294-SYNCPodcast_Dr.MegMill

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[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today, I’m sharing with you an interview that I did with Dr. Meg Mill. Dr. Meg is a doctor of pharmacy and certified functional medicine practitioner with over two decades of clinical experience. She’s also a best selling author, podcast host, summit host, and speaker.

[00:01:15] Jenny Swisher: Her virtual functional medicine practice has transformed the lives of thousands of people worldwide by connecting the dots between their diverse, unexplained, and often overlooked health struggles. She uses her EAT method to uncover and resolve the underlying connections, whether that’s gut dysfunction, nervous system dysregulation, histamine intolerance, or mass cell activation syndrome.

[00:01:33] Jenny Swisher: She empowers clients to regain control of their health to regain the energy, mental clarity, and competence needed to fully show up for their lives again. She’s been seen in many national publications and on media such as Fox News Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Forbes Health, Reader’s Digest, Health Magazine, Mind Body Green, Authority Magazine, Life Style, and Sunset Magazine, as well as several national publications, blogs, and podcast guest appearances.

[00:02:00] Jenny Swisher: Her personal journey through health struggles fuels her empathetic approach, making her not just a health care provider, But a partner in her client’s wellness journey. Now I can attest to that last fact because she has actually been one of my doctors on my hormone health and migraine team for the past couple of years and I have loved getting to know her, learning from her, and truly she’s been such a godsend for me.

[00:02:19] Jenny Swisher: I’m super grateful that she’s taken time out of her day today to come on here and talk to us about histamine.

[00:02:25] Jenny Swisher: Histamine is a subject that I know in my community, it gets brought up often and not really anyone understands. So this is a field that she has really dedicated a lot of research to herself. So she’s the perfect person to have on here to talk about this. So Dr. Meg Mill, without further ado, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:42] Jenny Swisher: If you would just tell us who you are and what you do.

[00:02:45] Meg Mill: Thank you so much for having me today, Jenny. I am, so I, like she said, I’m Dr. Meg Mill. I have a virtual functional medicine practice. So I actually came from a conventional background. I was a PharmD. I graduated, the doctor of pharmacy, did a residency practice as a clinical pharmacist.

[00:03:03] Meg Mill: And I kept seeing people just put on more and more medications and not getting better. And I realized this is not what I I set out to do. I didn’t do all this work in order just to see people kind of suffer with like, Oh, wait, now you need this. Now we have medications that interact with medications and make you have more health issues.

[00:03:20] Meg Mill: , and then I also was having some health issues of my own and not getting any answers. And I’m like, If I can’t get answers here in this space, I know, you know, I’m in the healthcare field, what’s going on. So that led me to start doing research and really dig into what was going on with my own health, which led me to functional medicine.

[00:03:38] Meg Mill: So I actually did a complete career change, went back and did all the functional medicine education, got certified in functional medicine and open my own practice. And now, like I said, I’m, it’s really wonderful because I can actually see health transformations every day.

[00:03:52] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, I actually learned about you because I heard you on a podcast.

[00:03:55] Jenny Swisher: I was searching, , podcasts one day on a walk and I was, I was really desperate for help with my migraines. And I heard you talking about migraines on a podcast, which we, I want to touch on here too. But, , one thing that I’ve experienced just in working with you. And one thing that I want to iterate to my listeners, they hear it from me often is this idea of really just.

[00:04:12] Jenny Swisher: Having the right practitioner in your corner to really be able to peel back the onion on your health. Right. And to really dig for that root cause. And, , I found that women like you and like me, like we’re in this position because we want to serve and we want to serve women on a deeper level. , and a lot of people don’t understand that going to their traditional doctor’s offices, while there’s nothing wrong with it, may not necessarily be leading them to what’s actually at the root of the problem.

[00:04:35] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so for me, um, I went through years of chronic migraine struggle. I still am. And, , I got really sick and tired of like sitting in waiting rooms and feeling like I was handed a pharmaceutical or people just wanted to put me on birth control or whatever the case was. When I finally embraced functional wellness and a functional medicine practitioner like Dr.

[00:04:54] Jenny Swisher: Meg, , is when I really started to realize like there’s a whole other world of stuff here that we can look into that has to do with our nutrition, that has to do with our lifestyle, and no one’s talking about that in the modern medicine world. So, just sort of to set us up before we dive into histamine, and I just want to reiterate.

[00:05:10] Jenny Swisher: If this isn’t something that you have embraced yourself yet, consider it, right? Consider doing the deeper dive on yourself and on your bio individuality. We’re starting to see a lot right now in the world of hormone health, and a lot of times it’s a box with a label on it that says hormone health, and it’s a protocol that’s like a one size fits all approach.

[00:05:27] Jenny Swisher: And That just doesn’t work. Like we have to know how our bodies are uniquely different. So awesome. So I want to dive into histamine. Like I said, you are the expert for this topic. , so tell us just from the get go, like what is histamine? Like what do we need to understand about it?

[00:05:41] Meg Mill: Yeah. So histamine, histamine is like the new cortisol I say, because it’s something that we actually need in our body.

[00:05:48] Meg Mill: And. It’s just a problem when we get too much. So it’s actually what we call biogenic amine. So when your immune system detects an allergen or an invader, histamines actually release primarily from our mast cells and our basophils, which are part of our innate immune system. They’re the front line of the immune system.

[00:06:07] Meg Mill: And its job is to increase permeability of our blood vessels and allow our immune cells to reach the affected areas more quickly. So It helps us with immune defense. It protects us against pathogens. It regulates, actually, gastric acid secretion, so it helps break down the food and aid in digestion. It can affect neurotransmitters, affect your serotonin, your norepinephrine, your acetylcholine, so it can be a part of your wakefulness, alertness, cognitive function, brain, mood.

[00:06:35] Meg Mill: You know, it’s It’s it’s really we have four different types of receptors, so we’re seeing these responses all over the body. It can be a part of our allergic response, which is what most people think of when we think of histamine, because we need to expel harmful antigens and parasites and other things from the body.

[00:06:51] Meg Mill: It can cause Bronco constriction. So our airways constrict because we want to actually prevent those harmful airborne pathogens from coming in and it actually. Um, and it’s also, um, And that really purposely contributes to our inflammatory response. So it recruits immune cells to the site of the infection or injury through like a vascular permeability we were talking about.

[00:07:12] Meg Mill: And actually creates this inflammatory response, which is good when you have like an acute situation. But the problem is we start to see this happen all the time where we’re getting these constant inflammatory responses because we get out of balance with our histamine levels.

[00:07:33] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So like in my case, one thing that I’m learning, right, is that I may have a component to my migraines that involves histamine.

[00:07:39] Jenny Swisher: Right. So, , let’s make the connection for people. I mean, obviously you’ve talked about some symptoms that people could be experiencing, whether that’s. Migraines are the things that you just mentioned, but how does this tie into like our hormones? Like, how does this, how does this factor? And I read an article by Dr.

[00:07:54] Jenny Swisher: Laura Bryden, that was about, um, you know, the connection between estrogen and histamine. Can you make that?

[00:08:00] Meg Mill: Yes. So there’s different ways that it happens. So one of the things is. That we talked about the mast cells. So remember our mast cells are our front line of defense in our immune system. They’re part of the innate immune system and they degranulate.

[00:08:14] Meg Mill: So when something comes into the body, the mast cell degranulates and it released histamine and other chemicals. So we start to get these responses. Now, estrogen will actually stimulate the release of histamine from mast cells. So there actually is reason for that in the fertilization process.

[00:08:33] Meg Mill: , but that’s not something we want all of the time. So when you think, and one, we will get into the other things, but one of the things I just like wanna point out is you, and especially when we’re talking about, let’s use it in the context of migraines, because migraines can actually be a symptom. of histamine intolerance that you’re not maybe expecting.

[00:08:51] Meg Mill: So that’s why there’s different levels during your cycle that you’ll have more symptoms. So, you know, you may have more symptoms when you ovulate or right before your period when your estrogen’s higher because you’re actually releasing more histamine because estrogen So, um, we’re going to be make sure that your diet is at a higher point.

[00:09:09] Meg Mill: So it gets complicated for people because then when we’re going to bring in diet into this, let’s, I’m just going to use red wine or a glass of wine because that’s just a common one. , you know, so people will say, well, I’ll get a terrible migraine if I drink red wine. Um, I’m not sure if it’s the wine, sometimes, like right in, like in the PMS window or during ovulation.

[00:09:29] Meg Mill: But other times I can have a glass of wine and I’m fine. So it must not be the wine. Well, maybe it’s not the wine specifically that maybe it’s the wine combined with those higher estrogen levels. So when we’re looking at it, we have to think of what are all the things that are adding up to get you to the point of symptoms, which we can, we can get more into, but I’m going to bring it back around just to the hormones right now.

[00:09:50] Meg Mill: So, you know, we have one estrogen. Can release the histamine from the mast cell. The other thing is Estrogen can also compromise diamine oxidase. So histamine is broken down by two pathways in your body We have one pathway in the gut, which is the diamine oxidase pathway, which that we’ll get into and then we have another One that is methylation.

[00:10:12] Meg Mill: So that’s we break it down by histamine and methyl transferase pathway. Um, and we have, so we have to be able to break it down our gut and we have to be able to methylate. So how we break it down in our gut is diamine oxidase. So this is an enzyme that breaks down histamine. It lives in the brush border of our gut lining.

[00:10:28] Meg Mill: So we need to have it strong. So estrogen can actually compromise diamine oxidase and make it more difficult to break down histamine. So, you know, you’re having the high estrogen levels, it might be stimulating your mast cells, it might be compromising the histamine breakdown, and then we have the imbalance with progesterone, so progesterone actually helps improve diamine oxidase, so it actually improves that function.

[00:10:55] Meg Mill: So if your progesterone levels are higher, it helps balance it. But when we get low progesterone and high estrogen, it’s kind of a double whammy there.

[00:11:04] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Which is probably why I know when I’m supplementing with my progesterone in the second half of my cycle, , not only are my symptoms better, but also, you know, it’s a natural antihistamine in that way.

[00:11:14] Jenny Swisher: Mm-Hmm. .

[00:11:15] Meg Mill: Yeah. So you’re helping the breakdown of histamine by, and you know, and that’s where, when you think, so when you’re thinking of some of these. symptoms. Well, let’s just take a step back and go into what are the symptoms of histamine in time. So, you know, we’re going to see those allergy type symptoms that you normally think of.

[00:11:31] Meg Mill: So you think of like nasal congestion, sneezing, asthma, difficulty breathing, things like that. But then we’re also looking at headaches and migraines, fatigue, heart palpitations, dizziness, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, PMS, irregular periods, flushing, joint pain, difficulty sleeping, high or low blood pressure, hives, rashes, you know, so we’re getting all of these symptoms.

[00:11:55] Meg Mill: Now, when I’m saying this, think about it. You’re not necessarily born with histamine intolerance. You can have genetic propensities to have genetic variants that make, you know, maybe you have a methylation. Um, you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s a very young variant. Maybe you have a variant in your diamine oxidase pathway, but you don’t have the symptoms necessarily at a very young age.

[00:12:13] Meg Mill: Usually it’s it’s things that happen over time. And then when we get into that perimetopause window, what happens? Your estrogen often is, you know, higher than your progesterone. So that can be a time where we really get exacerbated symptoms. But sometimes people’s only symptoms are like anxiety and migraines because of the different types of histamine receptors.

[00:12:34] Meg Mill: So you’re not actually you. associating, Oh wait, my anxiety or my lack of sleep or things like that are actually related to histamine dumps. You’re just thinking that there are other things. So it’s really interesting when we look at it from this perspective, how many symptoms can improve when we’re really focusing on being able to break down histamine.

[00:12:56] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, that’s so interesting, and I can’t help but share this quick little story, which is when you and I were first investigating histamine for me, and I know I was utilizing DAO enzyme supplementation, and we were looking into my genetic factors and my methylation and all these pieces. A good friend of mine from high school and I were chatting.

[00:13:13] Jenny Swisher: And her her daughter was struggling with what they thought was was allergies right and so they were going to an allergist and she was on. I don’t know what kind of if it was singular something there was some sort of like allergy you know prescriptions that she was taking. And I think she’s around 14 and had started her period and was it was interesting because as we were chatting you know her.

[00:13:32] Jenny Swisher: Her mom’s telling me like, she has this every month around like her period and around ovulation. And so you and I are working together and I’m like, have you ever considered, you know, histamine? And so she starts digging into it. She asks the allergist. Of course, the allergist is like, not my territory because it’s not functional medicine, right?

[00:13:47] Jenny Swisher: It’s not root cause. So she did eventually seek out someone for help with this. And the DAO enzyme factor for her, for her daughter has been all the game changing that they needed. She’s like, it literally is like, I mean, it’s, it’s hard, you know, for anyone to avoid high history. We’ll talk about high histamine foods, but especially a 14 year old, like to try to try to tell them, you know, like, okay, we’re not going to do the chocolate around this time of the month or whatever.

[00:14:10] Jenny Swisher: , so that, you know, supplementing with that is so game changing. So we’re going to talk about the things that you can do, but I just want to say like, from my own experience, like I, I know for me, it was like, Oh, I didn’t even realize that this was a thing. And that there are things within my control that I can do to help myself with this.

[00:14:25] Jenny Swisher: So. Okay, so we talked about symptoms, we talked about what histamine is, how it ties into estrogen and hormones. , let’s talk about, like, you know, what types of things do people not realize? Because I know when you first sent me, , the high histamine food list and I saw on there pretty much all the foods that I love.

[00:14:41] Meg Mill: Yes, healthy foods, right?

[00:14:45] Jenny Swisher: I mean, I remember, I remember telling you, wait a minute, like I eat healthy foods, like, and you’re telling me that these are high histamine foods. So let’s, let’s talk about that.

[00:14:53] Meg Mill: So yeah, let’s first talk about like, I’m going to bring it into the foods, but I’m going to just go back and talk about a little bit why this starts to happen.

[00:15:00] Meg Mill: So for this, I like to use a, like a bathtub analogy. So think of your body like a bathtub. And as long as you’re filling the bathtub and it’s draining, everything’s fine. You’re having a nice bath. But if the plug gets clogged or if well, I guess if you’re having a bath, the plug is clogged, but you know, you’re trying to keep the water going and flowing.

[00:15:22] Meg Mill: But if the, if the plug gets clogged. And, or you keep filling the bathtub, you’re going to get this overflow. And that’s what happens when we start to see histamine tolerance. Like we know we need histamine, but we don’t want excess. And that’s where like with, you know, we’re seeing that a lot of people are having excess histamine loads.

[00:15:40] Meg Mill: So we need to look at it from two ways. We need to look at making sure we can digest it. So that’s where the DAO comes in. Those diamine oxidase supplements, really that a lot of that comes back to gut health and really making sure that Your mucosal membranes are healthy that you don’t have dysbiotic bacteria in your gut.

[00:15:59] Meg Mill: So we, we really know that we need to heal the gut in order to really optimize breakdown of histamine. We also need to make sure you’re methylating well. So, You know, looking at those functions. So we need to be breaking down and then we need to lower the intake. So when we’re looking at what’s filling that bucket.

[00:16:17] Meg Mill: So like I mentioned, like, okay, we could have estrogen. We could have toxins. We could have mast cell activation syndrome where your mast cells just keep releasing and releasing and releasing. We could have high histamine foods where you’re just eating a ton of histamine foods and your body just can’t break them down fast enough.

[00:16:35] Meg Mill: So those are all the things that we look at. And what gets confusing is that a lot, like you’re saying, a lot of those foods are healthy foods. So we’re looking at things like avocado, which, you know, everyone’s talking about, like, what a great healthy fat, but avocados are high in histamine. A lot, and what gets a little bit complicated also is a lot of the gut healing foods are also high histamine foods.

[00:16:57] Meg Mill: So we need to heal the gut, but the things that most people are telling you to do to heal your gut are actually activating you. So it actually, we need to heal the gut in a different way when it comes to histamine intolerance because we don’t want to eat fermented foods. We don’t want bones. Those are all high, a lot of actually even probiotic strands can be histamine producing, so we need to look at those foods so we’re looking, thinking when you’re thinking of high histamine foods, you’re thinking of fermented foods, you’re thinking of aged and cured foods, You’re thinking of histamine liberating foods, which can be like bananas, tomatoes, strawberries, all again, healthy foods, alcohol, tea sometimes can be, , an issue with breaking down diamine oxidase.

[00:17:43] Meg Mill: So we’re looking at black tea. So we want to really take a look at our diet and see, and I have a guide I can link for you, Jenny, that Actually has like it’s like your essential guide to histamine intolerance and it breaks down this food for you because it can be confusing so we can share that as a download, but, , we just need to really look at what we’re consuming.

[00:18:05] Meg Mill: Now, here’s the thing. When we’re looking at a low histamine diet, it’s not a forever thing. It’s really an investigation tool because like we’re saying, there’s a lot of. foods that are healthy and we don’t necessarily want to give them up forever. So it can be something if you’re saying, okay, do I react to this foods?

[00:18:20] Meg Mill: Are they a problem? You can try the low histamine diet. You can see like, do I feel better when I don’t eat histamine? No, I think I told you that, like, I want you to look at these foods. I want you to evaluate if you eat these foods and how you feel if we pull them out, but our intention isn’t right.

[00:18:35] Meg Mill: Forever, because what can happen is you can actually become more reactive if you keep putting more and more restrictions on your diet. So then sometimes you can’t eat the foods eventually. So we need to look at that as a tool and then really do the other things that we need to do to balance your body.

[00:18:52] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, so good. I love that you just said that because I think it’s important to know again, this is a great place to interject with just health as individual, right? So, but if, , I am dealing with, , histamine issues and even a twin sister, if I had a twin sister, right? If she’s dealing with it, we could have Different symptoms.

[00:19:07] Jenny Swisher: We could have different situations. One of us could be more on the digestive side of things. One of us could be more on the methylation side of things. , one thing that I haven’t mentioned enough here on the podcast is one of the tests that we did together, which I talk about to my friends often is the decision, the genetic test and understanding genetic factors.

[00:19:22] Jenny Swisher: I don’t know why genetic tests are not just part of proactive wellness. I don’t understand. Like, I really want to do it with my daughters too. , because I just think it’s, All these things that I learned about myself at 40 would have been really helpful 20, 30 years ago. Um, when it comes to stuff, I think about all the folic acid I was taking and all the non methylated B vitamins that I was taking and all these things that really were pointless waste of money and probably more harmful than good.

[00:19:47] Jenny Swisher: , and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but I, you know, I want people listening to understand that even within this category, I guess, or this topic of histamine, there are variations and there are different things you have to understand for each individual person. So it’s another great place to interject that health is individual.

[00:20:01] Jenny Swisher: , and I love that you’re going to link up that guide for us. That’ll be perfect. So we’ll have that in show notes. So when it comes to, , you know, you’ve touched on obviously mass cell activation syndrome, what does that look like for people? And obviously it could be different, but can you give us a little bit of.

[00:20:15] Jenny Swisher: You know, specifics on what that can, what that can manifest as so

[00:20:20] Meg Mill: what to for mass activation syndrome, we have to like, look at the immune system. So again, we talked about the mass cells are a part of our innate immune system. So there. Looking so think you have an innate and an adaptive immune system So your innate immune system is just looking for anything.

[00:20:36] Meg Mill: It’s like what is what invader is coming? I’m, just out to watch now your adaptive immune system is going to target things So it’s going to put a tag on it basically and say Okay, we’re allergic to peanuts and we don’t like peanuts because peanuts have been tagged. So we’re going to react there. But the innate immune system is just an overall watched.

[00:20:54] Meg Mill: , so the mass cells are part of that first line. And so what starts to happen is when we get Um, and then we get an overload of toxins of potential viruses, infections, we get parasites, yeast, mold, all of these things build up. We start to get an overactive immune system. So your mast cells start to degranulate inappropriately.

[00:21:22] Meg Mill: So you start to get reactions to things that are safe, that aren’t dangerous. So basically you’re saying like your body’s saying, okay, too much. My mast cells are angry now and now I just have to release it like release histamine and other substances whenever we’re having anything. So you start to get this, like I said, overreaction, hypersensitive.

[00:21:43] Meg Mill: So you start to be more react. You say mass activations in general, you tend to have, you know, more than one body symptoms. So multiple systems are usually affected and you start to feel more of that. Like, okay, I’m hypersensitive. We need to do the same. things that we do for histamine intolerance. But also one really important thing for massive activation syndrome is also nervous system regulation.

[00:22:08] Meg Mill: Because what’s going on here is that your body is saying, okay, I’m used to reacting to this. So I like to use this example. So if you have a rose, like if you hand someone a rose and you smell it, and it’s like, oh, that’s pretty, that’s nice. You have a good feeling from it. And then you hand it to them again and you say, you have to touch a hot stove.

[00:22:27] Meg Mill: So every time you touch the rose, you have to touch the hot stove and you have to do this over and over again. That feels uncomfortable. I mean, who wants that? You don’t like it. So then you take the stove away and you give them back the rose. When they smell the rose, are they going to feel good? No, they’re going to feel uncomfortable.

[00:22:40] Meg Mill: You’re going to remember, oh, I react to that. So. You start to build these neuropathways that are used to reacting, so we actually have to work on neuroplasticity and brain retraining a lot of times to create that sense of safety, because we need to take away the things that are causing the mast cell activation syndrome, so we need to look at, you know, are you living in a moldy environment?

[00:23:04] Meg Mill: Do you have underlying gut, you know, infections? Do you have viruses? That’s, you know, at the pandemic, we saw this really go up because of the vi, you know, the virus, the viral load. So we need to look at all the things that could be activating your mast cells, take them out, but then also often retrain the nervous system that you are safe, that you don’t have to react.

[00:23:24] Meg Mill: So I think that’s an important piece really, and that, People don’t always want to look at because it’s like, okay, we want to look at, okay, what supplements we need to take, what do we need to do, but do we, we can change our diet. People can get so hung up on the diet, but not want to do the nervous system work.

[00:23:40] Meg Mill: And I think that’s an essential piece.

[00:23:42] Jenny Swisher: That is such an essential piece. And I actually am glad you mentioned that because I think in working with you, that was one of the biggest things that helped me. When I came into my first consult with you, I was in a chronic migraine state of really just a lot of pain, wanting to get out of the pain.

[00:23:57] Jenny Swisher: for having me. , you know, just to have a break. I think I used to say like a light at the end of the tunnel. Like, I just need to know when this is going to stop. Right. And one of the things that you encouraged me early on was to, to do like the affirmation work and to really think about like how to retrain my brain to, to not think in pain and, um, You know, while that may or may not be related to the histamine conversation, that neuroplasticity piece is so big because one thing that I started doing for myself was I would email myself at night.

[00:24:24] Jenny Swisher: So this is so stupid, but this was working for me, right? So, um, so like I tend to be, and now it makes sense because we’re, you know, I’m looking at cortisol and things that are shifting and changing and improving for me, but I was feeling really, really anxious in the morning. So. And I think that’s because when you’re living in a chronic pain state, when you have a migraine, you wake up in the morning and you’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s only 7am and I got to deal with this headache all day.

[00:24:47] Jenny Swisher: You know? So the anxiety level in the morning for me was really high. But then by the evening I could feel myself sort of naturally calm down. It was almost like, okay, well, I’ve made it through the day. I was a lot more level headed, right? So what I would do is I would start to email myself in the evening.

[00:25:02] Jenny Swisher: So when I was calm, I would email myself my own affirmations of you’re going to get through the day. It’s, you know, before you know it, it’s going to be evening and you’re, you know, this is the way you’re going to be feeling. And like, I would literally just like. I really just retrained my brain to think about how this, this is totally doable and I’m not going to enter the day in pain.

[00:25:20] Jenny Swisher: And so, , I totally agree that this is. It’s 50 percent of the equation, right? There’s always like the, the, I don’t know. I don’t want to say scientific side, but like, there’s always like the nutritional side and like the, you know, the, the supplement side of things, but also retraining the brain is so crucial in my case, it was chronic pain.

[00:25:37] Jenny Swisher: And I really needed to retrain my brain out of that. I really needed to, you know. Tell myself everything was, was calm. The other doctor that I was working with, Dr. Paige, , she was telling me constantly, she’s like, okay, like how you are talking to yourself and the fear that you’re living in is, is perpetuating this pain.

[00:25:52] Jenny Swisher: So like the chronification of this pain could very much be because you’re living in that fear. So just to kind of reiterate that for anybody listening to, so awesome. So we’ve covered a lot, but I want to make sure that we also tell people what we do. So what do we do when we’re dealing with, you know, Yeah, whether it’s histamine intolerance or mast cell activation, like, what does that look like?

[00:26:10] Jenny Swisher: Obviously, it’s different for everyone, but, , what has been your approach?

[00:26:14] Meg Mill: Yeah, so I think really starting with gut health and really looking at it from the mast cell or histamine point of view, we actually have microbes in our gut that are histamine producing. So, Along with all the other things that we talked about, you actually could have microbes that are producing histamine outside of anything that your body’s doing, and so we need to look at that and actually get that back into balance.

[00:26:43] Meg Mill: So we need to make sure that Our gut is healed in the way that it kind of is focused in this histamine realm. And everything is back in balance that our immune system is optimal. There’s a really strong immune approach to this because we have to really make sure we have a calm, healthy immune system as we’ve been talking about this as part of our immune response.

[00:27:02] Meg Mill: So we need to really focus on the layers that we do in order to Calm the immune system down and then make sure we’re actually able to digest and process the histamine. It, you know, really always say like, even when we’re looking at this, if you can’t, even if you’re eating, I think, and we’ve been saying this, like people get so hung up on diet.

[00:27:24] Meg Mill: If you’re eating a perfect diet and you’re following it so strict and you’re not digesting and absorbing what you eat, you’re not actually getting the benefits. I was just working with someone new who came in and all of her nutrients, she’s eating. So I’m like, I’m eating this like. Wonderful diet and I’m, you know, making such an effort and all of her nutrient levels are low because she’s not, I’m like, well, you’re not digesting and absorbing.

[00:27:44] Meg Mill: So even what you’re eating isn’t actually getting to where it needs to go. So we need to really focus on being able to digest and absorb the food that we eat. We need to bring down all of the things that are attacking our immune system and really get the body back in balance. So you can like look at the low histamine diet.

[00:28:02] Meg Mill: If you’re listening, you’re like, okay, do I have a histamine issue? That might be a little bit of a thing to do. As a clue, we will do that often. Like I said, what we did with you, like a trial period, but then we need to focus on really working. I kind of break it up into like the gut health piece, the immune piece and the nervous system piece and how they all connect.

[00:28:21] Meg Mill: They all connect with each other. So they’re, they’re not separate, but we need that. They’re all talking to each other and we need to bring all 3 of them back into balance and the hormones. Come back to so, you know, that’s part of it It’s all like I know and I mean even like when you were looking with the migraines They’re all connected and I think that’s something that no one’s telling you is you are Conventional system breaks it up into specialties.

[00:28:45] Meg Mill: Your body is not a specialty. It is connected So everything that’s happening is connected to everything that’s else that’s happening And we really need to look at that in a whole picture because we’re really bucketing like you can’t say. Oh, well You I’m the gastroenterologist and I only work with this system and I’m the neurologist and you know, sometimes it’s the parasite in your gut that’s actually causing the migraines and we just have to eliminate the parasite and your body calms down.

[00:29:11] Meg Mill: So there’s all these things that happen that connect and we just need to look at it as a whole person.

[00:29:17] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. And I mean, take it from my experience. I mean, I, I think I’ve seen every possible specialty. My daughter was in the hospital in August, , for a mysterious virus and we saw seven different specialists.

[00:29:27] Jenny Swisher: And, uh, it was so infuriating because I felt like I was the one communicating to each of them. Like they weren’t communicating with one another. And I’m thinking if this was analogous to the body, right? Like we need to understand that like the brain Connects to the body, to the gut, like the gut connects to everything else.

[00:29:43] Jenny Swisher: But, but in the modern medicine world, everything’s so divided, right? Like I spent years in a CT scan tube looking at only my head. No one’s looking at my endocrine system. It was just like, I try birth control bills while your brain looks fine. Right. Like I’m glad my brain is fine, but I don’t feel fine.

[00:30:00] Meg Mill: Yes.

[00:30:00] Jenny Swisher: Everything, everything is interconnected. So that’s awesome. Okay. Well, this has been amazing. This is gonna be an amazing resource. I get questions on histamine a lot. And to be honest, it’s just been so confusing, even going through it myself, I’m trying to figure things out, but I will say this, that when you are into, like, I know my listeners, they, they hear me teach about like cycle tracking and you know, if If you are in your fertile years and you have a menstrual cycle to track, even just tracking your menstrual cycle, along with any symptoms that Dr.

[00:30:25] Jenny Swisher: Meg has mentioned might help you pick up on some of these clues. A couple of the women that I, that are our friends of mine, they’re in my sync community. They’re using a mirror wand like I am, , they’re tracking saliva patterns, they know if and when they’re ovulating and they’re noticing things like, oh, I get migraines kind of around ovulation or this is, this is when things are happening as far as timing.

[00:30:44] Jenny Swisher: I had COVID again my third time last month, I guess, a month ago. Yeah, and it was funny because my whole family got it. Around the time of my ovulatory window. So my estrogen was going up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, ready to ovulate. And I wasn’t getting any symptoms of COVID. So I actually thought for a hot minute, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like my body, I’m avoiding it.

[00:31:03] Jenny Swisher: Like I must, this is awesome. Like I’m around everybody and I’m not getting it. Well, it turns on my body’s immune system was just really boosted for ovulation. So I kept telling my husband, I’m like, Oh crap, I’m going to get it after everybody else, because I’m going to, after ovulation happens, then I’m going to.

[00:31:18] Jenny Swisher: Sure enough, I track my cycle to a T. So I was like, I ovulated and the very next day I get a fever. How this all works, like the immune system and hormones, like it is so fascinating to me, but, but so cool. So thank you so much for, for giving us your time, for teaching us about histamine. I know you have a histamine summit.

[00:31:37] Jenny Swisher: You’ve got this guide to link up for us. So point us to all of your resources. I will make sure I also link up your podcast, but I would love for you to tell people where they can find you.

[00:31:45] Meg Mill: Yeah, sure. My website is just meg mill. com, which is M E G M I L L. com. Um, and there is a lot of information over on the website.

[00:31:53] Meg Mill: I’m over on Instagram at dr. Meg mill. It’s just Dr. Meg mill. And, um, like Jenny said, I have a podcast a little bit healthier, so I’m always sharing. Health information over there and , would love to connect with you. I do respond. So reach out to me if you have any questions.

[00:32:09] Jenny Swisher: Perfect. Yes. And like I said, I’ve been working with her now for well over a year and I’ve learned so much, so much from her.

[00:32:14] Jenny Swisher: So thank you Dr. Meg for being here. You guys, I will link everything up in the show notes. This is easy as swiping up to click on the links, but until next time we’ll talk soon.

[00:32:23]

[00:32:55] Jenny Swisher: