Episode-61-Michelle-Shapiro-RD-Unpacks-Histamine-Intolerance-Nervous-System-Healing
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Welcome.
I'm Carrie Glassman, your host of Living a Nutritious Life.
And on today's episode of the podcast, I sat down with my friend, the brilliant Michelle Shapiro.
Michelle is an integrative functional registered dietician in NYC who has helped thousands of clients reverse their anxiety, heal long-standing gut and immune issues, and approaches their weight and weight loss in a truly loving way.
In today's episode, Michelle shares her personal journey from drastic weight loss and health crisis to becoming a leading functional dietician.
What I really wanted to tackle today was histamine intolerance because it seems that people are struggling with this more and more.
And I wanted to know what Michelle was seeing and how she's treating these clients.
We talked about mass cell activation syndrome, histamines, long co, why rapid weight loss often is not healthy, and how understanding your highly sensitive body can be a superpower.
Michelle has a unique way of delivering info and supporting clients in a straight shooter kind of way that is also extraordinarily supportive and nurturing.
You're going to want to learn from her.
So, keep on listening.
And as always, please rate, review, and share if you love the episode.
Let's do this.
Welcome to Living a Nutritious Life.
I'm Carrie Glassman, a celebrity registered dietician nutritionist.
Join me every Tuesday on YouTube and your favorite podcast platforms as I bring in some heavy hitters to share the latest in nutrition and wellness science.
We dive deep into food, sleep, stress, relationships, and so much more.
Your weekly guide to a happier, healthier, more nutritious life.
Michelle Shapiro, welcome, welcome, welcome.
I am so excited.
As I just said in my intro, one of my absolute most most favorite and loved and adored people in this space.
I am so excit I'm always excited to see you.
I'm always excited to chat with you.
I mean, you know, you and I, we could just talk for hours upon hours, but to do it today on my podcast, I feel so grateful and honored for you to be here.
So, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here today.
I am so excited to chat with you.
How are you doing? I'm doing amazing because I'm here with you and I need to say that I feel exactly the same way.
We from the minute we connected have been like soul sisters and we're always on the same vibe and have easy conversations, easy friendship, hard conversations and like I love that about us and you're just one of the most curious amazing people.
So being interviewed by you is a joy to me.
So I'm very excited to be here.
A thank you.
All the love.
all the love.
I love it.
But it's so true.
We do.
From the minute we connected, it was just like this like such a nice easy friendship.
I totally agree.
Like that just like just But aside from just loving and adoring you, you are brilliant.
You are an absolutely brilliant registered dietitian nutritionist and I am so excited to share your wisdom with our listeners today.
So before we dive into the topic at hand today, I want to ask you about your personal journey.
you have a really interesting story and I want you to share if you can um a little bit about your health journey and how it influenced the work you do today.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I kind of define my health journey as having two different parts.
The first part is this major weight loss experience that I had.
So going into college um I had been I had grown up in Queens, New York, one of the most diverse high schools in the entire world.
Arguably the most diverse high school in the entire world.
Wow.
Yes, actually Flushing, New York, where my mom is from and I'm from Queens also.
Queens represent um is the most diverse like by per square foot place in the entire world.
And my high school is on the border of Flushing, so potentially.
And there's 5,000 students in my high school actually.
Um we Oh, wait.
What high school was it? Cardoozo High School.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Someone everyone knows someone from there because there was 5,000 kids in Well, I'm just wondering because my son went to Brooklyn Tech and I always thought of that as being the biggest high school in the country.
So, I think go to Brooklyn.
I think there was 55.
He was there a few years ago.
Yeah.
I mean, it's it's a lot.
It was like a college.
Yeah.
It's insane.
Um, so growing up there, I had always grown up in a larger body and then I was going to the University of Delaware for college and realized, oh, I might have to lose weight to kind of fit in because I grew up in Queens.
My weight never was an issue in my social life.
Didn't really feel it in my health because I'm 17 years old.
Um, I had great grades, great friends.
I was class clown of my entire high school.
Um, no really my weight didn't get in the way, but I knew going to college in a much more homogeneous place, I was going to have to lose weight in order for people to understand me, accept me, and that's just the way society is, you know, unfortunately.
But that's real life.
So, I lost close to 100 pounds in the time before going away to school.
And in like from graduation to going away to school, I think it was between like maybe like six to nine months like uh Wow.
But that's still really fast.
It was way fast.
And that resulted in my first health crisis.
The weight itself was not the health crisis for me.
That rapid weight loss left me sick all of college.
I had panic attacks, IBS diagnosis, hypothyroidism, acid reflux, like all of these different things kept popping up.
And doctors were like, "Why don't you lose a little more weight?" And that was like their answer to everything.
And it really was.
Now, how did you lose all that weight, though? A a very calorierestricted vegan diet.
Extremely calorie restricted.
And I kind of used veganism to like hide that there was an eating disorder going on.
Um, for sure it was right.
It was more just like major restriction.
Exactly.
And then I got so much validation from that obviously too that you want to keep going.
So, but I started going to doctors for these panic attacks because they were so profound.
I was having several panic attacks a day.
Um, I was And you'd never had this before until all this weight loss.
I mean, I'm a Jew from New York, so yeah, obviously I had anxiety growing up, but um, I did not have panic attacks before.
remember the first ones were like that summer going into college right when I had right after that weight loss happened and what I ultimately realized was that that weight loss put my body into what I would think is a toxin overloaded state that also is a very nutrient-deprived state so as you lose weight your you know your body will spill toxins from your fat cells your fat cells will spill toxins and I didn't have any nutrients because I was on a calorie restricted vegan diet to help clear detox and drain those toxins so I think that was part of it also of starving myself.
So starving yourself, low blood sugar and it really was naturopathic medicine and functional medicine and seeing practitioners that brought me back to life.
And that's where I said I'm not just going to be a dietitian.
I'm going to be a functional dietician because I said there is something so powerful about this practitioner in front of me sitting with me for two hours.
It just kind of changed and blew my entire mind.
Um and that was kind of the first part of my health journey.
And the second part came about four years ago when I encountered COVID um at exposure and I had a chiropractic injury that led me into um what I would call this very highly sensitive body state.
Um and it's been clawing my way back from that that has kind of defined this next leg of my work journey, health journey which for all of us is like usually intertwined obviously.
Um yeah absolutely we do.
Well, first of all, the just going to the weight loss part of the story.
It's so interesting because I think so many people do not think of that happening with weight loss.
They think weight loss, oh, you improve your health.
Weight loss, you reduce your risk of diabetes.
Weight loss, you reduce your risk of cancer.
Weight loss, you feel better, you're more you have more energy, right? they do not think of all of what actually happens when you lose weight and why losing weight so fast and being on such a severely restricted diet can be so detrimental.
So I think like just you even putting that out there and and sharing that is super helpful to to people because again I don't think people consider that.
And for any coaches and practitioners listening, it's like it's also really helpful because sometimes you see someone that's lost a lot of weight, that's like, okay, like your numbers should be good and you should be feeling better and they're not necessarily thinking about this other layer of weight loss and what what's going on.
So, absolutely really really important.
Okay, so let's let's talk a little bit about like what you just said, this sort of your second the second part of your journey when you got COVID and and all of that.
I know that since then you've had you've gone on again like this whole other part of your journey.
Can you dive like a little bit deeper into what's gone on there, what you've discovered, what you've learned because I know there's been a lot that's happened there.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So, I'm a storyteller, Carrie, and you know that.
So, the story for me was I again from the time that I was in college, I really healed from panic disorder.
I really healed from anxiety and I had never really had anxiety in between those 10 years in between basically.
Um I really mastered and I I do this with clients all the time and I really worked with clients on how do we lose weight in a body positive way? How do we not end up in toxin overload when we're losing weight? How do we safely approach weight loss? And how do we um heal from anxiety because I think it's totally possible.
It was only a couple years ago that I started to feel really off and it started with some dizziness.
Um, and I started to explore root causes.
Well, what's wrong with me? I had a COVID exposure like we all did in 20 like many of us did in 2020.
And then at the same time, I found mold in my apartment.
It was an amazing apartment and it was so painful because I really didn't want to leave.
And the quick story I'll tell is that I was like, it was like right near Bryant Park, right on Fifth Avenue.
It was just such a good apartment.
And it's so hard to lose a good apartment in New York.
And remember being like, you know what, this mold is kind of killing me.
I had severe dizziness, um, really severe digestive issues.
I was nauseous all the time, reflux, again, all these symptoms, but way higher.
And then I walked into my bedroom and I saw my husband literally coughing up a lung like he was in the movie Interstellar.
And I'm like, "Oh, he's in a mold dust storm.
I have to get him out of it." Like, this is like really unhealthy at this point.
So I then started going to these functional medicine doctors, naturopathic physicians again and their recommendations were let's get put you a mega dose of IVs binders let's get rid of this mold and they were very aggressive kill protocols binding protocols and Carrie when I started that I would leave an IV and I would text my friend who's the practitioner who would give me the IV because I all my friends are the ones who give me these treatments and I said to my friend like am I supposed to feel like I'm having like a heart attack.
Am I supposed to feel like I'm having fevers? Like my fever jumped up and he was he was like, "That's kind of abnormal." Like, and I had full body flushing and then the night after the IV, I had full body tremors and I was just shaking all night.
And I was like, "I don't think this is how it's supposed to go." And he was like, "Maybe it's too much vitamin C." And then I started to notice again, my body wouldn't react to these functional medicine treatments like other people's would.
And I'm like, "My body does something." Wait, what were the treatments exactly? Like what exactly were you getting IVs for? Mold.
So, I was getting mega doses of vitamin C, glutathione, okay, vitamins.
I I couldn't take one B vitamin orally without having a full body reaction essentially.
So, there was no supplements I was taking and I had notable B vitamin deficiencies.
And so, I didn't understand how is it possible that I'm feeling worse and worse when I'm taking these vitamins.
Um, and everything.
I mean, I we did I did infrared sauna, I did cold plunging, I did IVs, I did like anything.
And you were reacting poorly to all of it.
Everything.
Everything.
Yeah.
Wow.
Anything that was supposed to make me feel better in the long term, like you said before, this is the interesting thing.
It doesn't really matter if something makes us feel better in the long term or it's good for longevity.
If it makes us feel awful right now.
Absolutely.
It doesn't matter.
If it makes you feel awful right now, that's what actually matters.
So, my symptoms were getting worse and worse till ultimately um I did see a chiropractor because I was dizzy all the time.
and he took this like metal tool and was kind of digging it into my neck.
And this is my message to everyone listening to this podcast.
Don't let anyone touch your neck under any circumstances unless they assess you for hyper mobility and they assess you for any upper cervical instability.
I crawled out of that appointment and crawled to the ER.
I mean, I was on cement floor crawling.
I couldn't walk.
My heart rate was 160 while I was sitting.
Wow.
Because the nerves in my neck were affected from the treatment.
The nerves in your neck control your heart rate.
So Wow.
It was like and what did he what did the chiropractor say? Like what h like what was too and I and I kind of messaged him after like you you there's something because I didn't know I didn't have the language for what happened to me yet.
So that's what really I went to the ER and I said maybe this is like a POTS thing um because I realized it was in near my neck so maybe this is a postural orthostatic tachicardia thing and yeah actually will you just wait just for anyone that doesn't know what that is again will you just will you say that again? POTS.
Maybe you thought it was a have to define all these terms for sure.
Yeah.
So POTS is a syndrome called postural orthostatic tachic cardio syndrome which is basically when you make postural changes your heart rate jumps up tachicardia essentially.
So I was like maybe this is related to POTS or something because I knew I did I have very low blood pressure generally.
So my blood pressure was high my heart rate was high um and I could not understand what's going on.
I was in a neck brace and a back brace for like a year after that.
Um it was really challenging and I remember seeing you during that time.
Yeah, I remember where were we and you were like you look so you're like are you okay and I'm like literally no it was I remember I have Yeah, we were at a we were at like a a dinner for a brand I believe right the first times that I could even go to something was how bad it was honestly.
Um, and then I kind of in that then I was having these tremors again, dizziness, extreme frightening, go to the ER kind of symptoms and I had no explanation for them, Carrie.
I was going to all of my practitioners.
So frustrating and it's so frustrating and so many people right or people that have been in similar situations where like you have all these things going on and you don't know what's why you're not getting any answers.
you're and you are someone that's a so knowledgeable but b also has access to all of these incredible people around you and everything that's supposed to help is making you worse.
I mean that is that had to be not only I mean frustrating but upsetting, horrifying, scary.
I mean so many things it was and I really am the type person where I'm like if I can't figure it out how the heck is someone else going to figure this out? And that's so I basically was like I'm gonna have I'm going to have to figure this out essentially.
Um, I at some point in time, uh, realized that my COVID and all these things were kind of connected and I drew my own timeline of my life and I kind of pulled these all together.
And before I go into that, one thing I want to mention is with people with bodies like mine, something that I call a highly sensitive body, an HSV, living in a highly sensitive body, you know, these are people who, like you said, back in the day, Carrie, the deal was we would go to fun, we would go to functional medicine doctors when conventional medicine doctors failed us, right? Then we would say functional medicine is the beacon of light.
It's the one that's going to save us because conventional medicine is is not able to help us.
And it was that.
It really was.
Right now I'm seeing clients who are injured from functional medicine.
Essentially they have gone to conventional medicine doctors.
Forget it.
They've been to every functional medicine doctor and now they're in my office cuz they are the people whose bodies respond terribly to functional medicine treatments.
Okay.
Interesting.
And and why why do you think that they're too like you said highly sensitive to like Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a it's it's the right question.
Functional medicine aims to treat the root cause.
And sometimes that means that they are not looking at symptoms as well.
And either way, if you have a highly sensitive body, a doctor's office might not be the place to go.
You actually might need a nutritionist or a dietitian or a life coach or a health coach or someone like that because you need someone monitoring your reactions to things.
You need someone helping you through those dark moments.
So just going to a doctor's office, even if it's a 90-minute visit, but they're not following your case and checking your food journals, your stool journals, they're not going to pick up on the essential information.
So people who are in highly sensitive bodies, what may be happening that I suspect is a histamine like reaction or a literal reaction, a specific immune response that is not found in every single person.
Because some people do mold protocols, they feel kind of crappy, but they don't stay sick after that.
People in house do.
Okay.
So, you just said the big question, the big not question, the big word of the day, histamines, which is what I wanted to talk to you about, which is why I called you and said, Michelle, you got to come on my podcast and talk about histamines.
There's so much histamine talk right now.
And I know you're talking about histamines a lot.
we got to talk about them because I have never seen so so much histamine conversation and obviously I think most people I think when they think of histamines they think antihistamines and they think allergies and taking an antihistamine but that's where a lot of people's knowledge ends so talk to us about histamines and how and and what does that how does that even connect to what you were just telling us about 100% yeah so we have a type of immune cell in our body called mast cells mast mast cells They're a type of white blood cell.
Their job is to detect threat and help to send immune cells and resources to different parts of the body when something happens.
Our mass cells I kind of view as like the guards on the tower of the body.
So overlooking everything.
They're saying, "What's going on here?" And they're very they're very hyperaroused and they want to make sure everything's okay.
Mhm.
The way that they work is something they have an outside of them with receptors all around and then they have kind of these like sacks on the inside we'll call them.
On the outside when something attaches to the outside or attacks the outside they will release compounds from the inside.
They they do something called degranulate which means they release those compounds.
There are 1,200 different compounds that mass cells release and histamine is one of them.
The reason we talk so much about histamine is because having too much histamine in the body or an inability to remove histamine from the body can create system like symptoms in every system of your body.
There are mass cells in every organ of your body in your joints and your bone in your blood vessels.
Every single part of your body has mass cells.
So they can respond and create symptoms in any of those areas.
Okay.
So why when you were having all of these different symptoms and things happening, why is it so challenging? Because it sounds like no one was getting to the bottom of all of this and what was going on with you.
And so why is it so challenging to get a diagnosis or to get proper support for mass cell activation syndrome as you I know you you talk a lot about um in our current system like why is it so difficult? I mean for you again, you were in this, this is what you do for a living.
You have access to all these amazing people.
You were working with all these people, but why did it take so long? And actually, then I want to hear because we kind of I kind of feel like I jumped ahead a little bit.
I want to go back to like when you figured that out, what what happened there, but let's stick with this for a second.
Why is it so hard to Yeah.
to address that and to diagnose that and to support that? Yeah.
So, first of all, testing for it is hard and we'll talk about that.
But more importantly, weirdest thing in the world about histamines because they can cause symptoms like a racing heart, a fever, a rash, diarrhea.
If you car if you had a racing heart, would you go to an immunologist or you would go to a cardiologist? Right.
A cardiologist.
Absolutely.
Right.
The problem is that where the symptoms come from is not their organ of origin.
So you have heart issues, but they're coming from the brain.
They're coming from the immune system.
So the problem is if you go to any doctor, what they're going to do is run an EKG, run an echo cardiogram, and they're going to say, "It looks gorgeous.
I don't know what's going on." And that's because our nervous system controls where our body sends blood, how our heart sounds, it's coming from the brain essentially.
It's coming from the nervous system.
So you're not going to go to a neurologist with a beating heart.
You're not going to go to an immunologist.
Right.
Really like the first major practice paper on in the like American Journal of Allergy, it's like the AAI journal came out in like 2019 on mass cells.
It's in its of understanding.
We knew mass cells existed.
We knew they were a part of the immune system.
But again, no idea that they could wreak so much havoc.
And the reason they have is if you want me to talk about I think it's fascinating.
Yeah.
Relationship between mass cells and co.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we had this explosion in conversation around histamines I think because very annoyingly mass cells one of the receptors they have is something called the ACC2 receptor and CO is perfect match with the AC2 receptor.
So what long COVID looks like is not like people having a flu and then feeling kind of like crap for 10 days.
These are people who have felt sick sicker for longer than three months after having a virus.
It's unheard of.
And the reason is because the outside of like Epstein bar like mono you can you can feel that way for a longer time but it's because our mass cells are so on guard after that co that keep pumping out histamine and these other compounds and you don't want to have too much histamine floating around your body because then it can create a lot of these symptoms all those other symptoms that people right feel.
Okay.
So actually though one of can you go through some of those symptoms because I'm thinking like when people are having like allergic type reaction symptoms but like what what what do you think of as the most common symptoms there or someone like that's having long COVID like that.
It's funny because I wouldn't even think of um allergies as being a common histamine symptom which is so it's really funny because most of my clients don't really have allergy symptoms they have it shows up in other areas of the body which is interesting.
I think there's a spiritual explanation for that I can talk about later.
But um common symptoms I see with histamine intolerance or mass cell activation syndrome are severe physical biological anxiety that can happen, tremors, tingling, numbness, um feeling when it comes to mood, people feel like there's almost this black cloud covering their eyes like this brain fog, this depressive type feeling.
Something called coat hanger pain is really common with histamine issues in POTS, which is like if you took a like a upside down triangle and put it behind your back from here in your shoulders going down right in the back of your neck.
Um people experience increased urinary frequency, diarrhea, that's really profound, body pain, muscle pain, joint pain, um migraines are really common, menstrual cycle disturbances, so you know MS, um endometriosis and MCAST have a very strong link as well.
um really any symptom you can imagine that is when your body is in a very heightened aroused state um when you're very up and I have to tell you about this one client that I had um I'll call her Kay so Kay came to me and she was on eight psychiatric medications for insomnia nothing ambientone Xanax nothing they tried every type of medication you can imagine to get her to sleep when she came to me she was having rashes before bed.
And in conversation, I said, "Why don't we try an antihistamine and just see if it makes a difference?" So, we tried Pepsid.
Pepsid is actually an antihistamine, which is an interesting um Wow.
thing that most people don't know, and it works on the gut specifically, but I find it helps with sleep.
She tried it.
She's been sleeping eight hours a night for 4 years.
Pepsid for sleep.
I never would have thought of that.
Exactly.
Never.
Exactly.
So the reason I thought of it was because I saw this what started this whole histamine journey for me is I saw a study when they were treating longco and the only intervention it was 16 people was giving pepsid for fatigue and I was like what why are they giving pepsid I was like is it a stomach acid problem? Histamine and stomach acid have a direct relationship by the way as well.
So acid goes up histamine goes up also.
So that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
and the uh histamine attaches to the the H2 receptors on the parietal cells of the gut and so it'll make you pump out more acid.
But I was like I could not understand why this acid drug I didn't know it was an antihistamine at the time was helping and then I started to learn more about histamine.
So when I saw that study and it was like 14 out of 16 of the people in the study had an 80% improvement in symptoms from Pepsid and I was like what the heck is going on with this? So that's what actually started me in my whole understanding.
Why are they treating long co with this acid drug and that's what kept me going on this journey.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wait, go back to K though because I'm really fascinated by that.
So she's on eight different types of drugs to try to get her to sleep.
She has horrible insomnia and you put her on Pepsid and then she starts sleeping sleeping literally.
This is absolutely not an exaggeration.
Eight hours a night.
And you have to understand something her insomnia was so profound.
She would sleep 1 to two hours a night.
three nights in a row, then she would sleep like five hours.
She had paranoia as a result of it because she was like seeing things like she was not I mean, you can't live like that.
That's that's horrific.
It's so dangerous.
The reason is histamine's job and our mass cell's job is to keep us alert and awake.
So, they can be very like I don't know jumpy, arousing, arising.
So if your histamines are that high, doesn't matter if you try to calm your nervous system because your immune system is like stay up and stay awake.
So it keeps that looping either way.
Wait, so she I I mean would would like like what what did she say? How did she react to that? She must have just been like obviously beyond thrilled, but then what was the next step? So then you said, "Okay, this is a histamine issue." So then where did you go from there? Yeah.
So then you can start at some point.
Antihistamines are often important and that many people do need them in an MCCAST journey.
So, it's not my dream as a functional dietician to give everyone antihistamine medications over the Sometimes there's a there's a time and a there's a time and a place and a and a value there.
Yeah.
So, then we started to see what foods she might be reacting to.
Um started to support a little bit more of whatever nutrients she was deficient in, but really slowly to help ultimately with detox.
But then also we just had to address the histamine elephant in the room.
So we did a lot of supplements in the beginning that also address um histamine either helping them break down, helping with an inflammatory response because all of this is an inflammatory response.
It's a hyperimmune response.
Um so we did quite a bit of different herbs and supplements, but really Carrie the number one thing is worked on the nervous system.
Um and really Yeah.
Well, then she was probably able to work on her nervous system because if you're sleepd deprived like that, you can't even work on your nervous system.
But once she started getting sleep, you were probably able to then a work on the nutrition like you said in the supplementation, but also work on her work on her nervous system because she was at least in a much better place because just I mean going from not sleeping at all to then sleeping.
I mean that is just such a huge massive jump in her overall health and then her ability to deal with other things that I'm just imagining this person like coming in and literally like lying on the ground and kissing your feet being like you have saved me.
I mean that is like people like she is and it's I will tell you that I had read this Pepsi study.
It was in the back of my head somewhere and I I'm only saying this on your podcast but I did have like a weird like almost a spiritual download with her and I was like Pepsi.
I was like try this four or five years.
No, I love this.
But by the way, hey listeners, didn't I tell you Michelle was brilliant? Didn't I tell you? I said it.
I said the brilliant Michelle a little bit of a freak.
A little bit of a spiritual.
But I, you know, I had to flags fly.
Let them let them go.
I love it.
I love it.
You have to in order to heal.
You have to be yourself.
Exactly.
Well, you also have to No, you know what you did? And and I want to give you a lot of I mean, you deserve so much credit in so many ways, but you were open-minded.
You're open-minded to all the different possibilities that could be going on with her.
And that's like what you need in your team that's helping you heal.
You need people that are open-minded and going to look for all the different why, how, and instead of just, you know, going to someone them saying, "Oh, well, it can't be this and it can't be that, so you must have this." I mean, you have to be able to be open-minded and and see things and discover.
And it's like you talk about peeling back the layers and getting in there and figuring it out and being, you know, an investigator.
I mean, you wow, that is that blows my mind that story.
I love it so much.
Just because I know cuz from working with people over the years, too.
Like you see people struggle with so many different things and go to so many different doctors and so many different types of practitioners and not figure things out.
So when I'm just like imagining this person coming to you and then you figuring this out for them, it's really beautiful.
Yeah.
And you know, Carrie, and I know you feel this way too, but like I really do thank God, the universe that I had the experience I had because you can't know the terror of these symptoms honestly, unless you've experienced it.
So not everyone on my team has histamine issues by any means.
And by the way, not every client has histamine issues.
Yeah, like everyone listening is like, "Oh, that's me." But sometimes it is you and sometimes it isn't.
Um, and but I was very grateful to have that because I had never experienced anything like it in my life.
And you know, there's actually one study uh and I'll before I even say the study long co and MCCAST mass cell activation syndrome when those mass cells are constantly pumping are very interconnected.
I would say they are interchangeable in some.
I think that long co and mass I was gonna say the way it sounds like to me is that long co is mcast feel that way but I can't really say that because it's not okay not and I kind of feel like long co's a combination of mcasts hypermobility it's kind of like the cluster we call it the triad mcast and hypermobility the triad because they travel together these drums basically um and there's a couple reasons why but um I lost my train of thought point being I was very grateful to have experienced it because if you have to have symptoms that extreme without any explanation, Carrie, I was on Reddit looking for answers.
I literally was like, "Why do I feel dizzy after whatever, like walking? Why I feel and I just I was like, why do I feel weird on day nine of my cycle after my period ends, but I don't feel bad during PMS?" Like, there's no there's no Reddit for that.
There's no answer.
So, this is like the body's operating on a different system than what we know.
And in functional medicine, it's all leaky gut, IBS, and those things are lovely, but you you will not and they're important like and real diagnoses obviously, but you can't address the root cause in someone with histamine issues without addressing the symptoms.
You have to address the symptoms first.
Yeah.
So interesting, right? And it's right.
So it's it's and and so many people, right, they go from traditional western medicine to then they go, you know, functional medicine.
Let's get to the root.
And like that's not always the place to go.
Exactly.
And sometimes it's dangerous to address the root first.
This is the study I wanted to mention quickly.
They did one study.
First of all, stateby-state survey to see on average like how many people by state had long COVID.
And they found that up to 30% in each state of people had long COVID 3 months after having COVID.
So this issue is mega profound.
We're talking millions and tens of millions and maybe even a hundred million people in America who are experiencing this.
And that was about two years ago.
I'm sure it's expanded since then.
And the and the other thing I want to mention about long co that's just so important is that um they did one study and found that the quality of life of those experiencing long COVID on average was a lower quality of life than those with stage four cancer on medication.
Wow.
And that's because the fatigue was so profound that they could not work.
Fatigue is a major um symptom in all these conditions as well in in addition to insomnia.
They couldn't work.
The things they could do in their life was less.
And also people don't get community support, Carrie, because people don't believe you when you say you have long COVID.
They believe when you say you have cancer.
And by the way, not from a prognosis standpoint.
We're not talking about from a prognosis.
We're talking about quality of life.
Right.
Right.
And you know, Right.
No.
So, okay.
So, let's just say there's someone listening right now and they say, "Yeah, I think I have long COVID.
I I feel, you know, and I feel kind of crappy and whatever." What what's what do they do? Would they wake up tomorrow? What do they do? Who do they call? What should they ask about? What do they consider? Yeah.
The first thing I would do is it for yourself before even going to a provider, start inventorying your symptoms.
Yeah.
So, make a little diagram head to toe, little stick figure.
It doesn't have to be fancy.
and symptoms from head to toe.
Top of your body to bottom.
Anxiety goes in the head.
Headaches go in the head.
And then prioritize which of these symptoms are most impactful for me.
And then find out when when do those symptoms happen.
Do you get migraines around a certain time of the month? When you eat food, when you eat a certain type of restaurant, you talk to a certain friend who talks too fast like me? whatever it is, find out what those symptoms are for you and where they're from because you're going to walk into an integrative nutrition professional's office or a functional medicine doctor's office and I want you to come in with that information.
So, the first thing is get to know your body and get to know the language of your body and how your body's communicating with you, right? I would say like do a little self assessment and yeah, food and and food journaling too like you did mention that like with with the food side of it too, but like really really as much detail as possible.
I always say the more information you can go into someone's office with, the more you're going to get out of that appointment and you can start to like move things along because not only do you forget things in the moment, but also it's like just all down on paper.
You put together such a better story and it it helps you actually put it together.
Not just like, oh, my stomach hurts after this or I get a racing heart after that or that like you you can develop the story yourself before you go in.
So anyway, I know you just said that.
I'm just sort of reiterating because I think it is so valuable and I think people always think like I make an appointment and then they feel better like okay, I'm going to that appointment.
Hopefully I'll feel better after I go there.
They don't think about starting to do that work on their own.
And as much as like yes, you hopefully you'll go to an amazing practitioner like like Kay went to you and you gave her, you know, Pepsid, but hopefully you'll have an experience that is that impactful, but the more work you can do beforehand because no one knows you and your body like yourself.
And I think sometimes people do they they like to, you know, people do they feel better the minute they make an appointment.
People are like, "Oh, I feel better.
I've made an appointment to go and do this.
I'm fixing it.
I'm going to work on this." But no one is going to know your body like you.
And I always remind people of that.
And and any good practitioner should tell you like, "I don't know your body as well as you." And if they're not saying that to you, that's also, by the way, a red flag.
If they're like, "Nope, it can't be this cuz that's not true.
You shouldn't be feeling this because of this.
You're only feeling this because of that." Like if anybody's saying that to you too, like that is not a great practitioner because because it's not Yeah, exactly.
That is like a big to me a red flag.
Um, okay.
Let's talk about the histamine estrogen connection because I know this is a big I know this is a big deal for a lot of women also in pmenopause.
Absolutely.
So, what's the connection there and I know we have a lot of listeners that are in that pmenopause menopause stage.
though I'm sure they're they're chomping at the bit right now.
So we genuinely we generally consider progesterone to be mass cell stabilizing.
So a positive effect, less histamine potentially and we think of estrogen to be mass cell stimulating.
So estrogen and histamines much like stomach acid have a direct relationship.
They attach to each other's receptors.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So interest because progesterone we know helps like for most people calm calm and stabilizes the immune system.
It's involved response.
Um, absolutely.
And so here's the deal that we know happens in pmenopause.
First, progesterone will drop, right? Already can be a potential histamine issue, and then you have not lower estrogen necessarily, but swings.
So, it can be very high estrogen some months, very low estrogen some months.
So, this is where it's really weird, Terry, but if the simp if the hormones are lower, like a lot of my MCAST clients unfortunately feel so much better in menopause because you don't have the constant like high estrogen cycling.
Um, where clients with histamine issues feel worse generally is when estrogen starts rising.
So, the day their period ends, they stop bleeding, really weird day.
They start having migraines, they start having anxiety, they feel really weird often then.
And then there's kind of that's like the start obviously estrogen will rise for ovulation midcycle and there's a second kind of rise in estrogen around in a 28 day cycle like day 19 to 21 and notice that as well.
So the issue with pmenopause is unfortunately all over the place.
All over the place.
Yeah.
So you just have to kind of be consistent and preventative with stabilizing mass cells and with supporting estrogen detox appropriately in case it's one of those swing high months basically.
Okay.
How do we support the the MCAST? Absolutely.
So, I would say um if from the lowest level standpoint, if you want to use like teas, like I love nettle leaf tea.
I find that incredibly supportive.
Um there's a tremendous amount of supplements as well, but supporting your nervous system, eating regularly to support your nervous system and blood sugar.
The, you know, Carrie essentials that I know you've mentioned in every single podcast, your your principles have to be addressed.
And then when it comes to histamines, you can do things like besides taking medication, there's certain supplements like there's a DAO supplement which is the enzyme that helps to break down histamine in the gut.
You can take that before a meal.
Ginger is really helpful.
Pilla extract.
There's loads of herbs and supplements.
Queretin, although I find some people react to it.
Um, but you really want to start on a histamine journey.
Vitamin C, vitamin C, right? The problem is vitamin C helps with Dowo production, but it's very histaminey because it boosts your immune system.
You don't want anything pushing your immune system.
Basically, you want to calm your immune system.
Okay? So, before doing any other detox, anything like that, the first two things you have to do is address histamines and address your nervous system.
So, that could be also having calming herbs like uh el like uh supplements and herbs.
Atheonine, an amino acid, GABA, a neurotransmitter.
Um I like passion flour, things that calm and cool you.
And then things that will cool and calm the histamines as well.
So address the histamines and the nervous system first through lifestyle supplements.
Um really essential and then you can start to address if there's a specific gut issue that's a root cause if there's a mold issue but first in any stage in life that's what we have to address.
So good.
Wow.
Thank you.
And it makes so much sense that like during pmenopause where everything it's all those fluctuations that make it all harder to manage.
Yes.
I do have a hot take on permenopause though and I want I want I want your hot take.
I have no right cuz I'm not in parmenopause but but I have I want your hot take.
You have all the right in the world.
Tell us.
So the reason only because of my clients the reason the hot take I have is that pmenopause is not a medical diagnosis.
Okay.
We talk and hear about pmenopause online like pmenopause is and of itself a diagnosible medical condition.
Perry menopause is a period of time and it's different for every single person.
So I can tell you Carrie, I have MCCAST clients, highly sensitive clients who feel so much better during pmenopause because their hormones start to calm down.
So they actually feel better.
They might need to go on HRT and menopause of course, but right the the experience of pmenopause is so individual.
And when we think of when I think of permenopause, I kind of think of premenopausal, you're at the top of the slide.
P menopause, you're somewhere on that slide and then menopause bottom of the slide.
We don't know where we are.
So, it's more important than ever during pmenopause to not get into the mindset of, oh, I just feel awful because of my permenopause and right, of course, I'm writing off these you would never, but some people do that.
I'm writing off these years because I feel awful because I am parmenopause.
I'm diagnosed with parmenopause.
You're still you and you.
It's actually a time to pay more attention to your symptoms and give more support as opposed to just saying, "Let me write this off because it's permenopause." Which I see online every day.
I see that online.
Right.
No.
And I and I totally understand what you're saying because I mean I joke all the time with like, you know, brain fog and this and I'm like, "Oh, parmenopause.
I don't remember what I was just saying again." And I No, no, no.
I know how you're saying it though.
No, no, I know what you're saying, though.
But it's like labeling yourself, right? Like you don't want to label yourself.
It's like it's it's it's even like people label themselves all the time.
It's like when you have a client that comes in and says, "I eat sweets every night after dinner." And you're like, "Well, if you keep telling yourself that," you're definitely going to do that every single night, right? But if you tell yourself, "I love tea every night after dinner." What are you going to do? You're going to start having tea every night after dinner.
It's like it's like, you know, it's like and that's like a silly simple example, but it is the same thing.
It it's like what you're saying though that people label themselves like, "I'm in pmenopause, so I'm going to gain weight.
I'm in p menopause so I'm going to feel crappy and irritable all the time.
No, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean there there I agree with you that you don't say I feel like you're also a person who often feels good.
So you're actually a very good example.
Like I feel like you feel pretty good much I feel good a lot because I work on it but I also no I am oh I tell people when I haven't slept well I am irritable as f.
I mean I am moody.
I am moody because I think because you know you know me like I'm I I have yes I have a lot of happy energy.
I have a lot of positive energy but I also have a lot of lows.
I'm an emotion I'm very like emotional and so I have lots of ups downs all around.
Your deep your personality and sensitivity.
Absolutely right.
Right.
So so I do have a lot of different and I and I absolutely feel things more right now in this pmenopausal phase of life.
Okay.
the actual things that are going on in the body are so freaking real.
I just want Evan and not anticipate agony.
And I 100% I 100% understand what you're saying and also sort of like make it again sort of label it and make it like a thing like you are able to address it and deal with it.
doesn't have to become like your this is it throw away these years this is what's happening to meact with it also but is by the way the metabolic changes that happen during pmenopause the biochemical they're all so real it's not even it is so irrefutable how real those changes are um but your experience is also the most but I know yeah I know exactly how you were saying it though like that people do they like make it like oh it's my because of my hormones this is happening or that's happening so what I say to people it's similar I Like what you were saying is that I always say like during this time you just have to dial in a little bit close a little bit more to all of those things that you really should have been doing for all these years.
So it's sort of I again the term I always say is like you need to double down like double down on your on your on managing your stress.
So like you would, you know, managing that nervous system, double down on that.
Double down on like making sure that you're getting your quality sleep or what whatever you have to do to get that.
And so if you if you dial in on those things during this time of life, you are like you're going to get through it a lot better and feel like yourself.
You just can't, you know, when you're in your 20s if you don't have some sort of an illness and if you don't have something going on.
I never felt good in my 20.
I'm like, I was going to say, yeah, you didn't feel good in your 20s.
I But I'm saying for someone that, let's say, felt like pretty good in their 20s and then, you know, maybe was sick or or gained some weight or had something happen, they snap back.
They snap back very fast.
Like, you just aren't Exactly.
Your body's a little more resilient like that where because of the hormonal imbalances, you have to be a little more dialed into everything or everything starts to fall apart.
Yeah.
You know, I I started this diet tribe because I was at a a menopause talk um with some colleagues and one of the people there who was speaking is like a profoundly brilliant, incredible menopause expert.
I mean, she is beyond brilliant, an amazing amazing woman.
And she said like, you know, I knew I was in menopause because I uh started being really, you know, my husband was like, "You're acting really bitchy." And I was like, "This this is not the this is not the dialogue for me.
I'm way too much of a feminist." I'm like, imagine my husband said that to me.
Like I I was like, this is not this is not the dialogue for me.
But I think it was it we can get into that dismissing woman's symptoms as opposed to through it, you know what I mean? And writing ourselves off.
And I just want people to know it's not a medical diagnosis, but it's medically real, by the way, the realest.
And there's just so much we can do to make ourselves feel better.
I have I have so much hope that we can feel so good.
Yeah.
I listen, I like your hot take.
I'll take any hot takes any day.
So, I'm all here for the hot takes.
I love it.
Controversial.
Exactly.
But it's not woman's experience.
It's to empower individual experience.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, I have a couple more questions for you because I know I could talk to you forever and ever, but um I will let you go at some point.
So, um one more histamine question for you.
Yeah.
Because you know, I think you know that I get migraines.
Um, I no longer drink at all because I get migraines um, very easily from triggered from alcohol and other things too.
But anyway, histamine migraine connection.
Talk to me about it.
I have to tell you, my heart's pounding out of my chest out of excitement that you just asked this question.
It's my It's literally my favorite thing to talk about.
Okay.
One of the most So glad I asked.
I think I'm going to blow your mind, Carrie.
I literally think I'm going to blow your mind.
Okay.
First of all, I have to tell you, I went to a neurologist recently and I was I went for not recently.
I guess it was also like four years ago for headaches and the neurologist said to me, um, do you also get seasonal allergies? And the first thing he recommended was an antihistamine, which I'm like, that's very cool and we'll talk about it.
So, one of the main things that histamines do is cause something called vasoddilation in our body.
So, that means they open up our blood vessels.
So, I want us all to picture that kind of experience, and if anyone listening's experienced this, where you're standing in the shower and then you feel really dizzy all of a sudden.
You look down, your legs look really red.
People like start holding on to the wall if the shower is too hot and then your heart starts pounding basically.
So heat is also a vasoddilator.
So what's happening in this scenario? You're standing up.
Gravity naturally in general pulls blood to your feet and then your heart pumps the blood back up and your blood vessels will squeeze and pump blood back up.
If your blood vessels are always wide open, they don't pump that blood back to your heart.
So what happens? Your heart goes, "Oh my gosh, I don't have enough blood here.
Pump, pump, pump." And then you have that excessive heart rate to get the blood back up.
So, okay, this is it, Carrie.
All right.
The number one thing that migraine medications do is cause vasoc constriction.
So, they work exactly against what histamines do.
Now, if you even think about it, something like caffeine, we know caffeine makes our heart pump and constricts our blood vessels, right? Eedin migraine.
What's the difference between Eedin migraine and a regular Tylenol or Eedin is the caffeine component.
We always hear about migraine cures being oh diet coke and uh you know salty uh French fries those are all vasoc constriction.
Those all cause vasoc constriction.
So we think that possibly excessive vasoddilation causes blood pooling in the brain.
Too much blood not too much blood and not enough blood flow.
So constriction can either help some of the blood to leave the brain or it can also help with um just getting that pump going again or and that constriction can cause the blood pressure to go up which will then cause the pump again to happen.
So it is the biggest relationship and it comes down to this vasoddilation piece which is also where why we see skin rashes.
It's literally blood pooling on the surface.
Wow.
Wow.
No, it's amazing.
No, it's amazing and I think for so many people like out there too just to understand that and what is going on there but that yeah wow that migraine histamine connection it is it's fascinating I would also want to cause vasoc constriction in the time of a migraine so I would put ice on my head I would put I cold vasoc constricts heat vasoddilates ice on your neck ice on your head and we already know to do that right all the migraine cats have ice it's all about the vasoc constriction that's Every single remedy for migraines is for vasoc constriction and histamines are the biggest vasoddilators.
Wow.
And no wonder people, you know, are affected by things like wine that are high histamine foods that can cause the or migraine triggers, right? Exact.
A lot of the migraine triggers you'll see excessive heat like all the atmosphere changes.
A lot of those things can trigger a mass cell histamine response.
Absolutely.
Such a good So glad you asked that.
I'm like migraine.
And I'm like, I get to say vasoddilation now.
We get excited about these types of things.
I get it.
I hear you.
I get excited about those types of words, too.
Um, amazing.
Okay, last question for you.
How do you live your most nutritious life on a daily basis? What ignites your nutritious life when each day? So, you know, I I kind of mentioned this before.
When I was really sick, I realized if it's not going to be me who's going to figure this all out and figure out how to feel okay in a body that seems determined to not feel okay, who is it going to be? Um, so what fuels me is I need to set the example for myself and I can't afford to not live a nutritious life.
I have to live a nutritious life.
Um, other people have a little more wiggle room than me.
I do not.
my body is um I can't have those deviations like you said the sleep eating regularly um balancing my blood sugar like I I can't afford it because I can my body can slip into this immune state can slip into these things so and then I won't be able to show other people that it's possible and I think healing has to be mirrored um so that's what fuels me to love oh my gosh that's so beautiful right for you to help others you need to do it for yourself I love that oh you're so good concept We do.
We need to know that it's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're so amazing.
I love that.
Um I love you.
That is beautiful and amazing.
And you are so focused on doing what you need to do to help yourself so that you can help others, which is just awesome and beautiful.
And you are so brilliant.
And I could talk to you for hours and hours.
So I might just have to ask you to come back.
Okay.
I'll be there.
Okay.
Are we filming again? All right.
All right, I'm ready.
Um, all right.
You're amazing.
I love you, Michelle.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
Can't wait for this to come out.
Thank you all for listening.
Where can listeners find you? And do you have anything any big projects going on that you want anyone to know about? So, if you go to my website by this point that this comes out, I'm really hopeful it'll be there, and it will be, um, you can watch I have a histamine essentials webinar.
It's available for purchase.
It's a threehour everything you need to know either as a practitioner or someone just looking to improve your own health.
It is very comprehensive um on my website.
I'll give you the link for that.
Um I have a podcast, Quiet the Diet, um if you want to listen.
And I have a private practice where I have um it's myself and four other practitioners working with people one-on-one.
You are incredible.
And I'm going to put links to all of that in the show notes.
Thank you so much.
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