Is Histamine Intolerance Causing Your Digestive Symptoms?
What is Histamine
Histamine is a naturally-occurring compound in your body. It is an essential part of your immune system, and is also a neurotransmitter and helps regulate your digestive system. One of the possible root causes of digestive challenges, such as diarrhea and nausea, along with a host of other symptoms, can be caused by histamine intolerance. In today’s post, I want to explain histamine intolerance, help you determine if histamine intolerance may be part of your symptom picture, and help you understand what to do about it.
Histamine Metabolism
Histamine is naturally produced in your digestive system, in brain synapses, and by immune lymphocytes called basophils as well as MAST cells. There are high concentrations of these types of cells in your tissues that are prone to exposure or injury, especially mucous membranes). When a basophil or MAST cell is exposed to the right type of antigen (allergen), the cell “degranulates” and releases histamine to try to destroy the invader.
Histamine also helps regulate your daily body clock, stomach acid secretion, blood vessel dilation, appetite, body temperature, endocrine balance, and itch perception.
So histamine is an important regulator and player in your body!
Excess histamine is broken down by two primary pathways in your body: with the DAO (Diamine oxidase) enzyme and the HNMT (Histamine n-methyltransferase) enzyme and is supported by the methylation process (see What the Heck is Methylation https://confluencenutrition.comwhat-the-heck-is-methylation/). DAO is responsible for breaking down excess histamine in your digestive tract, while HNMT degrades histamine in the nervous system.
Usually, these enzymes break down excess histamine, and you don’t even notice. But if one or both of these enzymes aren’t working properly, or the intake or creation of histamine overwhelms your ability to clear it, you can start to experience histamine intolerance symptoms.
Histamine Intolerance Symptoms
Excess circulating histamine can cause a wide range of symptoms. To complicate matters, the severity of the symptoms can vary widely, and reactions may be delayed making pinpointing the offender difficult.
The classic signs of histamine intolerance include flushing skin or rashes (including hives), itching, and headache, but may also include itchy throat or eyes, fatigue, anxiety or heart palpitations, eczema or rosacea, nasal congestion, dizziness, shortness of breath, and tinnitus or hearing problems.
As always, these symptoms can also indicate other issues as well, so it’s important to create a holistic picture of your case, and to place the symptoms in context to make sure that we are fully understanding what’s involved in your picture, and to make sure we are focusing on the correct things. (See the blog How to Use These 2 Functional Medicine Tools to Clarify Your Path to Healing.)
Histamine Intolerance Root Causes
There are multiple possible reasons that histamine intolerance could be an issue for you, and creating the appropriate solution requires getting clear on your unique root causes.
The first place to always begin is with the food you are putting in your mouth each day. Foods can contribute to the problem if they are high histamine foods, if they are histamine liberator foods, OR if they impede the function of the DAO enzyme.
Some of the most common histamine problem foods include: fermented foods or beverages (kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, tofu, tempeh, etc.), processed or cured meats (salami, prosciutto, bacon, bologna, ham, luncheon meat, etc.), bone broth, alcohol, vinegars, avocado, tomatoes, and really ripe or overripe fruits.
Another reason for histamine issues can be dysbiosis or gut damage. This impacts your gut’s ability to produce the DAO enzyme that breaks down histamine.
If you also happen to have high amounts of bacteria that produce histamine, you may have histamine flares when you eat foods that encourage these bacteria. Candida toxins may also flare histamine symptoms.
Additionally, if you have a leaky or permeable gut (See video on How to Fix a Leaky Gut below), immune triggers may be sneaking through your gut lining and triggering a histamine response.
Or the problem may be that you are deficient in some of the nutrients that support methylation, which helps break down your histamine. The most important co-factors, which I find many people are deficient in, include vitamin C, vitamins B6, B12, and folate, as well as magnesium.
Finally, some people may have genetics that reduce their efficiency at breaking down their excess histamine. This includes people with certain MTHFR mutations.
How to Tell if Histamine Intolerance is a Problem for You
If you suspect that histamine intolerance may be part of your symptom challenges, here is a step by step way to expand your awareness and build understanding of what your body is doing.
First, download a copy of the FDN Histamine Handout here. Next grab a copy of my Food-Symptom Diary.
With these broad lists of foods high in one particular food element, the goal isn’t to remove ALL the foods. This isn’t possible, and generally isn’t advisable, because we want to keep you eating as wide a variety of foods as possible. The goal is to clearly identify YOUR unique symptoms triggers and to focus your attention there.
Take a look at the Histamine Handout and mark the histamine foods that you regularly eat (daily or very frequently). Using your Food-Symptom Diary to track your food for a few days, taking particular note of the histamine foods, and how your body responds (there are instructions for how to use the Food-Symptom Diary inside it).
Can you see any correlation between when you eat the histamine foods and your symptoms flares? Make sure to note any and all signs or symptoms in the Symptom column of your diary.
If you DO notice a correlation between eating the histamine foods and your symptoms, try reducing or removing that food for a short while, 1-2 weeks. Keep note of your symptoms, and see if they decrease.
After you’ve completed the elimination exercise, eat a trial serving of one of your suspected foods, and keep your eyes on your symptoms for a few days afterwards. Did your symptoms flare up again? If so, that food may need to come out of your diet for a period of time, or you can experiment with dosage or timing to see how you can tolerate it. For example, you may be able to eat tomatoes once a week, but more frequently causes a flare.
Other Steps to Support Histamine Intolerance Symptoms
The food changes are only one part of the process of resolving a histamine imbalance, and there is more you can do to resolve the root causes. Here are some other places you can focus your investigations to get to the bottom of your histamine issue.
Consider gut testing to see if SIBO or other gut infections are a factor, and address what you find. Sometimes these infections can really aggravate a histamine situation, particularly SIBO, candida, or other bacterial overgrowth. (See Gut Testing for IBS and SIBO for more info).
Make sure that you are choosing low histamine probiotics. Not all probiotics are appropriate if you have a histamine excess. Check out this blog for information about probiotics strains that help reduce histamine intolerance.
Add methylation support supplements. Because the methylation process helps break down excess histamine for eliminiation, supporting methylation can help. These nutrients include vitamin C, vitamin B6, B12, methylfolate, and magnesium.
Natural antihistamines can help with symptoms while you address underlying causes. Options include quercetin, vitamin C with bioflavinoids, and DAO enzyme.
Reduce or eliminate alcohol: Alcohol is a histamine double-whammy because it is very high in histamine, but also reduces the effectiveness of your available DAO enzyme.
Should you feel that you’re on the right track, but the details are confusing, or you need some more help getting gut testing, or interpreting your Food-Symptom Diary, please schedule a free 30-minute assessment session with me, to find out how I can help you work through this process.
Or to learn more about how therapeutic diets fit into the big picture of resolving your digestive symptoms, grab your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery here.