Histamine Psychosis (A Serious and Less Commonly Considered Symptom of MCAS/Histamine)

27 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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A short excerpt from a YouTube talk by Matt Kelly describing how high levels of histamine (notably H1-mediated signalling) can be strongly excitatory in the brain and, in people with mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), may precipitate acute psychotic episodes. The speaker frames these events as physiological (excess histamine release) rather than primary psychiatric illness and gives an anecdotal example.

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If you got a whole bunch of histamine going up to your brain. Histamine of the H1 variety and some of the other histamine reception in the brain is very excitatory. So it is possible. And I've seen this actually happen with people with MAST cell problems where they suddenly get a trigger and instead of having like asthma attack or something, they actually had a psychotic break, which was very, very unfortunate. But it was not because they were psychotic. It was because they had MAST cell activation syndrome and suddenly their body more histamine out, so it's a faster dumping. And so their brain participated in a psychotic episode because extra histamine.