A decade ago, it was uncommon for integrative medical practice to identify issues with histamine, the autonomic nervous system, and hypermobility as causing symptoms. Much has changed in the time since.
Histamine excess causes a multiplicity of symptoms – itching, flushing, insomnia, irritability, diarrhea and dysmotility, and others. These symptoms are common and often seen in people with chronic illnesses. They may arise from a propensity for increased release of histamine from mast and other cells that have been sensitized by underlying illness – particularly toxicity, infection, stress, and dysbiosis.
The autonomic nervous system regulates blood pressure, heart rate and output, respiration, and digestion. Dysautonomia includes a constellation of symptoms often referred to as POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), similarly resulting from underlying illness and from physical compromise of the vagal nerve, which is the source of parasympathetic tone in the autonomic system.
Joint mobility is increasingly understood as occurring across a spectrum, with increasing symptoms at the higher end of the range. Hypermobility is a feature of EDS (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome); as such, there is a genetic component to it, but the increasingly prevalence of symptoms relating to hypermobility suggests that there are epigenetic factors that are leading to insufficiency of the stability that collagen and connective tissue are responsible. Such factors may include dietary protein and exercise, toxicity, and infection (Bartonella, often a Lyme coinfection, in particular).
We increasingly see and address these conditions as part of our practice.