I said, well. And they said, that's for my anxiety. And I said, no, I don't think it's for your anxiety. I think it's for your mast cell activation syndrome. I think it's just a mast cell stabilizer. And. And there's a lot of stigma around these drugs. But when used appropriately at very low doses, it can be helpful. Just have to be, you know, careful.

I have seen someone I know really, really well who takes a half of the Smallest dose of Ativan. Oh, no. Addictive benzos at that dose. That has not ramped up over the course of years.

Years.

And manages mast cells, inflammation, and these feelings of rapid heartbeat, anxiety and panic attacks. It's not anything but mast cells. And the fact that for. In that case, the receptors in their biology, they like that stuff and it works.

That's right.

And there's a stigma in the biohacking community that I've worked for years to just get over. It doesn't matter if it's a drug, if it's a technique of breathing or an ice bath at the right time of day, it doesn'. Matter. What are the benefits, what are the risks, and are they worth it for you Right now? That's all that matters.

That's right.

And I've also said this will really piss people off. Pre pandemic. I had a guest on the show talking about the potential of MRNA vaccines for longevity. Okay. So if you get an Alzheimer's vaccine that actually had published studies that worked and that, you know, I don't, by the way, I don't believe any science on vaccines right now because all of it has been polluted by lies, cheating and deception. So anyone who says, well, they're proven safe, dude, show me that that was not a corrupt study because of the degree of lying. Right. So throughout all the research on vaccines, start over and I'll listen. That's my perspective. But I've talked to too many people who have brain fog and mast cell activation after getting one or two or three, three Covid vaccines, and they get it within days. Did the COVID vaccine cause an epidemic of mast cell activation syndrome in people?

I think both the virus itself and the vaccine has definitely ramped up the number of people who are suffering. And I think it's the spike protein. I think it's very specific because the MRNA vaccine causes the production of spike protein. What we were taught early on is that the MRNA would go, you know, would send the message to the DNA to produce the spike protein. The antibodies would then build up against the spike protein, and then you'd have an antibody response. And so then next time you saw the virus, you'd be able to have antibodies to it. That's what was supposed to happen.

Great story.

It sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, in many people, the spike protein didn't go away. The spike protein was supposed to go.

Away, like, hundreds of times higher than getting the virus.

Right? Right. I think that's what some of the studies have shown. But even with the virus Same thing. They get it. And for a lot of people, the spike protein establishes itself somewhere in the body. Sometimes it's the GI tract, sometimes it's the heart, sometimes it's somewhere else, and it just is there. And it is ramping up the immune response. Maybe it's getting into the monocytes. And they're like lots of theories of where the. Where the spike protein is going and what it's doing. But I think we have enough evidence to say that there's something about the spike protein itself that then is causing this immune dysregulation that I would call mast cell activation syndrome.

Unquestionably, the spike protein is bad for mast cells and bad for people. The studies that I've come across, and there are now lots and lots of studies out there, I've not read all of them, but. But they're saying if you get the virus, you get spike proteins at lower levels and limited to certain tissues, like more lung and sinuses and things like that. And they can travel around, but it's a transient amount of time. And that when people get the vaccine, they make more of it and they make it systemically. And you find way more spike protein in the ovaries, in the testes and cardiac tissue, in their brains. And it's caused these people. The vast majority of people with long Covid were vaccinated, not regular coveted people. Have you seen that in your practice?

Yeah, it's hard to piece apart. I mean, there are just enough people that have both, so it's sort of hard to know.

So are you protecting your license right now?

Maybe.

Okay, I respect that.

And look, and I'm not anti vax.

Everyone says that.

Yeah, I'm not.

Did you. Did you get the COVID vaccine?

But I did early on.

Did you get number six?

No, I got the first two.

Why did you stop?

Because I knew something was wrong.

You sound like an anti vaxxer to me. I'm just teasing you.

I know, but the reality is that I do think that there are vaccines that are important.

Well, like hpv.

Well, I have a problem with HPV also.

God, Tanya, you sound like an anti Tonia about how bad HPV is. Then tell me which ones are good.

Okay, so I did publish with my colleague, Dr. Afrin. We did a case series on HPV vaccine causing escalation of mast cell activation syndrome in patients who probably had it before the vaccine. So we did publish on it.

So you've shown that giving these little kids an HPV vaccine that wears off before they would ever Get HPV increases their risk of getting mast cell syndrome.

Yeah. Or escalates. They probably were already vulnerable to taking vulnerable people and causing an escalation. So what I think has to be done is that we have to develop tools to identify patients who don't have those risks, because I think there are people out there who get vaccines and are fine and they'll never have a problem. Problem. How do we identify those people in my patient population? Because my patients are so sensitive.

They're all the sick ones.

Right. So it seems like, you know, I. I might have a stance against vaccinations. It's not against it. It's just that for my patient population, I have to be extraordinarily cautious.

I respect that. And I'm totally putting on the spot here, which is kind of fun. It's fine.

I can take it.

Pushing people's buttons is my love language. So you said a couple things that. That are important. One is your colleague, Dr. Afrin. He's not related to Afrin. Nasal spray spelled the same way. He is the worst author on the planet. You can tell him I said that, and he acknowledges it, the first sentence in his book. And his book on mast cells.

His book is huge.

It changed my life. I wrote the whole thing, and I had to, like, rewrite it in my brain, but that was the book that illuminated for me this understanding of mast cells. So tell him I said thanks. In fact, I'd love to have him on the show. I love that you're working with the guy who kind of cracks the code.

Yeah, he's in my practice. We work together. We publish a lot. We've published.

I didn't realize he was in your practice. Oh. Oh, goodness. Okay, cool. He's one of those unusual brains in the world.

He is really, really a special person and is so committed to the cause, really to understand this and publish. And we have another paper we just published together. I mean, I think I've published eight or nine papers with him already. We have a couple others on the docket. You know, he. We published on GLP1, the utility of GLP1s in Mast Cell activation syndrome. That was just published last week.

Another reason that you might want to microdose those. For longevity. Right?

Correct.

Okay.

So anyway. Okay.

What about nicotine and mast cells?

Is that what you're. Is that what you've been taking?

I like nicotine. I did the. The first biohacking podcast talking about Alzheimer's and nicotine many years ago.

I'm fascinated by. By the research and the literature on it, and I think it's fascinating how it may be helping our long COVID patients and maybe it's helping them through a number of different pathways. And maybe it is helping on a mast cell level. I don't know if I can say it's only doing that. There may be other things. I think there's some people who are more sensitive to nicotine.

They probably shouldn't take it and they shouldn't take it.

Yeah. But I think it's an interesting tool and I think that, you know, again, I do have patients literally overnight their brain fog cleared.

You know, so pretty magic for brain fog for a lot of people. Okay. We know that it's beneficial at low doses, pharmaceutical nicotine, not smoking, for mitochondrial function via PGC1alpha and various other mechanisms. Increasing mitochondrial function lowers mass cell activation. Yeah, in general, but not completely, but it lowers it. And we know it blocks the spike protein ACE2 receptor, which would also lower mast cell activation of the spike cells causing it. So I would say if you have.

Brain fog, receptors are on the mast cell also.

Oh, of course. Right. So then like your risk of doing nicotine up to 10 milligrams per day max, don't go above that. Even though I might have done that in my learning process, the risk of risk is low. I actually think it's pro longevity because of anti Parkinson's, anti Alzheimer's and benefits to mitochondria. People sometimes disagree. Whatever. But if you have brain fog that's disabling, you're insane to not try a nicotine patch or a lozenge that doesn't have NutraSweet in it because of which are you doing?

Like, while we were sitting here.

Those are 1.5 milligram dose. So very, very low doses. The problem is I did 1mg a day for 5 years. No addictiveness whatsoever. Then I went to 2 because I just like it. And then I said, my life is so much better. Like, screw this nose. I'm just going to do whenever I want to. And then I got up to like 40 milligrams a day, which is a lot.

Wow.

And there's probably sympathetic activation response from that you don't want. And so I see a lot of people now using these Zen things, 6mg, 12mg and getting microplastics. I do not recommend recommend that. And I've gone really deep about to publish something on this. Up to 10 milligrams a day will not cause physiological responses. So for most people 6mg max per day. Buy a 6mg, break it into 4 pieces if you want. And then on days when you like, I'm going to be on stage, like, I got to bring it, then you have another 4 milligrams to play with. Just never go above 10 and you're not going to get chronic muscle tension and all the weird stuff, stuff that comes from excessive nicotine. Do you agree?

Yeah, I, I think, I think that's fair. I think, again, everyone's. Everyone's.

Yeah.

Biology is different, but I think that sounds. Yeah.

Pretty safe from a shamanic side. I've also been trained to administer hoppe. You know, you blow the tobacco stuff up someone's nose. That's different. I'll do that too for journeying and.

But that's not a regular thing.

No, it's not. With certain, certain psychedelics, nicotine is a very potent enhancer of the experience. I'll go over it for that. Tanya, thank you for making the long trip from New York to Austin to be on the show. The information you shared is really life changing. It is not in the world of biohacking, but it is in the world of chronic illness. And I just love it that you are a biohacking longevity mast cell expert. Chronic illness illness, like by any means necessary kind of physician and healer. And so, you know, my. My compliments and respect. Thank you.

Thank you.

How can people find out more about your clinic?

So I have a website, DrTanya Dempsey.com Instagram Dr. Tanya Dempsey MD and Facebook Dr. Tanya Dempsey. So I do. I put out a lot of content. I have. I have my own podcast. Podcast now.

Oh, I didn't even know.

Called Mast Cell Matters.

How come you haven't even invited me on there?

I was just gonna invite you.

Feelings are hurt. Oh my God.

You made me do it. But we've got to get you on.

I'd be very happy to be.

Yeah, it would be great. So Mass All Matters, which is on all the podcast platforms and so we've been doing that for a year and again just. I'm just trying to get all this information out there for people. I'm going to be doing master classes. I have some coming up. Writing a book. Lots of stuff going on. I'm excited about when.

For people who can't click the link that we put here in the notes, it's T, A, N, I, A and then D, E, M, P, S, E, Y. Because you can spell Tanya 15 different ways. I know from, from signing 10,000 books. I've spelled every name wrong, so I just always ask. So there you go, guys.

Tanya and the clinic is in Westchester County, New York. Purchase and it's called AIM center for Personalized Medicine.

Aim.

Aim.

Okay, beautiful. And we'll put all those, those links on the website and, and, and. All right. Thank you again.

Oh, thank you for having me. This was so much fun.

See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

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