Avoiding Triggers

Before my diagnosis of Mast Cell Activation I never would have talked about triggers. I had symptoms, but triggers? That was a foreign concept.  Now, the concept of triggers lends a lot of clarity to the Mast Cell Activation.  I am not going to get all science-y or medical here.  There are other resources for that, more and more each day.  My goal is to talk about the things that can trigger Mast Cell Activation, or degranulation (see, too science-y!). And what I do, or you can do, to avoid these triggers.

Some of this is pretty straight forward and simple.  If you react to eggs, then you do not eat eggs. You don't eat them fried or scrambled, but you also don't eat them in cakes or cookies.  You need to read labels and completely remove the eggs from your diet.  The same for all of those other foods that are triggers. But, how do you know they are actually triggers? Because first we need to identify what our individual triggers are. And what about nutrition?

Many people in today's society turn to vitamins and supplements to make up for any nutritional deficits, but did you know these can also contain triggers, or be triggers in and of themselves?

And while we talk about vitamins and supplements, we need to talk about medications.  Both over the counter medications, prescribed medications, and emergency or surgical medications. And then there are the substances used to evaluate us, like imaging dyes.

After foods and medications, we move on to environmental triggers. And physical triggers. Then emotional triggers. Yes, really.

ANYTHING can trigger Mast Cells.

And it's not in your head. You are not crazy.