Supporting Histamine Symptoms Through Nervous System Regulation: How To Retrain Your Body To Feel Safe with Michelle Shapiro
What's The Juice
Olivia Amitrano
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2025
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ep 132. Why are chronic symptoms more common among “type A” perfectionists who struggle to slow down? How does the nervous system directly connect to histamine intolerance? We are back with Michelle Shapiro, RD for a deeply moving conversation on what it actually means to “regulate your nervous system” in a world where social media makes it look easy. If you’re dealing with mystery, chronic histamine symptoms – this is the missing piece you need to know in order to begin feeling safe in your body once again. In this part 2 deep dive, Michelle Shapiro explains the crucial connection between anxiety, nervous system dysregulation and chronic immune activation. She shares why the path to healing requires both practical tools to reduce symptoms in the moment AND addressing the emotional patterns that keep our bodies stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Michelle also walks us through how to “separate the symptoms from the response to the symptom,” build nervous system resilience by learning how to say no, owning your “weird,” setting boundaries, and embracing your authentic needs. For anyone feeling trapped in a spiral of unbearable symptoms, this episode provides a road map for creating safety within your body, even when you are at your lowest.
HERE'S THE JUICE:
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Why nervous system activation could be the missing piece to healing histamine issues
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Why chronic illness often appears in "hypervigilant people pleasers"
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The paradox of spiritual healing vs. immediate symptom management
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How trauma and childhood experiences shape our threat response
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The importance of creating physical and emotional safety in order to heal
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Why relationships and community support are crucial for nervous system regulation
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Tools and tips to expand your nervous system capacity while still living your life
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Why symptoms are temporary messengers
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The role of the limbic system in MCAS
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What’s happening on a cellular level during a histamine flare
Watch the full episode on What’s The Juice YouTube Channel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is just one of the sweetest episodes of all time. And it's the episode that I wish I had 10 years ago when I felt really lost and stressed all the time and wondered why I was incredibly calm in the face of huge family crises. And yet when it came to answering a text message, my nervous system seemed to be in functional freeze. |
| 0:23.8 | So today's episode will answer that for you if you also find yourself a type A, very tightly wound, high stress person who can somehow show up in emergencies and show up for everyone else in your life. |
| 0:38.1 | But it feels nearly impossible for you to sit down and simply be with yourself and journal or meditate for five |
| 0:44.6 | minutes because doing the really simple things feel really hard when you are stuck in fight, |
| 0:50.1 | flight, or freeze for most of your lives. So let's get into it. Today's episode, Michelle Shapiro, |
| 0:54.3 | you guys already know. She's one of my favorite guests to have on this podcast. Our episode |
| 0:58.5 | where we talked about histamine issues and how histamine intolerance MCAS is at the root of so |
| 1:05.0 | many of the mystery chronic illness symptoms that people are experiencing today went completely |
| 1:09.7 | viral from season five. And in that episode, |
| 1:11.9 | we mentioned that we were going to do a follow-up, giving you guys solutions and real talk solutions |
| 1:17.1 | about what you need to start doing today in terms of getting to the root of it. And a big part of |
| 1:22.7 | that is building resilience in your nervous system. In that episode, we talked about how it can be so difficult to heal from histamine issues |
| 1:31.1 | because so much of your immune system deciding to throw out a bunch of histamine from your |
| 1:36.8 | mass cells is the fact that our immune systems are intertwined with our nervous systems. |
| 1:41.4 | And even though there are other root causes of histamine intolerance |
| 1:45.2 | and MCAS, like gut inflammation and gut infections or mold, the nervous system is such a big |
| 1:50.9 | piece because as long as our nervous systems are in fight or flight mode all the time, as long |
| 1:56.6 | as our nervous systems are overactivated and don't have the resilience to respond properly |
| 2:02.0 | and then come down in the face of stressors, our immune systems are going to continue to get |
| 2:06.6 | the message from our nervous systems that there is a constant threat and we just got to throw |
| 2:11.5 | out histamine and other inflammatory chemicals all the damn time. So today we are going to dive into |
| 2:17.2 | arguably the most important |
... |
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