Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Find Your Model Health Project where the official podcast for those looking to optimize their long-term health and weight goals and understand how their body really works. I am your host, I'm Shamey Lenny, I'm a fitness and nutrition expert, certified iridologist, nutritional therapist and biohacker, and I'm very happy to have you back with me for another part of your day. I really do appreciate it. This week we're going back over a topic I covered a while back on the podcast, but before I go on I must remind you that the information in these podcast episodes is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice, please consult your health practitioner before making any lifestyle changes.
So this week we're relooking at histamine, I've been getting a lot of questions about it, a lot of people experiencing symptoms, it's definitely the time of the year where people will tell me they have more seasonal allergies or hay fever, stuff like that. So I want to look at histamine again, it's proposed through the research that 80% of people have histamine issues and potentially up to 90%. So and that's not really surprising when you look at our environment and how we live, we're getting exposed to toxins and other genes and foreign invaders everywhere in the air, in our food, in our water, in things we touch just everywhere. So let's look at histamine.
So histamine is a very important molecule and a lot of people I think have a very negative opinion of histamine just like cortisol, it's kind of when people hear about cortisol they think oh no the stress hormone, everything is bad, they think the same kind of notion has been connected to histamine, but histamine is actually very important. So histamine is an immune signaling protein that causes the body to react whenever it sees some sort of pathogen or foreign invader coming into the body and then it causes what we would perceive as allergies or swelling and it has lots of jobs. Histamine is chemically classified as an amine, which is an organic molecule based on the structure of ammonia. It is produced as part of the immune response in the mass cells and basophils, which are immune cells, and the idea is to cause inflammation and other immunological symptoms to protect you.
So histamine performs several important functions in the bowels. There is a paper that I'll reference later that suggests that histamine problems or intolerance is actually begin in the guts. But anyway, it's important for functions in the bell and it acts as a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger that carries signals from one nerve to another. So histamine also affects estrogen and her period and histamine also regulates stomach acid, stimulates the brain and it plays a key role in ovulation and libido.
We're going to get into a lot of these symptoms and the important factors of histamine as we go on because I really want you to understand what's happening in your body. So the mass cells and the basophils where histamine is produced and secreted, they're mostly found in connective tissue. So histamine is released, which causes vasodilation and causes capillaries to become more permeable to the white blood cells and other immune proteins. So they can protect you.
They'll proceed to whatever the target is and attack the invader or the foreign bodies in the affected tissue or the affected area. So to clarify, histamine is released. And there's a foreign invader or when IgE antibodies bind to the mass cells. This causes flushing, vasodilation, inflammation, puffiness, mucus as your body tries to bind to the pathogen, eczema and even fatigue because histamine helps regulate being awake and sleep.
And histamine does all this to help get immune cells to the area to repair it and bind to any allergens that may be present. So you can see this is a protective mechanism. It's not all bad. So the symptoms I just listed there, they're what we would consider systemic histamine.
So that's the flushing, the runny nose, the mucus, the skin issues, all that. And we also then have external or gut histamine. So if someone has good issues or leaky gut, the histamine in the gut, which is where many researchers believe that histamine originates from, so the name of the paper, the research, is histamine intolerance originates in the gut. So if you have this histamine in the gut and you have good issues or permeable intestines or leaky gut, then the histamine can leak into the bloodstream and cause the systemic issues that I just mentioned.
This is why when some people eat a food, specific food, their skin issues can flare up or they can get a runny nose or sinus issues. And histamine also helps with bowel movements. That technically is flushing whenever you have vomiting or diarrhea, that is flushing. And this is why antihistamines cause constipation.
So I'm sure when people think about what I just said about the skin issues or the sinus issues or the mucus, they immediately think of dairy and we are going to get to that. There is a big histamine proponent to dairy because dairy has these immunological proteins, like they're not our proteins, they're a foreign protein and cow protein specifically found in dairy, those proteins are a lot bigger than human proteins, so when the body sees them, it's going to launch this immune response. So histamine and dairy intolerance, they very much do go hand in hand. So the normal regulation of histamine is by making it in the mass cells and the basal cells and then clearing it.
Like naturally, we want to clear it with the enzymes. One is called HNMT, which is histamine and metholtransferase. And the other one you may have heard is called DAO, which is Dymene oxidase. It really is a fine balance between having histamine coming into the body and going out of the body and there can be a lot of issues with these enzymes, people not producing enough of them, there can be genetic issues.
So the reason that someone might have too much histamine in their body is maybe, like I mentioned, they have issues with these enzymes, they may have muscle activation, chronic muscle activation, maybe due to inflammation, some sort of other pathogen in their body, maybe alcohol and food sensitivities, especially dairy, like I mentioned, they're consuming too much histamine containing foods like wine and sauerkraut and smoked or deli meat. Then they have that intestinal dysbiosis or good issues, like I mentioned, because some species of gut bacteria also manufacture histamine, then they may have excess estrogen because estrogen stimulates the mass cells and also causes more histamine to be produced. And then another reason for not getting the histamine out would be nutrient deficiencies if you're not binding and helping your body detoxify histamine back to be an issue too. Some people will have a genetic variant of the histamine clearing enzymes, H&MT and DAO.
And I have wondered this about myself. One of the symptoms of histamine issues is travel sickness. And I have had the worst travel sickness for as long as I can remember ever since I was a little girl, just so bad. And I've always recognized histamine issues in myself.
From other symptoms, if I go into a bathroom body, I get terrible nausea, I get a headache, I'm sensitive to strong smells. Now I can have red wine looking enough and not get any flushing reaction, but there's different things I've noticed where I get a histamine response. So I have wondered if maybe I do have this genetic variant because I will get like very, very, very bad travel sickness. It'll ruin my day.
I nearly have to drive all the time everywhere. So that's one thing. So that would be issues with histamine clearing enzymes. The leaky good and even SIBO because some of these bacteria, not only do they make histamine, but they also can then influence DAO's activity impairing it to work.
So if you have DAO not working properly, you're not breaking down the histamine and detoxifying it properly. The same goes for estrogen. So estrogen does down regulate DAO as well. So estrogen dominance is a big problem.
I think between or within the female population, I see a lot of different reasons for estrogen excess, but understanding if you have these histamine symptoms can help you connect the dots hopefully with the information here. And then I mentioned estrogen dominance. Part of estrogen dominance is lower progesterone deficiency because progesterone stabilizes mast cells and increases the AO activity. If you have progesterone deficiency, then you're going to have this imbalance of the hormones.
And this is very much going to affect histamine in your body. A lot of women will feel better earlier in the luteal phase when progesterone is high. And notice that they have less histamine issues at that stage because the progesterone is not only stabilizing the mast cells, but progesterone also helps to stabilize the brain as well and keep us calmer. And that can help with inflammation too.
Hormonal birth control as well can influence histamine because obviously it's got the estrogen excess and can a lot of the time further promote progesterone deficiency. So there's a lot of different things. Vitamin B6, I mentioned nutritional deficiency. Vitamin B6 is very important for histamine because vitamin B6 is an essential cofactor of DIO.
So DIO probably the more important enzyme for breaking down histamine, and we'll look at it a bit more in the coming episodes when we kind of look at how histamine affects your period. But DIO is a very important enzyme there. So not having enough B-vitamin specifically B6 in your diet can really influence how severe your histamine symptoms are. And even your PMS and period symptoms, which we will get into, but DIO in a very important enzyme, and I do think back to you because of how we live in our environment nowadays, and obviously the health conditions I see in not just women and people, I think DIO is downregulated in a lot of people for sure.
So what's the solution when we start to have all these issues? Well, we want to obviously improve how DIO is working and make sure that we are addressing any hormone imbalances and supporting detoxification. If you can avoid histamine stimulating foods like alcohol and dairy, red wine probably being the biggest culprit. You may do better with an organic low sulfite red wine or a biodynamic.
I find, dare I say, I do wonderfully on a good organic red wine. And part of that I think is because of the toxic exposure because toxic exposure really is going to stimulate histamine and the immune response. And then dairy, I don't do a lot of dairy, but when I do, it's fine. I don't have an issue per se.
It's good to get a bit of bad, traumatic effect in now. And then, but if you have a real issue with dairy and you know it, then avoid it as much as you can. If you suffer a lot with the skin issues, with the flushing, with the mucus, with the earthic area, with the rashes, all this, you want to try to reduce histamine-containing foods as much as possible. This is the fastest and simplest way to feel better and address these issues.
It can become restrictive and it can be difficult in the long term. But if you're addressing the underlying good issues and hormones and detoxification, like I mentioned, and supporting DAO, you should find that you improve your tolerance for a lot of these foods. As you go on, it really is like I always say supporting the body as a whole body, as one system and that, yeah, you may have these specific issues that we connect to thyroid or histamine or hormones or whatever. But if you don't support the body as one whole system trying to improve everything, all the different aspects of your body and health, then you're really doing yourself a disservice.
So if you're improving everything, you're going to find that you improve your tolerance for these foods a lot better. Now I'm hesitant to go through this list because I know people love a lot of these foods. And I do think that if for some of these foods you can find them organically or wildcard or pasture raised or biodynamic or whatever, you may tolerate them a lot better because although they are histamine-containing foods, they're going to be lower in the other toxins or chemicals or molecules that would cause an immune response, so you're less likely to have the mass cells react if that makes sense. So here we go though.
So red wine and champagne, hard cheese. So these are some of the highest histamine-containing foods. But again, before I go on, try to find them more biodynamic, biodynamic, wildcard. If you find that you don't want to eliminate them, they may be better options and you may not have that immune response.
Avocado, smoked or canned fish, shellfish, soy sauce, jelly meats, yeast, including nutritional yeast, bananas, dried fruits are high in histamine, dried nuts, vinegars, including apple cider vinegar for some people. But, of course, I'm going to add this in. Vinegar can be very important for helping with detoxification and supporting hormone since metabolism. So I just want you to be aware of this.
I know this list is not fun. We've also got sauerkraut, kimchi, salsa in their fish stock. Some people will have issues with bone broth, but honestly, even people that I work with that have histamine issues, I find that when they get really good organic, clean bone broth, they don't really have too many issues. I haven't seen people with issues much.
I think one woman would break out in a rash when she would have bone broth, but that was it. And then chocolate can be very high in histamine, especially depending on the type of chocolate and where you get it. A good organic dark chocolate is going to have less of an immune response than a cheaper, really prepared, shall we say, on clean chocolate. You're going to know your body.
This is just a list. You will know that if you eat this food, if you have issues or not, do you have an immune response? Do you break out in a rash? Do you flush?
Do you get aches and pains? Do you get travel sickness? Blah, blah, blah. So a lot of people will find actually taking some vinegar helps with travel sickness and nausea.
So it's really going to be individual. You will know your body. So if we have to, we're going to reduce the cystamine containing foods. We're going to, of course, support detoxification and good help, which is very important for managing hormones and anyway, because you do have to detoxify hormones.
So this usually means like helping with any kind of dysbiosis, some SIBO that might be there, any sort of leaky gut, any sort of constipation or diarrhea issues. I really like colostrum and zinc for the gut. And even if there's any issues in the stomach like acid reflux or any sort of pains in the stomachs, you want to look at that. supplementing with B6, because like I mentioned it up regulates the DAO enzyme.
So this is one reason why vitamin B6 can be so helpful with PMS. It was on a list I provided, I think it was a year ago actually of a PMS supporting list. B6 is very helpful here. And B6 also boosts the calming neurotransmitter GABA.
GABA, as many of you know, is one of my favorite supplements. But GABA is very important for women. It keeps us calm. It pushes down adrenaline and cortisol.
It makes us a bit more reasonable. I do like it could be complex because I want to make sure you're getting all the bees, but you can also just do B6 if you want. And you can get B6 from meat, chicken, some flour seeds. Red meat is a great source.
Then that's also going to help with the healthy clearance of estrogen and so will improving gut help. Estrogen, we do lose estrogen when we have our period. When we poop, we want to make sure we're pooping regularly, but also when we break down fat too. And if it was a possibility, because I know some of my older listeners, they may be doing some sort of hormone therapy or bioidentical hormones.
And I have a couple of clients using topical progesterone that you can get access to by yourself if you needed to. That can help to up-regulate the DANs as well and can help with adrenaline and cortisol and calming the body and helping with sleep too. So histamine, it can be a big problem, but it's not the end all be all. If you experience any of the symptoms I listed, the eartic area, the eczema, rashes, hives, swelling, puffiness, mucus, sinus issues, what you believe are allergies, flushing after certain foods.
All of these may be histamine and you can start addressing them yourself with this information. So I hope a lot of this made sense. If you have any questions, please do reach out to me if you find me on Facebook, Instagram, or on my website, chamensmodelhealth.com. Also on Facebook earlier today, I posted about, it was an introduction to histamine, but in that there's a many histamine assessment list.
So you can have a look at that. And then there's also, I posted another infograph that had a list of symptoms, including the travel sickness and all that that you can look at. So I really do hope you found this helpful. I will be doing another episode soon on the connection between histamine and the menstrual cycle because I know this is big for women.
And hopefully that will be helpful too. So otherwise, I'm going to let you guys go. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. I think this episode will straighten the point, shorten speech, hopefully helpful.
And I'll chat to you guys real soon. Bye bye.