Hit Histamine Intolerance with These Essential Tips

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September 18, 2015

Do you have a food intolerance? Was it diagnosed by your doctor? A surprising 38% of New Zealanders (6% of Australians) report that they believe they have a food allergy. However doctor-diagnosed allergies is much lower at 1-11% (around 3% of Australians). A surprising fact beginning to emerge is that some of those allergies may be caused by another medical condition called histamine intolerance. Before we learn about histamine intolerance, let’s first meet histamine.

Histamine is a nitrogenous organic compound (a chemical) which occurs naturally in some foods. It’s also present inside your body. It’s one of the chemicals released when you experience an allergic reaction.

Histamine is a useful hormone. It signals that our bodies are having an allergic reaction to something. In this way, our body becomes aware of the problem and does something about it. Unfortunately, histamine also has a negative side.

All of us have an enzyme called diamine oxidase (DAO) which breaks down the histamine we absorb from the food we eat. This is the reason why most of us are unaffected by the physiological effects of histamine. Sadly, some of us may be deficient in this enzyme. If you have insufficient amounts of DAO, you can experience allergy-like symptoms. This condition has become known as histamine intolerance and if you have this, you can’t tolerate the effects of histamine in your body.

What are the signs and symptoms of histamine intolerance?

You can experience allergy-like symptoms:

Headache
Itching
Rash
Vomiting
Diarrhoea
Abdominal pain
Anxiety
Fatigue

Note: Unfortunately diagnosing a food intolerance can be difficult because there are currently no reliable tests. If you go to your doctor and ask for an allergy test, the results will be negative (skin prick test). This is because your reactions to the foods you eat aren’t caused by an allergic immune-response, but because of your body’s inability to tolerate the histamine (hence histamine intolerance).

How do you know if you have histamine intolerance?

The most reliable and convincing way to diagnose histamine intolerance is through an elimination diet. Before you self-diagnose that you have histamine intolerance, consider closely related and common disorders like real food allergies (which show positive results on skin prick tests), such as coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, colitis and others. Seek the help of a doctor to eliminate the possibility of related disorders and arrive at the correct diagnosis.

The first step is to eliminate histamine rich foods from your diet. If your symptoms subside, lessen or disappear, histamine intolerance may well be the root cause of your health troubles. It’s essential to note that after you get well, reintroduction of the foods you suspected should be done to confirm your suspicion.

If you take a look at the WHO International Classification of Diseases-10 manual available online and type in ‘histamine intolerance’, your search result will come back empty. This is because only in recent times has histamine intolerance or HIT gained popularity and acceptance as a diagnosis in the medical community.

What You Can Do if You Have Histamine Intolerance

Avoid or eliminate histamine rich foods from your diet.

Some foods don’t contain high levels of histamine, but instead stimulate mast cells in your body to secrete histamine. This has the same effect in those with histamine intolerance. As much as possible, avoid them too.

Lucky for us, there are some foods which naturally help to lower your histamine levels.

The existence of histamine intolerance is becoming recognised amongst the medical profession but further studies are needed for proper diagnosis. In the meantime, do any of the symptoms mentioned above sound familiar to you yet you have had a negative diagnosis of allergy or intestinal disorders? If YES, then histamine intolerance might just be the culprit in your case. Time to try an elimination diet and slow reintroduction of the problem foods. Combine this with a low histamine diet and hopefully over time your symptoms will improve.