Teresa says, “Would you mind speaking about a type of patient who has a negative reaction and side effects on almost every supplement and herb. Where do you start in both diagnosing and treating, especially since they’re so sensitive to supplements? The patients who I have like this already eat Paleo or close to Paleo. One person I suspect of MAST cell activation syndrome. Would it make sense a histamine intolerance or MAST cell activation could be a common theme in these patients who react to everything? Thank you.”
Chris: Yes. It could. I see these patients quite a bit as you might imagine, and they’re really challenging for sure, and at this point, there are a couple of different ways of answering this question. I mean, at a 30,000-foot view, these patients have, like I was just saying to Jamie, they’re hypersensitive. Their whole body is kind of on high alert, and they’re reacting to anything and everything. In my experience, I’ve found that it’s very unlikely that you are going to be able to address that patient as you’ve already discovered by a bunch of different supplements and treatments. What you have to do first is to calm down the hyperreactivity, and I think the best way of doing that in many cases if something like that dynamic neural retraining system or DNRS program. It’s a neuroplasticity-based approach. It really is working at the level of regulating the nervous system, which has of course a profound impact on the immune system. We don’t have a lot of time to discuss that now. I’m happy to talk about it more in the future, and there are other options too like Feldenkrais somatic experiencing, other kinds of hands-on approaches, but something really needs to happen to calm and soothe that hypersensitivity reaction. In those patients, once you can do that, then they can start to be able to tolerate some of the treatments that you might want to use but not be able to.