Thread by @alexhaagaard

Anyway, I'm just gonna go ahead and thread about my experiences with it, because it's hard to describe accurately in general terms.

But this has been one of the biggest factors that has prevented me from doing physio/strength-building exercises over the years.

https://twitter.com/alexhaagaard/status/1377639886262575109

It resembles Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, which is a common and well-known phenomenon, in that it's highly localized, and involves aching and loss of muscle strength in a particular muscle group, about 24-48 hours after exercising that muscle group.

What I've never been sure about is whether the magnitude of what I experience is "normal."

Because all resources on DOMS are just like "hurting's normal but if it hurts too much you're working too hard and it shouldn't like...immobilize you or anything."

And it does immobilize me. It feels more or less like having a severe intramuscular bruise (but unlike a bruise it usually dissipates after 24-48 hours).

But the question is, am I just super sensitive to this kind of pain, or is this an abnormal level of pain?

I suspect it probably is abnormal, and I suspect it's mast cell related for a few reasons.

It has improved since I've started on daily antihistamines and mast cell stabilizers. Now it only happens when I deliberately exercise a muscle group, rather than just by...carrying a bag of groceries.

It is known that histamine is implicated in *some* way in "normal" DOMS (even though they haven't quite figured out exactly how).

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

I also tend to experience other MCAS flare symptoms when I'm experiencing DOMS (flushing, that thing where your breath feels too hot, sore throat, migraine) though that could just be my mast cells being triggered by the pain, or by other aspects of the physical exertion.

But anyway, for these reasons, I suspect this is probably actually a fairly common MCAS symptom, even though it never gets talked about as such.

And it's incredibly fucking frustrating that there's essentially no research on what causes it or how to treat it because the blanket assumption is just that "if it's that bad, stop overdoing it you weird gym dork"

[medical bs]

And meanwhile as an MCAS patient you get told you're sick because you're just a lazy slob and you'll feel better if you exercise.

And when you're like, "okay but after I exercise it literally feels like I've been severely beaten" they're just like, "lol ok liar"

So like, which the fuck is it??