Dr. Zachary Rubin

Yeah, well, thanks for having this conversation with me because we've been talking on the sidelines for years and really appreciate that you helped promote my book.

I have yours, by the way.

So, you know, I just want to give a little context too, because a lot of people were asking me about people's stories that were being shared online about taking certain medications to treat their PMDD.

And this happened actually for the past couple of years, I saw some of this.

And then I decided to do some more literature review over the past couple of years, see what's out there to help people kind of understand whether or not there's a connection between

allergies, and various women's health issues.

So I'm glad that we're having this conversation.

So we're going to start at the basics here, which is talking about mast cells, histamine, and what's going on there.

So the mast cell is a part of your innate immune response.

It's

kind of like sends off alarm bells if there's a foreign substance.

And they're housed not just on your skin, but in various connective tissues, like in your gut, they're in your brain.

And so they release various chemicals in response to different stimuli like potential infection, or even if you get a cut, any type of physical trauma, they're a part of the wound healing process.

And so histamine is one of the ones that

people are familiar with because one of the most common allergy medications out there are antihistamines.

So people hear of the brand names like Zyrtec, Claritin, Benadryl.

We'll get into those in a minute.

But histamine as a chemical is not just about allergies.

And my book is all about allergies, but histamine as a chemical is much more than that.

It is in your brain.