If you’ve had a treatment at Advanced Allergy Solutions or attended one of our talks, you’ve probably heard the term “mast cell degranulation.” Mast cells are sacs located throughout your body, filled with compounds (like histamine) that induce inflammation. When they’re destabilized, mast cells will burst open—or degranulate—flooding your system with histamine and causing allergic or inflammatory reactions.
We talk to our patients a lot about the best ways to stabilize mast cells and keep them from releasing histamine. Great examples are improving gut health, taking certain supplements like Seeking Health’s Liposomal Vitamin C, and staying hydrated—but the thing we come back to the most is STRESS.
When you’re stressed, your body produces Cortisol Releasing Hormone (CRH), which tells your adrenal glands to produce cortisol. Under long-term stress, your body will keep producing more and more CRH but not be able to produce enough cortisol. You might be thinking, what’s wrong with cortisol being too low—isn’t it the stress hormone, and isn’t having high cortisol unhealthy? While high cortisol is certainly a red flag, cortisol actually has some pretty important housekeeping jobs in your body, including lowering histamine levels. The CRH you’re producing is also a major mast cell degranulator. So when you’re under chronic stress, your body is producing more of the CRH that bursts open your mast cells and producing less of the cortisol that can wrangle all the histamine being released.
To sum up: lowering your stress will help improve your allergies! You can see significant benefits when you implement even seemingly small changes, like making sure you get enough sleep and exploring mindfulness or meditation practices. Another great stress relief option is a 30-minute session on our Biomat, a heated amethyst-filled mat that uses far-infrared rays to boost your immune system and calm your body’s stress response. And this month, Biomat sessions are complimentary!
For the month of November, to celebrate winning Best Alternative Healing in this year’s Best of the Bay, we’d like to treat all of our patients to a Biomat session as a token of appreciation for your continued support. A Biomat session goes great with an allergy treatment but is deliciously relaxing on its own as well. Give us a call or book your free session online today!