Essential oils can be used to support different elements of your immune system, including your mast cells, an important inflammatory cell that helps fight infection and repair your body.
Mast cells are a type of white blood cell found in your tissues and organs, particularly at sites where the body interfaces with the environment, such as the skin, lungs, and digestive tract. They also reside in the joints, bone marrow, and central nervous system.
Mast cells perform many essential functions in the body, releasing different chemicals, like histamine, when they sense something harmful to the body, like allergens, pathogens, mold, and other irritants.
While best known for their role in allergies, mast cells are also involved in the formation of new blood cells, wound healing, the development of immune tolerance, maintenance of blood-brain barrier function, defense against pathogens, preventing microbes from entering tissue spaces, and regulating inflammatory responses during injury, infection, or neurologic events.
In response to environmental changes or insults to the body, mast cells release mediator molecules that influence the behavior of other cells and tissues to maintain the health and balance of your body.
For example, mast cells release proteins that are concentrated near blood vessels and in the respiratory tract, where they work together to increase blood flow and help remove bacteria from the bloodstream. These proteins also inhibit inflammation by preventing cytokines. Mast cells also support your body’s immune defense against parasites (such as worms).
When mast cells are unstable or not functioning properly, excessive histamine in the body presents as Mast Cell Activation Disorder (MCAD) or “histamine intolerance.”
Histamine Modulation
Histamine supports your body’s natural response to pathogens, creating inflammatory responses that signal and boost the immune system’s fighting response.
The release of histamine is a normal defense mechanism by your body that causes the contraction of smooth muscle and the dilation of capillaries, allowing white blood cells and other proteins to better target and attack foreign bodies in the affected tissue. However, an exaggerated histamine response can bind to cell receptor sites, resulting in irritation and chronic inflammation.
Histamine levels are designed to be kept in balance by two enzymes that break down excess histamine and prevent allergic reactions. One of these enzymes resides in the lining of our intestines and must be present to maintain balanced histamine levels in the gut. A damaged gut lining compromises the production and secretion of this enzyme, allowing histamine to build up and wreak havoc throughout the body.
The goal is to balance, not block, the histamine response. Ideally, you want to modulate histamine release, not eradicate it. Excess histamine can build up in your body and contribute to numerous overactive histamine responses, such as being allergic to and reacting to everything, including taste, touch, smell, and even things that are not inherently dangerous, such as food or pollen. Symptoms present when too much histamine builds up in your body because of an inability to break it down.
Symptoms of Mast Cell Activation and Histamine Intolerance
When mast cells are out of balance and go unchecked, the chemicals they release can cause systemic damage, including:
- Itchy skin, eyes, ears, and nose
- Surges of anxiety
- Digestive problems
- Nasal congestion
- Red, watery eyes
- Eczema or Hives
- Feelings of panic or extreme anxiety
- Fatigue, irritability, or confusion
- Joint and muscle pain
- Swelling of the soft tissues on the face, mouth, or throat
- Low blood pressure
- Chest pain
- Rapid heart rate
- Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
Mast Cell Activation and Histamine Intolerance
When your immune system becomes hyperactive, mast cells release excess histamine and other chemicals that affect every organ system in the body. Remember that mast cells are found in all human tissues, and mast cell mediator receptors are found on almost every cell in the body, which means that over-activation of mast cells has the potential to affect every organ system.
Mast Cell Activation Disorder presents clinically as a chronic, debilitating, multisystem allergy and inflammatory symptoms. It has been associated with obesity, diabetes, skin conditions, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), depression, and more.
Parasympathetic and Histamine Over-activation
Stress contributes to mast cell activation and histamine release.
The parasympathetic nervous system regulates mast cells and ensures they remain in check.
Your parasympathetic nervous system serves as your anti-inflammatory pathway, facilitated by the vagus nerve, making communication between the parasympathetic nervous system and mast cells crucial in controlling your inflammatory response.
When your sympathetic nervous system is overactive and you are stuck in an ongoing state of emergency, your mast cells will feel like they are under attack as well. They will release histamine as a response. This ongoing stress-related release of histamine can cause histamine intolerance and ongoing symptoms.
Activating your parasympathetic nervous system can help reduce stress, calm mast cell activation and histamine release, decrease inflammation, and bring your system back into balance.
Research on “Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve modulates the histamine content of mast cells in the rat jejunal mucosa” demonstrates that vagus nerve stimulation may help to reduce stress, decrease mast cell activation, lower histamine release, and improve histamine-related symptoms. The research found that “mast cells are subject to nervous control.”
Furthermore, stimulating the vagus nerve may help regulate mast cells in the gut. A 2012 study published in the American Journal of Physiology found that certain fats may cause the nutritional activation of the vagus nerve, which may help to regulate mast cell activation and reduce your histamine-related gut problems.
Additional research published in Neurology found that vagus nerve stimulation may help reduce histamine-induced symptoms, such as itching.
Essential Oils for Histamine Modulation
Many essential oils can help alleviate inflammation and act as natural antihistamines to stabilize mast cells and relieve symptoms associated with heightened histamine levels, including the oils in my Histamine Balance™ blend.
These essential oils are often derived from herbs that possess powerful antihistamine properties, and the essential oils concentrated from these herbs often contain those same beneficial properties.
One of the key essential oils in our Histamine Balance™ comes from the herb rosemary. Rosemary has detoxifying properties and can gently assist the liver in releasing toxicity that may be the underlying cause of histamine over-reactions or mast cell activation.
Because essential oils are gentle natural solutions, they can provide you with gentle relief, without throwing your body’s natural system off balance.
Essential oils with antihistamine properties are an ideal natural approach to mitigating the inflammatory response triggered by histamine, as they can naturally stabilize mast cells and easily permeate our nasal cavities to loosen mucus and promote drainage.
Histamine Balance™
Histamine Balance™ blend contains a proprietary formulation of organic and/or wild-crafted essential oils of Blue Tansy, Roman Chamomile, Lavender, Manuka, and Spruce. However, we find them to be non-triggering in most individuals due to the many other ingredients, including Rosemary, Peppermint, Ravensara, and Vetiver, that work together to prevent histamine release. Blue Tansy, in particular, is known for its ability to neutralize histamine and help control allergic reactions.
The essential oils in the Histamine Balance blend are uniquely suited to modulate excess histamine excretion, balancing histamine levels and helping to reset the immune response and reduce allergic reactions.
Parasympathetic®
The parasympathetic nervous system regulates mast cells and ensures they remain in check.
Activating your parasympathetic nervous system can help reduce stress, calm mast cell activation and histamine release, decrease inflammation, and bring your system back into balance.
Our Parasympathetic® blend contains clove and lime essential oils. I am aware that clove essential oil has been vilified as a “mast cell destabilizer” and “histamine liberator,” meaning it can liberate histamine and cause mast cell reactions. This finding conflicts not only with my own experience and observation, but also with that of many of my clients, so I decided to dig deeper.
While I could not find any research to support this, I did find a Histamine Dr. article on “7 High Histamine Spices to Avoid” which notes that certain high-histamine spices, including clove, should be avoided.
The article extolled many powerful anti-inflammatory benefits of clove, noting that “Cloves contain a powerful compound called eugenol, an antioxidant that may improve fatty liver and abnormal blood lipids.”(Study) along with “modest quantities of the flavonoid quercetin, which has anti-inflammatory properties.” (Study)
The concern over the clove herb was related to “compounds called benzoates that trigger histamine release” and “Erucic acid, a fatty acid, is another compound found in clove oil that also causes inflammation, which is why people with histamine intolerance should avoid cloves and their oil.”
I was curious, so I looked up the chemical composition of clove oil on PubMed.
It does contain 0.01% of both Benzyl benzoate and Ethyl benzoate, compared to 88.8% Eugenol, and Erucic acid was not mentioned as a constituent of clove oil.
I double-checked my work with the study ‘Chemical composition and antioxidant properties of clove leaf essential oil’ – PubMed, which also failed to mention Erucic acid. Therefore, I cannot find research to support the concern that clove essential oil is contraindicated for histamine. However, I welcome any additional research you might find and highly recommend Parasympathetic as a powerful tool for vagus nerve stimulation.
Discover more about the additional benefits of cloves and lime here.
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References:
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8742478/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23812038/#
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12105316/
- https://www.histaminedoctor.com/7-high-histamine-spices/
- https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jmf.2013.0033
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25182278/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8588428/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16910723/
