My flatmate has chronic sinusitis and congested nose. He has had this for years. He’s also had insomnia and really bad quality sleep for years. He’s had all of this medically explored, he’s tried a lot of drugs, and nothing has really helped.
Until he found some mention of mast cells and decided to experiment with reducing his histamine levels. His nose cleared up and all of a sudden his sleep quality improved. His supplements arrived and his chronic sinusitis began to clear up, too. So he kept googling.
He found an article mentioning mast cell activation as a potential cause of central sensitisation – i.e. everything hurts and all sensory input is bad – which is one of the main components of fibromyalgia. So he passed the information off to me and, thinking this could be interesting, I started researching.
Mast cells are the harbingers of inflammation in our body. They release up to 200 different inflammatory mediators, known as cytokines, which do everything from increasing blood vessel permeability to depolarising nerve endings. Mast cells are everywhere in your body, all through your connective tissue, and they don’t care about the blood-brain barrier, either. When they activate, they can either fully degranulate (that is, release all of the granules they hold in their cytoplasm at once) or they can selectively degranulate. A full degranulation can result in anaphylaxis, while a selective degranulation can result in … any combination of symptoms, really. They respond to anything and everything, from an allergen in the environment (hello hay fever, yes, it’s mast cells that are causing that allergic reaction) to an infection (bacterial, viral, parasite, etc.), all the way through to emotional stress and temperature changes.
Inappropriate mast cell activation has been, as I mentioned earlier, linked with central sensitisation, one of the particularly nasty components of fibromyalgia. Mast cells have been linked with bloating and abdominal cramps associated with non-coeliacs gluten/wheat intolerance, neuropathic pain and fatigue … you think it and it’s probably on the list. It’s not incredibly well understood, as many things relating to the immune system are, and it seems like it may be a contributing factor (or the causative factor, in some cases) in conditions like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are a description of symptoms, rather than a description of the underlying disease process, which is what makes these conditions so varied, and therefore so difficult to manage and treat, because each person requires individualised treatment. In many cases, and especially in mine, the diagnosis of fibromyalgia is reached and that’s it. There’s no looking into any underlying causative agents, it just is.
But during my google-fu, I’ve realised that a lot of my symptoms, including my overreaction to vaccinations, suddenly make sense through the lens of an inappropriate mast cell activation component. All I need to do is too much one day, and the next day I have a sore throat and a bad post nasal drip on top of extra body pain.
While the diagnosis for mast cell activation disorder is a pain in the backside (and not always particularly accurate), the treatment is something I’m able to do myself … or at least a trial of a few things to see if there’s any improvement. So I have quercetin supplements on their way, which may help to stabilise mast cells, along with a combo supplement with chinese skullcap extract. These are the two supplements I have come across that seem to be the initial ‘go to’ for treatment, so I’ll give those a whirl and see what happens.
Excitingly, despite ordering them only last week, they should be here today! I’ll let you all know how it goes over the next couple of weeks.
Walk to Wellness 