Dr. Meg Mill EXPOSES the Dangers of MCAS and BII with Robert Whitfield MD

Welcome to the show today. Dr. Meg is a PharmD and certified functional medicine practitioner with over two decades of clinical experience. She is also a best selling author, podcast host, summit host and speaker. Her virtual functional medical functional medicine practice has transformed the lives of thousands of people worldwide by connecting the dots between their diverse, unexplained and often overlooked health struggles. She uses her EAT method to uncover and resolve the underlying connections, whether gut dysfunction, nervous system dysregulation, histamine intolerance, or mass cell activation syndrome, mcas. She empowers clients to regain control of their health, to regain the energy, mental clarity and confidence needed fully to show up in their lives again. She has been seen in many national publications on media such as Fox News Channel, abc, NBC, cbs, cnn, Forbes, Health, Reader's Digest, Health Magazine, mindbody, Green Authority Magazine, Lifestyle Life and Style, and Sunset magazine, as well as several national publications, blogs and podcast appearances that she's made. Her personal journey through health struggles fuels her EMP approach, making her not just a healthcare provider, but a partner in her client's wellness journey. Welcome to the show, Dr. Meg.

Thank you for having me today.

Oh boy. I've been waiting for this. Meg and I have been trying to talk about this for a period of time because my patients have tons of problems with inflammation and I have a new, even more isolated group that have mast cell activation syndrome. So we're going to get into all of that. But I want to thank Dr. Meg for getting on the show and being an advocate for muscle activation syndrome, which to me, because I'm old Now, I'm 55, so everybody listening understands this. This is a relatively new, you know, newly diagnosed situation, really. And when I was reading about it, when my patients first started talking about it, I was like, I feel like I'm a little behind the eight ball here. So we're going to ask Dr. Meg to help define and kind of set the stage for mast cell activation syndrome and then we'll dig deeper. Sure.

So let's start actually by taking a step back and talking about the immune system because I think that gives us a good context of what mast cells are, why they become overactive. So you have two different parts of your immune system. You have your innate immune system and your adaptive immune system. So think of your innate immune system as those first line. They're really looking for any type of threat. Your adaptive immune system is a little more specific. They're going to tag certain things, you know, if you have a specific allergy to, let's food like peanuts or Something you're getting a tag there that's saying, okay, this is a problem, but our innate immune system is just looking at, okay, what is the threat and what do we need to do to stop it. And your mast cells are a part of the innate immune system and they're constantly looking for threats and dangers. So they're also concentrated, which will, it will be interesting when we relate this to breast implant illness because they're concentrated on surface areas. So they're going to be concentrated on your skin, on, in your GI tract, in your airways, on places. And that's why we see some of these symptoms come up in multi system symptoms.

So for everybody listening, you know what Dr. Meg just said is critically important. Everything that your body gets exposed to is exposed on those particular surfaces that she's talking about. Whether it's your skin surface where people apply products or we breathe, which you hear me talk about air quality quite a bit and the things you ingest. So when we eat or drink, the quality of the things we eat and drink are critically important, as I'm sure she is going to highlight, to reducing your chance of activating or, or stimulating this process.

Exactly. So we want to be careful. So we're having this and that's why we're seeing it in, in multi systems. But we're, we're protecting ourselves. So that's the thing. Your mast cells are there to protect your body, actually kill off the invaders that come in. So what happens is when mast cells detect a threat, they degranulate and they release all of these different chemicals. So they're releasing histamine, they're releasing heparin, they're releasing cytokines, prostaglandins, tryptase. So they see an invader, they degranulate and they activate an immune response which actually is part of our inflammatory response. We want inflammation. When there's a threat, we just want inflammation. Temporari actually kill the thread off and then we relax again.

That's super important. So what Dr. Meg is highlighting is our body has a system to control inflammation. And probably of all the things you said, histamine is something everybody can relate to because there's histamine receptors and there's really two types, there's one and two. So everybody's heard of things like, you know, Pepcid, you know, pomotidine. So that's a H1H or I'm sorry, H2 blocker, apologize. And then something like, you know, Zyrtec, you know, an allergy type medicine for an H1 receptor. But so what I'm hearing is like, you know, obviously we get exposed to something, our body reacts that turns on the signaling mechanism, these things, you know, let go of what is going to, from a, a cell standpoint, start the inflammatory cascade.

Exactly. So that's what happens. And we want that to happen, so we want that process to happen. And then regularly that happens to us all the time. We bounce in and out. But what starts to happen in mast cell activation syndrome is think of our immune system becomes, let's say, angry because you start to have exposures. Often what starts to happen is that you have triggers. So you have mold exposure. So you can have long term mold exposure where you're exposed to mycotoxins all the time. You can have constant allergy exposure environment like the, we're talking about environmental allergens. You can have underlying, and we can get more into this, but you can have underlying gut dysbiosis. And we actually know there are specific mast cell activating and histamine producing microbes. So the conversation becomes interesting when you say, you know, is it you or is it your microbes that are doing, creating some of these reactions? Which is crazy.

That's super important though. I, you know, I think when people come see me, first of all, nobody wants to see me, Meg. Nobody wants surgery, right? When they can't see, nobody wants to lose their super nervous. I had this patient today who's literally trying to crawl out of their own skin to not be around me. And you know, obviously our programming is, is basically used to highlight what you're talking about. So if someone has a dysregulated immune system where it's really ramped up, why is it ramped up? And we look at their genetics and how they detox, we look at their toxicity burden. So people hear me talk about this. What does that really mean? So Dr. Meg just said the quiet part out loud like everything is important and don't let anybody tell you it's not. If somebody tells you mold is not a thing, then you need to get away from them because they sound stupid. So mycotoxins are incredibly, you know, bothersome to my patient population. And I'm super sensitive because my glutathione pathway is not great. So things that would normally necessarily not bother another person, make, you know, me have allergy type symptoms or make me feel unwell. So if I and I had a home that we didn't know had mold in it, in a bathroom, which is a common thing because of the fixtures, the, the Pipes that go to the, you know, the faucets into the shower. And if you have any kind of leak in the tub or stuff like that, these are things that can happen. Or roof leak or whatever. It doesn't really, really matter. Moisture can Rio set up the environment or mold to proliferate. And then if you're sensitive to mycotoxins like I am, you're not going to do well.

Exactly. And I think that's a really important before we even move on. And I will tell you a funny story, too, about this, because I woke up to a bathroom leak this morning, and I'm calling my husband saying, oh, no, we need to get this taken care of. And he's like, you and your mold issue. I was like, no, he's one of those that I'm all.

I.

Because I'm, you know, I see these huge effects of mold on health and how this affects people's lives. And so I am very, very mold conscious. So, yes, if your bathroom is leaking, don't be like him and just think, okay, it's not. Not a big deal. You need to get it dressed right away. You need to look inside, like, what is going on and what's happened because of that leak or behind your walls. It's happening all the time to people. But the other thing that you mentioned that I think is so important to highlight is that I think people discount it a lot of the time, because as you said, genetics are different. And you could be living in a house with everyone else who is fine and you're sick, and you say, well, it can't be my house because I'm not. I'm the only one that's feeling this. Everyone else is fine. But you all have different detox pathways, and you might not be clearing the mycotoxins, and they may be able to handle that level. So we're always looking at what is the burden on your body.

And that's super important. So for couples especially, I find this to be a problem. Right. The. We'll just say in my patient population, the. The. The woman is particularly sensitive. And so my setup is they don't methylate well. They don't have a good vitamin D pathway, they don't have a good glutathione pathway. They have limited antioxidant pathways. They have estrogen toxicity. Well, if you just add all that up, of course, they're super sensitive to a mycotoxin load. That may not affect someone else, especially a male who' a higher testosterone level to buffer out cortisol obviously any estrogen toxicity would be better buffered out by a male. And if they have just a good glutathione pathway, they probably won't be symptomatic. But you're breathing in all these spores all the time. So people are like, they hear me talk about this. And so like in Austin, where I am, I'm in Austin, Texas. Old is a big problem. So is cedar and so is oak because it doesn't really get that cold here. So the trees are constantly dropping this stuff. And it's just, it's not, you know, the, the environment kind of sets up some of it. And people come here, say they'll move from the east coast to the west. Everybody's coming to Austin. So they all come here and they're like, oh my God, now I got allergies in Austin. And they're like, you know, it's the theater fever. Like there's a whole cottage industry made here on this premise that cedar is causing all this. And to a degree, I'm sure people can be sensitive to cedar, but more importantly, the mycotoxin burden is so high, especially in some of these older homes. Like people, you know, want to renovate a bungalow or they, they come and they buy something that's, you know, an old ranch style home. And for everybody listening, so Austin basically was built on the Colorado riverbed. And so you're, you're on a home that's pure and beam. And it's, it can shift too. The, the, the weather, right. If it rains, it can change. If it, if it's dry, it can change. But just in general, I tell people, like, you need an air filter and we use Jasper Co and Swiss IQ air, you need an air filter that can take out spores. Because if Dr. Maggie is the person who's sensitive and she's, you know, sleepy and the, the bathroom in her master bedroom happens to have a leak and there's mold. She's respiring all night long and breathing spores in and out. And now just like she said, her airway that absorbs those things is super sensitive. And she could wake up and have a headache. She could wake up and have like a, like a sinus type thing or just difficulty breathing or swallow. There's all sorts of manifestations. I'm sure that you're going to highlight about what that can do to you.

Yeah, so that's, and that's what we're looking. So we're looking at all of the layers. So when you think of it, you know, think of what you're saying, okay, what do you have? You could have mycotoxins, you could have allergy exposure, you could have the underlying gut dysbiosis, you could have infections. We're seeing it a lot after the pandemic with the virus. You know, you can have Lyme, tick borne illnesses, chemical toxicities, the pesticide exposure, toxic heavy metals even. Some people start to be sensitive to EMFs, hormonal changes, you know, xenobiotics. That's where you know, the breast implants are coming in. We have even stress and anxiety. So there's all these things that are stacking up. So you're having all these exposures. Your immune system's handling it for a while. Okay, I can handle this now. I have this layer now. I can handle this. Okay, now. And we get to a point where it's just like enough, basically, like enough. I'm starting to be angry, I'm starting to react to everything. And so what, we start to have these overactive mast cells and they start to release all of these granules. And then you start to get things like skin rashes, hives, itching. We can see headaches and migraines, fatigue, dizziness, heart palpitations. Then we have all the GI symptoms like the nausea, the bloating, the diarrhea. We can have weight changes, brain fog, cognitive problems, neuropathy, tingling, shortness of breath, allergy symptoms. We can see hormonal changes actually with mast cells. Estrogen actually also is another thing that signals mast cells to release. So there is actually receptor. So high levels of estrogen can be a problem. Then we, you know, can signal some of these things, joint pains, anxiety, depression. So it's, it's all of these symptoms where, you know, when you're looking at breast implant analysts, you're looking at a lot of the same symptoms. So it's, there's crossover. And so sometimes I think people will be having issues with their mast cells and not even realizing that this is what's going on because a lot of their symptoms cross over with symptoms from other things too that maybe are being talked about a lot more.

Yeah, I, I, and I get, you know, everybody tries to pigeonhole me and like, all right, what is breast implant illness, Dr. Whitfield and Blah, blah. And so, you know, for everybody listening, there is crossover of a number of chronic inflammatory processes in our body. So that's why like Dr. Meg said, Lyme and mold and muscle activation syndrome, they will share a lot of commonality in terms of symptoms. So everybody's like trying to figure out what is going on. Now, I will just say, you know, nobody who comes into my office to see me gets told that they should do one thing or another. If you're coming to see me, you've already in your mind decided you're going to. To probably consider removal of these. You're coming to get, you know, more qualified information about things we've published or data we know about that's unique to our clinic. But the symptomology can fit, like Dr. Meg said, a number of problems. And so, you know, if you have a device, whether it's a hip, knee, breast implant, dental implant, cardiac implant, essure implant, iud. I mean, there is just a laundry list of things that can be contributing to chronic inflammation.

Yeah. And I think that, that you make a good point. And then I also want to add, like, kind of some differentiators a lot of times that we see with mast cell activation. But I actually don't care so much about the diagnosis. So I know that we always talk. It's hard to get a diagnosis of mcas. And I think what you're saying is exactly right. You know, people can get hung up on that diagnosis and do I actually have this and what's my label? But we're going to do the same things. So we, we need to lower.

Like to be having a label, though. They want to know, what is it, doctor, I want to know.

And then it's like, okay, okay, have this. And this is, you know, I can. I can fit into this box and I have this. But you don't have to fit. You don't have to have that label in order to do the things that we need to do to make it. You feel better. So I do try to tell people that because there, there can be another. Another thing that has a lot of crossover symptoms is histamine intolerance because your mast cells are releasing histamine. So we can see a lot of the same sensitivities symptoms. And, and there's this big question, do I have histamine intolerance or do I have MCAs? You know, what's the. Like, which one do I have? And. And really, we need to do the same things either way. It's not necessarily like we have to know the difference. We need to be able to rebalance your immune system. We need to bring down your toxic burden. We usually need to heal your gut because of all the microbes that we're talking about that are actually producing some of these bacteria. We need to look at all. Yeah, look at all the things that are. That are causing this. Now, the other thing that something is, I think, differentiating with MCAs versus some of the other chronic inflammatory things is people are often very hypersensitive. So you'll see do count. Like, do smells really bother you? Do you, you know, are you getting rashes? Are you eating something? Like, we start to see reactions to things that are safe. So we start to see reactions to foods we're seeing. You know, people can even get reactions. It can go so far that they're reacting to water. You know, we can, you know, it can really be this wide range of, you know, certain reactions to, like, I can't. Sometimes when I drink water, I'll get a rash or I'll get hives. And we have unexplained reactions. So I think when we're seeing extremes like that, we also have to take a step back and look at the nervous system. So we start to get some nervous system dysregulation. And that's another aspect that goes on when we're looking at MCAs. Because once you start having some of these reactions, we get these pathways that start to react the same way. So we get this fear and this dysregulated nervous system around. What am I going to react to? What am I going to react to? And so we need to change. So I use this example, like if you're. If someone gave you a rose and you smelled a rose and you thought, oh, that's a nice smell. That's enjoyable. And then every time you smelled the rose, they said you have to touch a stove at the same time. And so you'd smell the rose and touch, oh, that's uncomfortable. I don't like that feeling. That doesn't feel good. So you start to associate, okay, I don't want to smell the rose. So then they take the stove away and give you the rose back, you're still going to react like, oh, this is uncomfortable. Even when that stove is gone. Because your body's now trained that this is not safe. This doesn't. You know, every time I touch that smell that rose, I'm going to get this pain. So we're feeling like we're not safe. And so we get in this reactive place where we're reacting to things. We're not feeling safe. We're not feeling like we can eat anything or drink anything or do anything without having reactions. And so we do. Do nervous system work, too. That's a part of what I work on with everyone.

Yeah, that our colleague, Dr. Gupta has talked about that insula in the brain that keeping that loop running, even though you, you take away, like you said, you take away the trigger, but then you still have the same loop running. So that's that. That unfortunate programming we get into, and I see that a lot in patients. I have patients who are extremely uncomfortable in pain. And it only is heightened by you either. And I, you know, just like Dr. Meg said, I always boil things back down to what you're putting into the system that creates a lot of what we see or on the surface. So if you, you have a poor diet or if you have poor sleep habit, or if you have a habit of taking in, you know, fluids, that may or may not, not to your knowledge, how things are going to affect you. You know, maybe you don't really understand the relationship between sugar and, or caffeine to how you metabolize it and what it does to you and how it messes up your, your gut microbiome. Because once the gut is out of balance, then all the other things that have to happen don't really happen very easily. And the abs, I get asked all the time, like Dr. Whitfield, do you think collagen works well, okay, for everybody listening, Collagen is a huge protein molecule and you have to have hydrolyzed collagen for it to work. If you are ingesting it, and then if it's Dr. Meg and I, no one on this earth can tell you how much collagen will each absorb in our gut. So basically, if you don't know that, which none of us do, I, I think Dr. Mega would, I and I would agree that it's very difficult for us to counsel you on that absorptive process. So I can say, yeah, to my knowledge, I know it works. I don't know to what degree in each person it's going to work because that's going to be different. We're all bio individual and the genetics dictates much of what we're describing. But she's talking about your gut health, which is incredibly important. We spend all this time on, I think people just kind of gloss over it as it's not super important. But, you know, the, the, the main thing with gut health is if you don't detox well and you have high levels of estrogen and stress and disregard dysregulated sleep patterns, I mean, there's like zero chance that Dr. Meg or I are going to help you right off the bat, get everything back on track with any kind of programming. We're doing.

Yes. And I think you made a great point there too, saying you can eat the best diet in the world. And if you're not digesting and absorbing the nutrients that you're getting, you're not getting the value. And so we're really. I see people so focused on diet, and I think that is very important. So I'm not saying in any way that diet isn't important, that, you know, we need to be eating the nutrients, we need to be feeding our microbiome in the right way. But. But you also have to look at all of the other functions and are like, how, you know, do you have enough pancreatic enzymes? Do you have enough stomach acid? Do you. Is your, like you're saying with detox, you know, is your liver producing bile? Is it flowing? Is it actually binding to toxins and having them leave the body? And how are all of these functions happening? Do you have H. Pylori or candida or parasites that are actually activating your immune system? So we need to look at it in the, in that full picture in order to, to see, okay, what are we. How are we digesting and absorbing and then we'll be able to actually absorb the nutrients. Like you're saying if you're taking collagen and you can't absorb it, then you're not getting the benefit. And I think we need to really. Yeah, focus on that. And then going back, I always take it also a step back to the nervous system and really that gut brain connection, the vagus nerve, and making sure that you can regulate your nervous system no matter what your stress level is. So people say to me all the time, but I can't control the stress. I have so much stress in my life. We can't change your life, we can't change the stress, but we can work on regulating you so that you can actually handle the stress and keep yourself calm within that space that you're in, no matter what's going on in your life. And that's my goal for people. We can't change what's going on, but we can regulate you within that.

Right. I think you mentioned so many good points in that. So we look at gut health. You know, I feel that is probably when I first started taking care of patients with breast implant illness, and I didn't quite understand the variance or the variability in outcomes. So I would do an explant. If someone had an infection, they would do. Well, if someone had a ruptured device and I got all the material out, they would do well, so in those instances, those are crude examples of we remove a big trigger to the immune system and then they start, you know, doing better, quote, unquote. I'll just say globally, they would do better. But in those patients that weren't infected, we'll say about two thirds of the patients are. I recently published a paper, and it talks about roughly a third have a bacterial contaminant that's found on PCR testing. So that is. I'm going to say, you know, baseline, where about a third of the patients have some kind of bacterial biofilm and that's contributing to immune system activation. So that could clearly stimulate somebody to have a meso activation syndrome or contribute to a worse example of that. And I feel like we just had a patient which stimulated this discussion with Dr. Meg we're having now. But what I also make sure to highlight with patients are, and I think it's A sneaky thing, Dr. Meg, is parasite infections.

Yes. And it's. They're hard to find. They don't even always show up on our stool test. So it's really tricky. They have, like, I think what. What you tell people, too, that that grosses them out is they also have their own life cycles. So when we're looking at a parasite, they're more active, generally around the full moon. So you also have to account for activity of the parasites. They're living beings, too, and so sometimes you can see them. You're more likely to see a parasite if you're testing during a full moon when they're more active. But we also will. I'll often pulse parasite cleanses to parasite treatments around phases of the moon to. To actually increase the effectiveness.

Yeah, so that's an interesting thing. What Dr. Meg said is very correct because we'll do different stool tests. They all have different, you know, strategies to highlight, you know, what is there. But you don't necessarily always pick up what is there. I've gone to asking people, like, have you traveled to. Like, what is your travel history? Have you been to, you know, Mexico? Have you been to South America? Have you been to Africa? Because those are the most likely scenarios. I always create a travel thing in my head because. Because we had an example where we went to. A lot of people go from Texas to Mexico. It's just common and it's easy. And I have plenty of examples of people who then go there, and they're fine when they're staying at the place where they're staying, and then they go off property or they do an excursion or Whatever. And then that night they get sick or they. They'll tell you they got sick. And I mean, that's clearly example of an imbalance created by ingestion of X. I'll just say the majority of the time, to me, it's going to be a parasite. And then they'll give you the story of basically travelers, diarrhea. And there you go. That's. That's your introduction of the pathogen into the system that now creates all the imbalance that Dr. Magus is talking about.

And I think it's really tricky. I just tell a side story. My dog. So I work with a lot of people, so, who have migraines. So migraine is another thing you can get even from MCAs, but migraines can happen from other reasons. And my daughter started to get migraines, and it just came on and she was getting them about almost like once a week. It was a problem. And so I work with people with migraines all the time. I started running tests on her to see what was going on and telling her to do certain things that she didn't want to. To listen. Listen to. She's like, mom, you don't, you know, you don't know. This is. This is not what I'm feeling. You know how your kids are. And we. We found a parasite, and she really loves raspberries. I get her right. We get organic raspberries, but raspberries have a certain type. Like when we. So she had a certain type of parasite that we found, and hers did show up in the stool test. And when I did some research on that specific parasite, a lot of times you can have it from eating raspberries, which she eats a lot. So she picked up the parasite probably from just. Just eating raspberries from the grocery store. And so I made her do. We did some parasite cleansing and the migraines stopped. And I think, like, just even for. For her as a. As. I mean, I'm working with thousands of people. I know this works. But she, you know, as her mom, she still didn't believe, like, mom, this isn't gonna make a difference. And we did the parasite cleansing, and then migraines went away. And so I think, like, people don't realize the reach some of these symptoms. Like, you're not necessarily. You think like, oh, the diarrhea or specific GI symptoms, but you can have parasites causing all sorts of different symptoms in your body.

And.

And really it's something that you should consider when you're, like, looking at yourself and a whole body System.

So I'm glad you used your daughter as an example.

Yeah.

That, that same type of situation dealt with my daughter, but the symptoms were cystic acne. Having never had acne in her life. And of course, like you said, they don't necessarily want to listen to us. Doesn't matter how many books you write or how many patients you take care of or how many things you understand until, you know, it gets to this. I want to go to the dermatologist and get like, you know, derma. Dermatologists are great, but for that problem, they're going to recommend a few things, none of which are ever going to go in my kid or on my kid. Antibiotic or Accutane. Bad things in general, they lead to leaky gut, to all sorts of problems. So, you know, to Dr. Begg's point, like when you have things that come out of the blue like that, you know, this. In her example, it's migraine. In my example, it's cystic acne, which affects kids, you know, routinely. And it could be from other things, obviously, like estrogen toxicity, a bad alpha 5 reductase pathway, parasitic inf. They all. Honestly, Meg, to me go back to what you said, like what you're ingesting. So, like, she loved berries. Ours was clearly the example where it was a food contaminant off property where, where they had eaten. And so, like, I'll say it again, like, you have to be incredibly diligent and careful about with what you put on your skin. You know, the air you breathe, the fluid quality and the food quality. Because in the end, you're a high performance machine and that machine cannot perform without those things happening in lockstep.

I agree. I know. And we're not set up that way. I mean, it's. We're in a world that you have to be your own advocate there because you're not just. It's not like, okay, I can just go breathe the air and drink the water and eat the food wherever I am. You have to be your own advocate in what you can do to clear, make those things clean.

Do you try to get folks immediately upon intake and interviews say, hey, I really want you to do like, these things that are just really behavioral, like, no processed foods really eliminate gluten and dairy. And let's just see if that helps you, Because I do that routinely with my patients because those are just behavioral modifications that you can do starting, you know, immediately to make different choices that will affect, you know, the outcome. And so I always tell them, like, tiny Tiny changes will actually cumulatively be impactful if you make enough of them and you're consistent with them.

Absolutely. And even getting an, like an air filter in your rooms, like at least in your bedroom. So get something that's cleaning the air. What do you, what are you doing with your water? Do you have a water? Is there any filtration system on your water? Things like that. When we're talking specifically about mast cell activation syndrome, I'll often have them test out a low histamine diet too. A lot of people will do. Now I don't want to do that long term for that's not the answer. And I think that's another thing people can just get so hung up on of like, oh my, I am stuck in this low histamine diet and I, you know, I ate something out of that, that.

What examples would there be?

So the low histamine. Yeah, that's a good point to. We should go there. So low histamine are foods that are fermented foods. So, you know, this is where it gets a little bit tricky in this population with gut health. Because with gut health you're often actually like encouraged eat fermented foods. Bone broth is another high histamine food.

Avocado, not the bone broth.

The bone broth people can get.

Yeah.

React to bone broth. So avocados, tomatoes, strawberries, bananas. So we're looking. Alcohol is another high histamine food. So we're looking at healthy foods. And that's why it's not a good long term solution. But you can see when the mast cells are releasing excess levels of histamine, we have to make sure that we're able to break down the histamine. If we lower the histamine levels in your body, that load, do you feel better? So people will often feel better eating low histamine foods. That can be another clue that you're having an issue with histamine breakdown or mast cell activation syndrome if you do better on a low histamine diet. Now that's not your ultimate solution. The ultimate solution is to get to the root of all of the things that are causing it. But that is a good thing to calm down symptoms while we're doing that investigation.

When they're on that low histamine diet, what are your recommended sources to improve protein? Because obviously we have a host of, you know, types of D diet and when you're taking that out for the omnivore, carnivore, the, the vegan, vegetarian, like what are you recommending as the protein sources.

So you can eat meat, but you just have to be really careful with sourcing. So with the, you want to be careful. So like poultry would be better than beef. A lot of times you have to be careful with fish. Like a, like a salmon could be okay, but you want to make sure it was flash frozen off the ship chips. So there wild caught.

Wild caught fish.

Wild caught. So but if you, so histamine, this is where it gets more complicated. So histamine could grow in food. So you have to make sure that you flash freeze after you cook. So you don't want to do meal prep if you have like histamine issues. Because if you cook chicken or if you cook beef or something, then after you cook it and you set it in the refrigerator, it can grow, histamine can grow in the food. So leftovers can be a big problem for people with histamine issues. So we want to make sure, like if you're meal prepping, you're meal prepping and then you flash freeze. So someone who wants the meal prep for the week, you flash freeze your food right after you cook it. So that we don't have histamine growing in the food. So even if you have, let's say a piece of chicken that's a low histamine protein, but it's sitting in your refrigerator, the histamine can grow in it. So I say, okay, make sure it's fresh, freshly cooked. We also have DAO enzymes, diamine oxidase enzymes that you can take to help you break down histamine. So if you're going out to dinner, for example, you could take, and you don't know how it's prepped, you could take a diameter oxidase enzyme to see, like, okay, does that help you break down the histamine more? So think of that like a lactate for histamine to break down. How? Like when you, when you have, I think a lot of people understand, okay, I have lactose intolerance, I take lactate. When you have histamine intolerance, you can take a dao.

Yeah, let's talk about that. I, you know, I am a very, guess I would say pushy provider about dietary protein intake. And I don't discriminate about the type. I just say, here's my goal for you. And it's almost a gram per pound of body weight. Even in a small patient that seems like, oh, That's a lot. 100 grams for somebody who's 100 pounds. Well, the, the point is in order to recover, you have to have that. Otherwise it's going to lead to prolonged periods of swelling, prolonged periods of discomfort secondary to that swelling, decreased energy and stamina levels and inability to focus, and all these things that people. You know, he's used the example Dr. Maggie. I'm like, do you need a nap in the afternoon? Okay, so only babies nap in the afternoon. So. And if you're doing that, your body's just basically shutting it down because you haven't given it what it actually needs to recover, which is protein, which then gets broken down to amino acids. When I put people on higher protein diets, we automatically make the assumption that their gut cannot handle the increased load. And so we give them digestive enzymes to help with that increased load as a part of a, you know, a conditioning response. If you're going to take in this amount, you need to up level basically how you break down proteins and fats and carbohydrates and. And, you know, we don't want people on gluten. So I'm constantly like, please avoid this right now. But they're like, everything. You know, how can I eat? I'm like, okay, okay. Like, it's not that complicated to try not to make it that complicated. Like, it's not kid food. If you're trying to eat kid food. Kid food has gluten in it because, you know, gluten and sugar are what, like, trap the brains of young people and. Or, you know, things that, you know, have energy associated with them, which are fortunately bad. But the. The. To your point, just trying to make sure that as you increase certain things in your diet, you're. From an enzymatic breakdown standpoint, you're. You're just trying to help, so you don't. Another problem.

Yes. So, and sometimes we'll do. You can. I mean, depending on the level of sensitivities, we'll even do like a clean protein powder. So, you know, we'll. We'll do that. We can add that in. Sometimes I use amino acids, too. I'll use some amino acids to help support that. So we're. We're always. You know, I think the one thing that. I guess I would say diet is. Is different for each person. And I think people can get so hung up on the diet that they're maybe seeing on Instagram or seeing somewhere out there, like, okay, this. Someone said I have to eat this way. And so that's the way I have to eat. And you're like, actually, it's unique to you. Everybody has A little bit different for their needs and what's going on. And it's not just one size fits all.

Yeah. That's why I don't try to let you like, what should I do? And I'm like, I don't care what you do. I'm getting these macros. So I just want you to get better protein and you really have to control these other things that when you put them into your diet can really affect you bio individually. So if you're. I love when people tell me, they sit in front of me like, oh, you know, Dr. Whitfield, I tried keto, it didn't work. I'm like, really? You don't think keto works? And, and just tell me, you know your experience with that. And they start off, you know, like a lot of people do. They start off it's, it's a very clean, protein enriched diet. Very little in terms of, you're not supposed to have any processed stuff in that diet and then very limited amounts of healthy fats. And then they do really well. They experience what is very traditional, which is a 5 to 10 pound weight loss the first one to two weeks because that's simply you dumping fluid it. So that's, that's very common. Everybody's excited and they're like, oh my God, I'll just keep doing this. But then habitually things change and you start now reintroducing what we call bad fat into the diet. And once you increase the fat load or the, the body's ability now to metabolize those fats is a consequence of your genetics. There's a couple things Dr. Meg always say. You can't pick your parents and you can't outrun a bad diet. If, if you're driving your fat content higher and higher, that's when you fail because genetically you can only metabolize so much fat. And if you think of those people, they're not heeding advice like you're saying where they're increasing their ability to break down those fats by adding enzymatic or digestive enzymes in, in the process. So like it's just a balance. And then when you, when you tip over what you can metabolize, of course it's not going to work and you're not going to feel good.

Yes. Yeah. And I think you make a great point. You can, you can do the, do things in the right way or you can do things. And yes, if you're doing keto, but you're eating high saturated fats processed, you know, like you're still. It's not gonna. You're not even. I had people say to me, well, I'm gluten free. How come I haven't lost weight? I'm like, we are eating gluten free muffins and gluten free cookies and oh.

I'm glad you brought that up.

Is not making you lose weight.

Yeah, probably listening. There's a whole industry, like the food industry is pretty smart. Like just, you know, all of a sudden magically everything became organic almost overnight. And now there's, you know, thousands of products that are gluten free that, you know, if you just go five years ago, you could barely find anything that was gluten free. And now there's a whole smorgasbord of gluten free items that are just what gut processed. When you see gluten free, don't be fooled to think that's good for you. I mean, there's a whole host of processing that goes into those bars or those products that you're now thinking, oh my God, this is. Dr. Meg told me to go get something that's gluten free and I go buy this whatever bar. I'm not gonna get sued by a bar company overseas. But there I. And I used to have that kind of concept in my head. I'm like, all right, we gotta be gluten free, but I need to get these calories and I'll, you know, buy this bar. And I fell into that trap several years ago and there's a lot of processing that goes into those, those bars, which is. I'll just use that example. And now, I mean, I don't even have the interest to have a bar because I kind of now know from a knowledge standpoint those are not great for me. And if I eat those, I really robbing my body of what it wants, which is a nutrient dense food source. So, you know, I like, I like to eat meat and fruit and I don't eat a lot of vegetables. I have a, like a sulfur issue. I don't metabolize sulfur well. So the more cruciferous vegetables I have, the harder it is for me to kind of deal with all of that. So doesn't make my wife super happy, but I feel a lot better. And I sit at a, a good weight. I have good energy levels and I feel, I feel good. I have. That's what's important for my bio individuality. So that's what I do.

Yeah. And you want to eat ingredients, not products. So I think if you're Looking at, okay, I'm looking at things that are ingredients, that are whole foods that would be in something. When you're eating like the product you're eating that there's a lot of processed things. What's going, what's going into this and always paying attention to that is important, important. No matter what. No matter what you're looking at health, whether you're looking at MCAs, whether you're looking at breast implant illness, whether you're just looking to be healthy. I think it's something we all have to consider and, and we're not being educated well in our world to be able to do that. So thank you for sharing. Thank you for being an advocate here and sharing this information.

Yeah, maybe when you, you know, we're seeing Dr. Meg, if you're eating things that actually have labels, you're probably not eating food. Food, because food doesn't really have labels. You know, if you're buying stuff from the butcher, it's just going to be how many pounds of whatever you're buying. If you're, you know, buying a fruit, obviously bananas aren't going to have a big label about the, the nutritional value of the banana because the only things that have labels basically are processed. They're in cans or boxes or a wrapper. And real foods not in any of those things. And the drinks that I got, I'm going to mention this so I want all the, the women listening to this and the guys stop drinking out of plastic water bottles. I find this to be an inane thing in this country. And I recently had to go before we went to a retreat we were at. I came back from Madrid and I was super happy in Madrid because the water they, they gave me or I purch glass bottle and they just recycle everything. They don't really sell a lot of stuff in plastic. They do, but it, like for the drinking water, which I don't really drink other stuff, really, I just, I don't. I just have water. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is super. This is easy. So I get this big, you know, liter of water and I just take and put my aminos in it or my protein powder and I shake it up. And you may think it looks gross, but I think it looks great.

Me too. I think that's something that when you were talking about what can you do? What are some simple things? I mean, I think just go like you're saying, going around your kitchen and taking all of your plastic out, that's just a thing. Just go through your kitchen, take all of your plastic out and put glass, use glass containers, glass bottles. You know, we're eating out of plastic and then we're actually. I had someone that was working with that was getting an or spending a lot of decent amount of money on an organic food service that was sent, you know, that then sent the dishes in like the, the food plastic and tell them to heat it up in the microwave in the plastic. Like you're actually there. You know, it happens that you're doing all this and then your plastic's leaching all through your food. So you know that it's just really invasive.

Yeah. Well, this has been a great conversation with Dr. Meg. I want Dr. Meg to tell us all where we can follow her to learn more about muscle activation syndrome. I know I've learned a lot from this show, but like, let's get some information of where to follow her to learn more.

Yes. Thank you so much. I. My website's just megmill.com so I have a lot of information over on my website. I have a YouTube channel, Dr. Meg Mill D R M E G M I L L I also have a. I'm over on Instagram @ Dr. Meg Mill too. And then I also have a podcast called A Little bit Healthier where we talk about, about mcas, but we also talk about all different things to just live a healthier life. So I love follow ups. I, I answer questions myself. So reach out, let me know how you're doing, ask a question.

And from this show, if you have questions, I'm gonna have to have Meg answer them because I am not the expert when it comes to mast cell activation syndrome. Thanks for coming on the show, Dr. Meg. I appreciate it having you.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Sam.