Are you experiencing unexplained headaches or a lot of anxiety? Do you experience irregular menstrual cycles? Does your face blush when you drink red wine? Do you get an itchy tongue, throat, or runny nose when you eat bananas, avocados, or eggplants? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then you most likely have a histamine intolerance.
Having a histamine intolerance can be very frustrating, as you may feel like symptoms often come out of nowhere. Fortunately, thanks to functional medicine, many people are able to identify histamine intolerance as the source of their sudden symptoms, and then determine the underlying causes of this condition.
What is histamine
Histamine is a chemical involved in the immune system, proper digestion, and your central nervous system. It works as a neurotransmitter, communicating important messages from your body to your brain. It is also a component of stomach acid, which is what helps you break down food in your stomach.
You may be very familiar with histamine from its relationship to the immune system. If you have suffered from seasonal allergies or food allergies, you may have noticed that antihistamine medications such as Zytrec, Allegra or Benadryl provide quick relief from symptoms.
This is because the role of histamine in the body is to provoke an immediate inflammatory response. It serves as a red flag in your immune system that notifies your body of any potential attackers. It causes blood vessels to swell, or dilate, so your white blood cells can find and attack the infection or problem quickly.
This is part of the body's natural immune response, and enzymes usually break down histamine so it doesn't build up. If for some reason your body can't break it down properly, it starts to build up and you start to develop what we know as histamine intolerance.
In addition to the histamine produced within your body, there are also a wide variety of foods that naturally contain it, cause its release, or block the enzyme that breaks it down, Diamine Oxidase (DAO).
If you have a histamine intolerance, it is advisable to avoid the following foods until you have addressed the underlying cause of the intolerance.
Foods to avoid if you have a histamine intolerance
Although histamine blockers, a class of acid-reducing drugs, seem to help prevent intolerance, they can actually only lower DAO levels in your body.
How to know if you have a histamine intolerance
Elimination / Reestablishment
Remove the high histamine foods listed above for 30 days and then reintroduce them one at a time.
Blood
tests You can have blood tests done in a laboratory to measure histamine levels and DAO levels. A high ratio of histamine to DAO means that you are ingesting too much histamine and that you are not having enough DAO to break it down.
Increase DAO
If blood testing is not available to you, you can simply try a low-histamine diet and add DAO supplements to every meal. If your symptoms resolve, it means you had low DAO levels.
Hair loss whether baldness or noticeably thinning hair can occur for a number of different reasons. Sometimes hair loss is a side effect of a health problem that needs to be addressed and will remedy itself when the health problem is properly treated. When hair loss is due to a condition involving the hair itself, as in the case of alopecia, the hair loss can be permanent. Divine Locks Complex
