Can herbal medicine trigger Mast Cell reactions?

Can herbal medicine trigger Mast Cell reactions?

Dr. Dempsey, have you seen that any of the herbal meds for tick-borne diseases tend to trigger a mast cell reaction, especially cryptolepis, skullcap, biocidin, cinnamon, clove, oregano oil, sida acuta, houttuynia, and knotweed? 

So what I would say is that when there's a trigger from these herbs, it could be one of several different processes. One is an excipient issue. So some of these herbs are found in tinctures. They can be in alcohol. 
So some people react to the alcohol. So it's not the herb, but the alcohol. Sometimes they're found in a glycerite form, but they still are extracted in alcohol. There are several companies that are starting to make capsules with them, with these herbs. 
But the capsules could contain methylcellulose. Part of me just wonders how much of it is the excipients that's causing the reaction. 

Now the second issue is that, sure, it's possible that those individual herbs are themselves causing a mast cell reaction. I just think that's a little bit less common. 
And then the other major issue is this sort of realm of when you kill infections, you can have, depending on the infection, you can have something called a herxheimer or Jarisch-herxheimer reaction or herxing, which is like the verb that we made we made it into. 

So herxheimer reaction is essentially a die-off reaction. So as you use these herbs, and some of them are truly very strongly antimicrobial, they can kill. As they're killing, particularly like an infection like Lyme disease, you can get like tremendous toxin release from these infections and from the cells of those infections and the body that has to deal with those toxins. 
And so that can set off mast cells and set off a cytokine response. And so very often when we're trying to treat, we're also balancing it with how to manage these herxing reactions, herxheimer reactions, detox reactions, die-off reactions, kind of we use those interchangeably. 

And then how to manage the mast cells while you're trying to use those things. There are definitely going to be people who are not going to tolerate herbs. I definitely have patients who have to actually do better with antibiotics or other treatments, and some patients, herbs are going to be the perfect solution for that.