Ep 76 - Histamines

[00:00:27] Today we're going to talk about a topic that's discussed a lot in summits and on podcasts and in blogs and on social media. If you are working with people who are suffering with migraines or they get stuffy and red after they eat, they have hives after certain foods. They don't tolerate fermented foods very well.

[00:01:11] Or something else, or a combination of all of the above.Are histamine foods, high histamine foods, inherently bad foods are you and your clients doomed to suffer as a result of genetic predisposition to histamine intolerance? Histamine is a chemical and it's produced from the amino acid, histadine, and it's released by the immune system.

[00:02:05] The causes of histamine intolerance are not enough of the enzyme. That breaks down histamine once it's produced. You'll see as we go through this that there are a lot of places where histamine is very necessary, very needed, and very desirable, but we need to have the ability to break it down once it's produced and it does its job.

[00:02:57] So what causes us to produce more histamine than needed? Well, imbalance in gut microbes. And guess what? We see that all the time, don't we? Also leaky gut and mast cells that degranulate, that break down too easily, that release their histamine. Too quickly and also chronic exposure to allergens or dangerous chemicals.

[00:03:48] That makes sense, doesn't it? And genetic variants can affect the capacity to break down histamine. So when you understand which variants your client has, it can help you to target the right diet and the right supplementation to help them manage their symptoms. There are two ways the body breaks it down, as I said, the diamine oxidase and the HMNT histamine methyltransferase.

[00:04:44] Okay, so when these guys get out of balance and they're not breaking down the histamine, that's when the symptoms occur. DAO is encoded by a gene called AOC1. It's mainly produced in the intestines to counteract histamine from foods, but also histamine produced by the intestinal microbes. Foods that contain a lot of histamine include aged cheeses, aged meats, fermented foods, and a whole lot more.

[00:05:34] We get histamine production. So people with histamine intolerance need to be super careful about eating leftovers. So some of the bacteria and some of these come from the foods and from the fermented foods we eat, from the bacteria, from probiotics even can increase histamine levels in the body. And when we look at people who have histamine intolerance, they generally have elevated levels of zonulin, which is a regulator of the tight junctions between the cells in the intestine, and that will cause some of these histamines, some of these bacteria to get into the bloodstream.

[00:06:45] High levels of these biogenic amines can reduce the ability of DAO to break down histamine, because the DAO works on those in preference to breaking down histamine. So these are things we have to look for as well. DAO degrades the histamine into a chemical called imidazole acetaldehyde, which is then quickly oxidized into imidazole acetic acid.

[00:07:34] Uncontrollable movements of the head in uncontrollable words that come out of the mouth. So what happens if we have too much histamine? We can have problems with the heart. Histamine is essential to the way the heart functions, and too much here can be detrimental. And people with chronic heart failure have higher than average levels of histamine.

[00:08:21] So there's several different types of receptors for histamine. One of them is called the H2 receptor, and that's in the heart. Clinical trials show that if we block the H2 receptors in the heart, then we have cardiac symptoms. We have problems with the way the ventricles and the auricles contract and relax to pump the blood from the heart.

[00:09:10] It does it in various kinds of cells, including mast cells, and we think about mast cells of these cells that contain a lot of histamine, and when we're exposed to something, the body says, uhoh, that's not good. These mast cells burst open and release their histamine. Some of the actions that histamine causes are increased allergy symptoms.

[00:09:57] So if you have folks who have been on antihistamines for many years, it's really helpful if you can learn to get them off of that. We'll talk about some of the ways that you can supplement them and foods that they can eat to try to reduce their histamine load so they can get off those medications, because it builds a dependency and it doesn't really solve the problem.

[00:10:40] So how many of the people you see have migraines that might be histamine induced. Mood? The anxiety, irritability, brain fog. Can be caused by high levels of histamine. In the stomach. It can cause acid reflux. And if you've ever heard of acid blockers, there's H2 blockers. Those are histamine receptors in the gut, in the stomach.

[00:11:33] Sinuses. It can cause drainage and congestion and that runny weepy eyes and nose that we associate with histamine reactions when there's allergy season is happening in the skin, it can cause hives, right? We associate that with the histamine response and people who get hives from certain foods, they reach for the antihistamines to block those and bring them down.

[00:12:14] People with histamine intolerance often have several of these, not necessarily all of the symptoms, but if you're talking to someone and you're hearing a lot of these symptoms, you may want to think about histamine intolerance. because here's the deal, it's an A mimicker. It's a mimic that often gets overlooked for a very long time until someone sees, guess what?

[00:12:58] There's also HMNT, and there's a gene, a genetic SNP. In the HMNT, we'll have the person not producing enough of that enzyme to break down the histamine. Also decreased activity of MTHFR. I mean, know, that's like the popular gene, right? That's one that everybody knows about, but low levels because it affects the levels of folate in the body, can end up causing histamine symptoms.

[00:13:46] That all lies in the types of histamine receptors. There's four types we're going to talk about. There's the H1 receptor, and those are found in smooth muscle, the muscles that are inside the organs, in the viscera, and those can be in the endothelium, and it can be in the lining of the blood vessels. When we activate the H1 receptors, that can cause symptoms like itching and swelling and vasodilation, nose running, allergic reactions, but asthma reactions because of its effect on those linings.

[00:14:58] Of the heart. The H2 receptors can also be found in the mast cells. And the mast cells are they, they degranulate, they explode basically and release their histamine. H3 receptors are in the central and peripheral nervous systems, and they act as feedback loop for histamine levels in the brain.

[00:15:38] Those are the ones found in bone marrow in basophils, which of course are a white blood cell that's involved with allergy reactions and also parasite reactions also in the thymus, which is important for the immune system in the small intestine, the spleen, and in the mast cells. So these are the four types of histamine receptors.

[00:16:23] Coming on. So we mentioned the mast cells and that they burst, they degranulate and release their histamines. So a lot of these are found in the lungs, in the bronchial tree. So that's why we see a lot of allergic lung type reactions. When people have histamine reactions we see as asthmatic type reactions.

[00:16:59] So what are you going to do? How are you going to help them? So let's talk first about some supplements and then we'll talk about some foods. So there's certain nutrients that are important to help modulate and regulate histamine production. Vitamin B6, especially in the form of P5P fer, Pyridoxal 5 phosphate is a co-factor in the reactions that degrade the histamine.

[00:17:45] Quercetin, we see that a lot of quercetin, combined with vitamin C have been shown to inhibit the mast cells from bursting and degranulating. And you know, that's an important piece. And oftentimes when I work with people with histamine reactions to food, I'll have them take 500 milligrams or more of C. 500 milligrams or more of quercetin with every meal about 20 minutes before the meal to offset some of that histamine reaction to break down some of those histamines.

[00:18:41] So you see some of these help in the breakdown, and some of these reduce the release. This is much better than taking an antihistamine, which just blocks the effect, and once you stop taking it, the effect is in action. So you have to keep, keep, keep taking it. There are also some companies that make DAO supplements.

[00:19:28] And that one is a helpful one to be able to take. Here's a fun one. Pea shoots. You can get people to eat pea shoots in their young form when they're nice and short and they come up in the spring, but you can also grow them as sprouts in the house, and they are naturally high in DAO who wouldn't have known, right?

[00:20:09] So that's a good one. So there's, how do you prepare the food? Well, they found that frying, which was not what we really want to do anyway, and grilling, increased the histamine levels in foods. Whereas boiling had little to no influence and sometimes even might have decreased it. So, another reason to get people to stop eating fried foods and start using them more in esteemed fashion leftovers.

[00:20:52] Plenty of lists and we have them on our website for people. You can go search for high histamine foods and when you do, you ask your person to keep a diary of their food. And if you start to see a trend that they eat a lot of high histamine foods, you encourage them to reduce that and replace those high histamine foods with other foods that are, you know, similar structure share, similar nutrient density.

[00:21:40] Well, I recommend that you get people off of alcohol anyway. But this is an extra good reason to get people to stop doing alcohol. Whenever we reduce these, we can get the symptoms low. But sometimes people have to be way more careful than just reducing. Sometimes they have to severely reduce or at best eliminate over time.

[00:22:20] We really do need to support gut health. We need to have a healthy gut. We need to have a healthy microbiome, and we need to support those tight junctions. The leaky gut is an important contributing factor to histamine intolerance, so we really want to help people work on their gut. Once you get them on the low histamine diet and you get them taking some enzymes and foods that help to break down the histamines, then you can heal the leaky gut.

[00:23:11] People are stressed to the max these days and that's contributing to a plethora. Of histamine intolerance. So these are all things like some of the basics that we teach. Some of the basics, the core principles, what I refer to as the freedom pillars. Get them having fun, get them getting enough sleep, get them cleaning up the environment, cleaning up the diet, having a positive outlook, and having mindfulness practice to reduce stress.

[00:24:03] Get them off of the things that damage the gut. You lead them to a healthier, happier life. Sometimes it's harder. Sometimes you need to dig. Sometimes there's just a few little tweaks that you have to make. Even after all this, I highly recommend that you look into this, you study it. Dr. Ben Lynch has on his website Seeking Health website a book.

[00:24:42] He also has a beautiful chart in there that shows all the different interactions on all the systems that are affected, including the reproductive system, which we don't think of as being affected by histamine. So it's important for you to really look at the person as a whole, really get your skills up in terms of functional approaches, because the medication approaches don't really work.

[00:25:29] And until next time, shine on.