Mast cells are the body's first responders. In MCAS, they respond too often, too strongly, or to the wrong things. Understanding them is the first step to tracking them.
What mast cells do
Mast cells sit throughout your tissues — skin, gut, airways — ready to release histamine and other mediators when they sense a threat. That response is essential to healthy immunity. In mast cell activation syndrome, that same machinery fires inappropriately, producing symptoms across many systems at once.
The signals we track
Because mast cell activation ripples through the body, its fingerprints show up in measurable physiological signals: shifts in heart rate, skin temperature, and markers associated with inflammation and stress response. The MCT - 1 is designed to read these continuously and in combination.
Why combination matters
No single signal tells the whole story. It's the relationship between them — over hours and days — that lets our AI separate ordinary fluctuation from a genuine activation event. That's the foundation everything else at MastCell Tracker is built on.