Supporting Healthy Mast Cells
A graphic illustrating mast cells (red balloons) and their triggers (spikes). Source: OpenAI (2025)
When I’m discussing mast cells with patients, I describe that living with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome/Disease (MCAS/MCAD) can feel like you live in a room full of balloons and sharp spikes on the wall - where the slightest movement or unseen/unknown trigger can set of a reaction and cause debilitating symptoms.
The last post covered the basics on mast cells, what happens when they go rogue, the conditions associated with rogue mast cells, as well as the diagnostic criteria for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome/Disease (MCAS/MCAD). This post will teach you how you can support your mast cells from diet, lifestyle, medication, and supplementation perspectives.
Let’s dive in.
Diet
Mast cell triggers are varied and wide, so our initial approach needs to cast a broad net. That’s often where our go to diet and lifestyle recommendations come into play in the initial treatment plan. There’s a concept called the Histamine Bucket which we can think of as the totality of the histamine entering the system from the triggering conditions/exposures. Because our diet play a role, we often talk about reducing foods with a high inflammatory as well as high histamine foods from the body.
I don’t think that restrictive diets are the only way to get better, and I see them as a temporary treatment, you have to keep digging deeper.
Anti-inflammatory diet which reduces the triggers of chronic inflammation and can thus reduce mast cell activation. This includes removing gluten, dairy, added refined sugars, and overly processed foods. This can be hard.
Low histamine diet which is more specific to your food triggers plus commonly high histamine foods like aged cheeses, canned and cured meats, vinegar, alcohol, dried fruit, dried fish. Fresh foods can be challenging, some people require freezing their food before cooking/preparing. There are even more factors to consider with this diet. This is even harder.
If neither of these seem to help you may have to look at foods high in oxalates and salicylates that can mimic excess histamine or mast cell dysfunction.
📣 As you treat, the diet component should make up a small amount of the treatment plan 📣
Lifestyle
Remember when I mentioned environmental causes of mast cell activation? That includes allergens from the environment, mold and mycotoxins, toxic metals (what we’ve known as heavy metals but it’s kind of a misnomer because they’re not all heavy), and chemical exposures (pesticides, conventional cleaning products, beauty and body products, plastics, solvents, glyphosate, etc). Perhaps one of the most difficult triggers to address are the emotional toxicities. Spoiler alert: we’ve all got some or all these.
The process of identifying the culprits and removing them from our bodies represents the bulk of the treatment plan when addressing root causes. This is where we use targeted detoxification and depuration therapies…as you are removing the source of exposure. There are only a few ways anything leaves your body: your poop, pee, breath, sweat, tears, and menstrual cycle. These pathways are known as the emunctories and they have to be primed from the beginning of any longterm successful treatment.
Medication
Antihistamine therapies are often the first line of treatment that people reach for. By and large, these medications work that bind to the receptor before histamine can do so, thus eliminating the symptoms that excess histamine causes. There are two main classes, called H-1 and H-2 which relate to the individual receptors that they bind to. Generally speaking, antihistamines that bind to H-1 are used to treat allergies and allergic rhinitis while drugs that bind to H-2 receptors can treat upper GI conditions (like acid reflux, peptic ulcer, etc).
The good? They can reduce symptoms.
The bad? They don’t solve the problem and keep you stuck in a loop of merely treating symptoms.
Some antihistamines (like diphenhydramine) have anticholinergic effects that, long-term, have been linked to increased dementia risk.
Other than the antihistamine class, there is a medication called Cromolyn which is a mast cell stabilizer. Derived from an herbal extract, Cromolyn prevents the release of the pro-inflammatory mediators by stabilizing mast cells and preventing their degranulation. It doesn’t work overnight and works in concert with other treatments.
Supplementation
By and large, supplements (vitamins, botanicals, etc) will work to stabilize mast cells, like Cromolyn. This includes:
Vitamin C
Bromelain (found in pineapple)
Quercetin (from herbal baddie Stinging Nettle)
Pycnogenol (extract from a French pine tree)
Luteolin, and more
The bioflavonoid, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory qualities provide a well rounded treatment.
Final Thoughts
Think of an ideal treatment like a handshake…one hand you have diet, medications, and supplements work in partnership with lifestyle changes represented by the other hand.
Successful treatment requires both hands and they work best when applied together. 🤝
If this seems daunting, it’s because it is…Mast Cell Activation Syndrome has an unpredictable nature. It takes time but what I say to patients is that we should see a shifting in symptoms as we continue to dig towards the root cause. It doesn’t take perfection, it takes continued action with a diversified treatment plan that can change with you.
If you’re ready to achieve real and lasting results by addressing the root cause rather than just simply chasing symptoms, book a Discovery Call and get started today.
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