@Never Give Up , if the reason why you are marking this one off the list is because you have very mild to no skin reactions / lesions; no anaphylaxis or anaphylactoid reactions that nearly require the use of an Epipen or hospitalization; no foods intolerance or allergy; no environmental allergy or even MCS...
Well, this might be a mistake. MCAS can be very much systemic and can affect virtually every organ, so the clinical manifestations are very diverse.
Here's a list I've personally found very useful. Please note that your clinical profile does not need to fit all those signs and symptoms for you to have it.
I have tons of real food and environmental allergies that raise my IgE antibody levels, true. But, from what I've read and/or have been told, those are often common with MCAS, however they aren't what MCAS is!
People with MCAS get triggered by things that aren't allergens. Physical activity, changes in temperature, emotions, sunlight, etc.
Some will also get triggered by foods that they aren't allergic to (especially foods that tend to make the body release more histamine), but that is not all people with MCAS that will react this way, either.
The manifestations of mast cell degranulation can simply be brain fog, nausea, fatigue, and general malaise...
It doesn't have to be itching, skin redness, difficulty breathing, throat swelling, and so forth!
This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to diagnose, because the patient's manifestations caused by excessive histamine (and other mast cell mediators) release could have nothing to do with what you would typically expect from someone having an "allergic reaction".
Most of the time, I just feel as though I was drunk or poisoned, that's pretty much all of it! No swelling, itching, redness, or anything like that.
I've never had to go to the hospital following a reaction, either.
And the only time I've ever had to use anti-histamines because I was having trouble swallowing and breathing (took a high dose of Reactine (Cetirizine) in an effort to avoid using my Epipen, and thankfully it worked!), was when I accidentally ate a citrus pie that had eggs in them that hadn't been perfectly cooked!
So that was an actual allergic reaction to eggs, not my MCAS acting up!
And my skin lesions are so light / mild that most often they go unnoticed.
I have something that looks like livedo reticularis on my legs, but it's only present from time to time.
I have red plaques on my chest when I take a bath, but about 1 hour after that bath they are gone.
I have some redness on my cheeks (that has improved since I get Xolair shots) that a dermatologist identified as "rosacea", but I don't "flush" (i.e. get red cheeks) when my symptoms get triggered.
Although I do feel as if I was running a fever and the skin of my face feels really hot to the touch when I feel especially tired. No change in color or external appearance, though.
I have dermographism, but I wasn't even aware of it until my immunologist scratched me to see how I react! Lol!
I get a bit of eczema and urticaria on my hands (and at some point in my armpits), but that's only from time to time.
I used to have some striae with a lot of itchiness on my legs, but that didn't happened to me in 6 years!
So really, taken alone, all those skins reactions tend to be stuff that happen to healthy people, too. When you combine them, yeah, it's a bit weird all of this has happened to the same person in the course of 7 years. But otherwise, it's not that spectacular of especially significant.
MCAS is a little like ME/CFS in regards to the fact that it has many, many faces... Don't rule it out too quickly if you do recognize yourself in many of the signs and symptoms found on the list I showed you, and if your reactions that mimic allergies are very light or mild.
