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Histamine intolerance, genes and diet by Dr Lynch

connie dello buono

Histamine intolerance is becoming more and more prevalent.

I have it.

I also have MTHFR and susceptible to methylation deficiency.

Given the prevalence of the MTHFR polymorphism, it only makes sense that the general population is also very susceptible to histamine intolerance.

Connected.

I wish I knew I had histamine intolerance 30 yrs ago.  Now that I’ve addressed it, so many of my symptoms are gone – or managable.

If there are two things to try in order to reduce histamine intolerance:

  1. Creatine and Phosphatidylcholine
  2. Reducing stress (sleep, mindset, meditation, exercise, hobbies, adaptogens)

The issue is histamine intolerance can rear its ugly head anytime, anywhere.  You have to be ready for it and know how to deal with it.

Identifying if you have histamine intolerance is not easy – and it is COMMONLY missed.

The only true way to know if you have histamine intolerance or not is to go on a low histamine diet for a period of time.

Feel better?

You are then histamine intolerant.

Congratulations.

You’ve joined the elite club of folks who actually understand what is ailing them.

Seriously.

Now – my job is to help you beat it.

Before we do that, let’s get into what histamine intolerance actually is.

Imagine a 5 gallon bucket.

You have a lot of things to put into that 5 gallon bucket: soap, toys, screwdriver, watermelon, your favorite cat who doesn’t sit still, a pound of sand and 2 gallons of water.

Obviously, you’re going to have issues.

You need to make some decisions.

What stays? What goes?

The cat must stay. You’d love the water to stay but your favorite cat told you otherwise. Sand is chosen as is the soap because you know your favorite cat is going to do something to the sand.

The rest stays behind and off you go with your favorite cat, sand and soap in the bucket.

You’re happy and all is good.

Ignore the people on the beach. They’ll get over it.

This is the same thing as histamine intolerance.

You have a bucket of histamine and your body requires histamine in order to function.

You need histamine to do a variety of things – such as:

The ideal amount of histamine allows these things to occur – and occur perfectly.

As histamine levels increase, your tolerance for it goes down.

You start to get too much blood flow, have too much attention, moving bowels too often and your exercise is now affected negatively.

This translates into histamine INtolerance.

Your histamine bucket is overflowing.

You need to get rid of some of it.

How do you do that?

Not easy as there are many factors which increase histamine – and they should all be addressed.

The causative factors for histamine intolerance are many:

There are three main genes which are central to processing histamine:

If any one of these genes are slowed or burdened, then the removal of histamine is slowed – and symptoms of histamine intolerance occur.

How can you see if these histamine-related genes are slowed down due to genetic polymorphisms?

Order a 23andMe genetic test and then run your raw data through StrateGene. I developed StrateGene with a team of researchers. We specifically have one section of the report dedicated to histamine metabolism. Here we show the genes associated with histamine breakdown along with the epigenetic controls and cofactors. Very cool seeing it graphically.

What are symptoms of histamine intolerance?

Many.

I want to share with you one of my favorite research papers of all time – as it is so beautifully done.

Here it is:
Histamine and Histamine Intolerance

But don’t make me jealous – come back and finish this article as that paper – while great – is not nearly as comprehensive as mine – especially in terms of how to deal with histamine intolerance .

Signs and symptoms of histamine intolerance are difficult to identify because many have delayed reactions – we’re talking a few hours after eating possibly.

Common signs and symptoms of histamine intolerance:

This is a slurry of symptoms and issues, isn’t it?

This goes to show you that it is best to think WHY, HOW and MECHANISM of various conditions rather than focusing on the ‘condition’ itself.

Can you imagine a patient walking in with the list above?

They do.

Every day.

They’d have to go to a variety of different doctors:

Then, each doctor is going to prescribe a variety of medications:

All of the above medications are palliative only.

They simply mask the symptoms and not one of them addresses the underlying cause.

In fact, some of them exacerabate the actual main complaints!!

This happens to thousands of patients – daily.

This has to stop.

Let’s look at it from the way doctors should be looking at this.

Instead of asking, “What is your chief complaint?”, it should be:

“Please list ALL of your symptoms from most aggravating to least aggravating.”

This way, the physician can see all of them and see if they are correlated.

Guess what?

They are.

The body is connected.

The brain bone is connected to the heart bone which is connected to the lung bone which is connected to the intestine bone.

Remember that song when you were a kid?!

I think the lyrics were a little different but the idea is the same.

CONNECTED.

Stop DISCONNECTING patients and spreading their organs from one doctor to another.

Instead, understand how their body works as a whole and why these various symptoms and conditions are related!!

If this patient walked into my clinic with all of these symptoms, I’d be evaluating:

In terms of labs, I’d be evaluating (if a first office call and patient could afford them – otherwise would skip labs and wait to do it until I was stuck and patient not improving):

From Michael McEvoy via my Facebook page – I thought this to be an interesting comment and worthy of sharing here:
“Consistently I’ve observed a basophil % of 1 or greater to correspond approximately to a whole blood histamine of 60 or greater. A % basophils of 2 typically features a whole blood histamine greater than 150.”

It needs to be clear – CRYSTAL – that histamine intolerance is COMMON.

Now let me be clear on another point.

Histamine intolerance is ONE issue out of potentially many that are going on. This is why I outlined all the causative factors above. I am NOT saying that all you have to do is address histamine intolerance and that laundry list of symptoms will go away.

What I am saying is that histamine intolerance is a major contributor to a laundry list of symptoms and must be evaluated – in addition to other things.

This is why you need a health professional trained in methylation and nutrigenomics on your team.

I wish I didn’t have to always state the above disclaimer/disclosure but I must. People sometimes think that there is a magic bullet and constantly seek it. There isn’t. It’s complex and a team of health professionals is needed.

Back to addressing histamine intolerance.

A simple trial of what I am going to recommend is highly recommended for those suffering from a chronic long term variety of ailments which may come and go or just stay or get worse.

In order to reduce histamine loads, I typically recommend these things right out of the gate:

Genetics which predispose you to higher histamine intolerance (just a few):

There are common supplement recommendations which I use if the dietary, lifestyle and environmental changes are implemented.

It is NO use to take supplementation if you are going to just keep on living a life which is not conducive to health. A supplement is designed to ENHANCE – not to REPLACE basic lifestyle, dietary and environmental choices.

As one transforms their lifestyle, diet and environment – and mindset – many things resolve on their own – however, not always of course.

Supplementation requires all systems to be supported.

If any one system is unsupported, then symptoms of histamine intolerance may not resolve.

For example, a friend of mine has had allergies for longer than I’ve known him – which is over 20 yrs.

His allergies were improving significantly but the missing piece?

Supporting his adrenals.

After adding this in, despite a high pollen count, allergies were gone.

The more one adjusts and cleans up their diet, lifestyle, environment and mindset, the less supplementation is needed.

Also, at first, more supplementation may be needed to restore missing nutrients, eliminate pathogens, restore beneficial bacteria, stabilize cell membranes, restore gut health and adapt to stress.

Phew – that was me some time ago – and it also may be you.

I still suffer from histamine intolerance – and – always will – but with my changes all around, I have improved SO much.

My genetics predispose me to histamine intolerance – big time.

To give you an idea of my histamine intolerance situation:

Having since cleaned up my lifestyle, diet, environment, gut, mindset and added supplementation, my histamine intolerance is now significantly improved.

It comes back fast, however.

On a flight to London, I wanted to sleep so I decided to drink some red wine.

Within 10 minutes, I had a nose bleed, faster heart rate and sweating.

I wanted to hit myself – but I already looked like someone hit me in the face so I didn’t make it any worse.

That goes to show you how fast it can come back – especially with slowed histamine metabolizing genes. I was also under stress – flying, work stuff and tired. I didn’t take my adrenal support….

Supplements which support methylation, MTHFR, histamine metabolism and histamine regulation: 

Stressed?

As mentioned previously, stress increases the demand of the MTHFR and MAO enzymes – and also methylation in general.

If you stress your methylation, you are on the road to histamine intolerance.

The bucket of histamine may overfill as your body has to deal with other things.

Thus, reducing and balancing stress is an incredibly important thing to do.

Get stress out of your bucket.

(I get into the science, reasons and mechanisms of how stress affects us negatively in a conference held in the UK. This is the best presentation I’ve done to date illustrating the negative effects of stress. You may access the recording here.)

The way to balance stress is multifactoral – as most anything.

Can you cure histamine intolerance?

No.

Can you maintain and support your body’s ability to balance histamine levels?

Absolutely.

This is why this article is so long.

I had to teach you how to balance your histamine levels – by addressing a variety of pathways and mechanisms.

Go out and try some of these lifestyle, dietary and environmental tricks.

You’ll be surprised!

Symptoms which affected you your entire life will start disappearing and your friends will start asking questions.

With a smile, you’ll tell them you’re one skilled MTHF’R who knows the biochemistry of histamine.

Comment below how you support your histamine intolerance – and also how long you suffered with it prior to realizing you had it. How did you get your histamine intolerance diagnosed?

If you haven’t thought of histamine intolerance or didn’t know about it until now – what do you think? Going to try some of the above recommendations? If so – keep us all posted by posting a comment or two!

If you’re a health professional, are you seeing more and more histamine intolerance in your clinic? What are your tricks in resolving it in your patients? Did you find this article useful?

I’m loving this – one puzzle piece at a time. Knocking them out

Go knock out your histamine intolerance!

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https://clubalthea.com/2016/10/14/your-complete-dna-sequence-will-help-shape-the-future-of-medicine/

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