Personal Experience with MCAS Histamine Intolerance and Zyrtec Withdraw

Chelsea Stolte
2 days ago
10 min read

Here we are approaching mid June of 2026. Feels like half the year has already passed by while I was out trying to figure out multiple ailments I acquired over the first few months of 2026. After time off work, drastic diet changes, and some good news I suppose. I would like to share my experience from August 2025 to now. This information might help someone else who has gone through the same struggles as myself. Maybe even save yourself around $8-$10,000.00 In tests and doctor visits as well.

In August of 2025 it was determined that I was having yet another gallbladder attack and this time it was interfering with work and going on for weeks. If anyone has had a gallbladder attack, you know the severity of that pain and discomfort wrapping around your back and even sharp pains into your shoulder or other places in your body. We decided to have a robot assisted removal. The recovery was a little rough. What came months later is what I find to be most important of all, the diet changes and histamine intolerance.

A little backstory, I have been taking Zyrtec on and off for years for dizziness (not allergies) and after gallbladder removal I found I was taking Zyrtec more often but did not realize it was a problem until around January when I started getting some itching and random red welts across my stomach and legs after a few days of not taking it. So this tragic cycle kept me coming back for more Zyrtec and ended up withdrawing for a few days then going back on it. OK, so the original dizziness got worse, my ears started hurting, brain fog, itchiness, headaches… all things that started occurring after taking more Zyrtec in a few months than I had in the past decade. Why is this important? Well, sure they put a warning on Zyrtec but it only says the withdraw is hives. It is not just hives. Your body has to adjust back to breaking down histamines on it’s own. This doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it ONLY cause hives. The hives happen because your excess histamine is not being broken down and it literally has no where else to go.

So, back to my gallbladder removal and the steady increase in Zyrtec. Why is this an interesting combo? Well, your gallbladder is an important part of your body. Whenever you remove any organ it takes time for your body to adjust (by itself or with medication). I was told oh, most people go right back to their normal diet any lifestyle like nothing happened. Well, maybe this is the case for some but not for me. At first I was able to eat all the foods I normally ate, then around Christmas time I found myself having a panic attack after eating cooked down fresh cranberries – weird? I thought nothing of it at the time. There was one other food that I cannot remember but it did the same thing to me I found myself darting to the bath to calm down an anxiety attack. After the anxiety attack I found myself with stomach cramps and diahhrea. This happened a lot the next few months. The list started growing after this, I’d eat lunch (usually an avocado and some tomato on toast or some light protein around noon) then around 2pm I’d end up with a headache and dizziness I could not explain. Next, I would end up with anxiety and in the bathroom. I lost a lot of weight during this period of time 110 down to 102-4lbs. This is where I started having to go home around 2pm because I thought I was literally going to fall from being off-balance. This progressed until it finally started happening in the morning, afternoon and evening. All with severe anxiety, multiple baths and no idea what was happening. Insert my first couple weeks of short term disability here. I went to the doctor assuming hey, maybe this is some weird Zyrtec withdraw, so low and behold this was one of the culprits but it still was not the answer. My headaches started to subside but my whole body was covered in hives for weeks. Itchy, sleepless nights, aloe gel, lotions, hot baths trying to get through the Zyrtec withdraw. I would have circular symptoms – I would eat, get dizzy, have to lay down, and then have a hive attack. I have never had a single “hive” in my life. I am 33 years old. This was completely new to me. So, the doctor added Zyrtec to my list of no-go medications. How about that, an allergy to antihistamines. All of them. Watch what your medications have in them because even Pepcid has it in there. They try to use Pepcid to treat histamine intolerance – don’t do this because you are adding the possibility of another withdraw. If your symptoms are not too severe you can go without. I have struggled but It is not worth starting over with a withdraw.

So, we got the Zyrtec withdraw under control. I still have hives 3 months later. Less common, smaller spots and usually only in the evening. Let’s put the hives on the back burner and talk about the weird dizziness and headaches after eating. I did a ton of research on histamine intolerance while I was withdrawing from Zrytec and realized I had been eating high histamine foods the last few months for most of my meals… pre-packaged canned goods, aged cheeses, tomatoes, avocadoes, 0% non alcoholic beers, all of which are high histamine. OK so why am I telling you this… well, I thought I would give a low histamine diet a try to help relieve my body of excess histamine while withdrawing from the Zyrtec for those few weeks. WOW is the list of food you can eat small. You pretty much have quinoa, rice, some grain, some beans, dark leafy greens, apples, blueberries, coconut milk and fresh meat protein to choose from. I don’t think I ate very much for about a month there late March to mid-April.. but I stuck to the diet and had nothing processed. Did the diet help? Maybe… things seemingly got better as each week went on. While doing this I continued to research more and more about histamines and their relationship with hormones and other parts of my system that it would affect. Guess what, histamine affects all your systems! If your histamines aren’t working properly you can’t clear your female hormones.. like estrogen. So when your estrogen is high you have more histamine reactions, why? The estrogen is slowing down these enzymes in your stomach to digest food called DAO enzymes. So, at this point you are not properly digesting food. What else? Well, perimenopause and if your menstrual cycles have been a mess. What is even worse is when you have excess histamine you are producing excess estrogen in your ovaries and it is a double whammy. This increases your period pain, bloating and anxiety. Lucky day to be a woman, right? So, your birth control pill that is an estrogen pill can cause you even more problems. Progesterone on the other hand will help offset or stabilize your mast cells and produce DAO enzyme. When one system is out of whack, all the histamines are firing on overload. Are we connecting the dots here?

So what are some of the main causes of histamine intolerance?

The main cause I found for histamine intolerance is poor gut health. Again, piecing together my own experience. My gut was never in good shape, otherwise I would still have my gallbladder. Doctors told me to go ahead and eat normally and make no dietary changes. If I would have been directed to some better gut health to support the lack of a gallbladder and my other stomach ailments I may have been able to avoid losing 3 months of my life. Advocate for yourself. That is what you have to do now a days.

What are some of the terms I came across during my research phase? The most important one is what I will cover since it catches all of my personal symptoms.

MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome)

o Can affect two or more body systems

o Can be induced my mold toxicity, autoimmune diseases, or even long COVID

o Anaphylaxis

o Body mistakenly releases histamine to random environmental allergens or foods.

§ You are not actually allergic, you are having a histamine reaction

Examples of reactions: Hives, Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bloating, stomach pain, drop in blood pressure, dizziness, palpitations, shortness of breath or wheezing, headaches and brain fog.

Mastocytosis

o Hereditary Markers – Rare Disorder buildup of Mast Cells

o Similar to MCAS but more severe and can affect bone marrow and organs, and cause more aggressive anaphylaxis.

Starting to sound familiar with my seeming withdraw from Zyrtec symptoms? Or was Zyrtec covering up a bigger problem after my gallbladder was removed? Was the gallbladder also covering up a larger problem? BINGO!

After the 3 weeks of withdraw and late nights of itching, meal planning around the whole like 5 foods I can eat, I decided to see some new specialists and get some blood work done.

Specialists / Tests I saw for supposed histamine intolerance and MCAS:

1. Primary Physician

2. Heart doctor / 48 hour monitor

3. Allergist

4. Allergy Testing Facility

5. ENT (Ear nose and throat)

6. CT SCAN found nothing

7. MRI of brain found nothing

8. SCAN of ovaries and internal organs

9. Neurologist? See them in 2027.

10. Functional Specialist – These people acknowledged MCAS but very expensive testing and will take months of dietary changes (you can do these at home)

Conclusion? I am perfectly healthy and all of my blood panels including tryptase (which is completely useless unless you are having a severe flare at the time of the blood draw), were normal.

At this point my frustration is high and I have not been able to eat good food in months. So, what did I do? I kept researching. I made myself meal plans, I made charts with what I ate at every time of the day to see if I could pinpoint exactly what was causing what symptoms. That lasted about 3 days before I was crying from stress and unknown ailments and causes. My body was literally attacking itself whenever I ate or digested anything. It was a complete nightmare.

The silver lining. I wouldn’t say I am in remission, but I have been slowly re-adding foods such as sourdough bagels and cream cheese, milk, some nuts, etc and have been okay for the most part. I would like to note I have not found any treatment to “cure” these problems but I have found a damper, I found out I was pregnant here about a week ago and it is possible my symptoms have subsided a bit because as your placenta grows there is more DAO enzyme in your body .. about 10,000 times more to be precise to help breakdown histamines.

The downside: histamine intolerance has popped up in studies in relation to miscarriages and pre-eclampsia. I had previously had this with my first child. Maybe another BINGO right here, something that has been missed my whole life? MCAS or Histamine intolerance that is finally showing its ugly face with obvious symptoms? Was the Zyrtec covering up my histamine intolerance all these years? Is my b12 deficiency and pernicious anemia also hooked to this? My lack of intrinsic factor protein in my stomach? How about my gallbladder acting up all these years? I’ve had low stomach acid as PPIs always made me worse as well. Inflammation in my stomach from an upper endoscopy. Pale stools and pains in my liver, even fatty liver that resolved itself a few years back. Was all of this my body crying for help with a histamine intolerance?

If so. Why are we not seeing more discussions about gut health? There are plenty of “protocols” out there that you can try through functional medicine or your friend named “insert here” who brings you trial supplements. That is not the point though. Why are we not nipping these symptoms in the butt before or even right as they are happening? Why are we giving PPIs, why are we giving acid reflux meds? what are we giving prescriptions for anxiety when the problem is clearly the body crying for help? These are all band aids. Not cures. What the heck are we feeding our children?

If you lay out the late 1990s to early 2000s food pyramid you see all the wrong things at the top and all the right things at the bottom. Why is this? These foods are now known for causing problems rather than help your children or family grow. Your brain and gut are connected. It is very important that you treat them both with respect as you only get one of each. Now, this pyramid has always been for profit, not your health. It was strategically made to buy the aisle items from large food manufacturers before hitting the fresh meat and produce. Aisle items are literally preservatives and leftover subsidized garbage put in a box to fill your stomach with little to no nutrients. How about to top it all off, we are spraying pesticides and weird things all over our fresh produce that can also cause histamine or actual allergic reactions in some people? So, what is safe anymore?

Instead of a rant, I just want to raise awareness that what we should be eating is very little of the bottom portion of this pyramid and we should be sticking to meat/ veg/ and some fruit. If you look at a low histamine diet, this is pretty much what you are left with. Shop as local as you can. Know where your meat and produce comes from. Follow local farmers markets, preserve your own foods with very little to no preservatives. Replace medications with real foods and herbal remedies. You can only advocate for yourself because the system is not your friend, it never was.

I am attaching the files and meal plans, supplements I bought (but have not used) that got me through the peak of healing my gut and what I started introducing again as time went on. Please don’t use this over medical advice as your situation may be different than mine. I had a mild to almost severe case of histamine intolerance and anaphylaxis, but you should 100% be in the hospital if you feel your throat closing or any breathing or heart problems.

Join and give me your story. It is important to hear others and validate growing concerns with our food supply and medical care.

One Week Meal Plan: