Dr. Robert Whitfield explains mast cells as immune soldiers that normally activate then rest. In Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, they stay primed and leak mediators even at baseline, then overreact to triggers like infections or implants. Patients are often dismissed as having psychosomatic symptoms.
they're often gaslit, they're often, you know, told that it must be in their head, right? And the reason this happens is mast cells are really, they're your first line of defense. So anything in your environment on the outside, in your environment on the inside, they're gonna react to. They're the soldiers that are going to protect you. And so they're actually, they're really necessary. Everyone has them. And when you get an infection, they'll come out and fight. If you have something internally, like an implant, they'll come out and fight. So they're fighters, but the problem really is when it becomes a syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome. So regular people, they have regular mast cells, they get infected, the mast cells come out and fight, but when the infection is done or the assault is done, they'll come back and they'll kind of hang out at baseline and wait for the next assault. People with mast cell activation syndrome get— have already a low-level amount of activation of these mast cells. They're leaking at baseline. And there's probably a variety of things that have happened over the course of their lifetime to bring the mast cells to that state. And then they get implants or they get exposed to some major infection or they get exposed to an environmental chemical. And those mast cells, which were already abnormal and already ready to fight, they fight really hard.
