Hello Spring!

Spring is here! Woohoo! If you haven’t guessed it by now, Spring is my absolute FAVOURITE time of the year! So many beautiful things happen in spring.  The weather starts to warm up (and being from NQ originally, I much prefer the heat over the cold), we can wear shorts and a singlet again and start restoring the Vitamin D stores in our body.  We also see flowers blooming, more bee’s and butterflies about and baby animals everywhere!  Literally, this morning while I was driving my little one to daycare we had a mumma and dadda duck and about half a dozen babies cross the road in front of us🥰 Spring is a time of new beginnings, of clearing and cleaning out the old and replacing it with new and positive intentions in time for Summer to arrive.

However, there is also more pollen in the air and so we see more Hayfever and sinus issues. Is this something that affects you?  Generally, people with a histamine intolerance in their body will suffer from these types of symptoms. Did you know, people who have a histamine intolerance may also suffer from; headaches, insomnia, anxiety, eczema, flushes, asthma, throat clearing, post nasal drip, racing heart, diarrhoea, stomach pains, bloating and acid reflux, to name a few.

Histamine is actually a compound which is involved in your body’s immune and inflammatory response and also plays an essential role in gut function as a neurotransmitter.  When your immune system is triggered by a possible threat, such as, pollen, dust, food intolerance, etc. histamine is released into your bloodstream, causing blood vessels to dilate and an inflammatory response to occur.  The response of histamine in the body is natural for a healthy immune function, however, if high levels of histamine are continuously built up in your body, this is when we see the above-mentioned symptoms, occurring and a histamine intolerance taking place due to our body being in such an inflammatory state that it is no longer able to breakdown the histamine response.  In order to breakdown histamine our body produces the enzyme DAO (diamine oxidase) which is produced in our intestinal lining.  However, if there in inflammation in the intestinal lining and/or chronic inflammation in the body, we have trouble producing DAO and therefore are unable to clear histamine from our system.  This then causes a domino effect resulting in further histamine-like symptoms to occur in the body. 

So how do we lower our histamine or overcome a histamine intolerance?

First and foremost, we need to heal the gut.  In the words of Hippocrates – Father of Medicine – “All disease begins in the gut”, and this is no different.  Remove the triggers and trigger foods and start a gut healing process with restoring your gut microbiome and in most cases a gut healing powder (which would have to be prescribed by your healthcare professional or Naturopath)

Secondly, we can also adopt (temporarily) a Low Histamine Diet. Some foods contain histamine and some are also blockers for the DAO enzyme, therefore, adopting a low histamine diet while you heal your gut can help in the healing process of reducing the inflammation and histamine in the body.

Next, supplementation of Vitamin C.  Vitamin C is such a beautiful powerful antioxidant with benefits for so many things, including lowering the histamine response in the body.  I usually get my patients to gradually increase their Vitamin C every couple of days or until “bowel tolerance” (so until your poo softens or you get diarrhoea from the Vitamin C).

Finally, get some Vitamin D! Spend 15mins in the Sun every day exposing areas of the skin which are not usually exposed to sunlight and let it soak in and absorb.  Vitamin D is essential for our immune system and in down-regulating inflammation in the body and unfortunately, the majority of Australian’s are Vitamin D deficient!