Medical ID iphone app
The iPhone is a lifeline to many of us, but now it could literally save your life. A free app for iPhone called HEALTH combines the reporting from all your various health tracking apps, but more importantly offers a medical ID feature. Once your medical information is entered it can be accessed without unlocking your phone. […]
Confused by a negative histamine test result?
A negative histamine result doesn’t rule out mast cell disorder or some kind of chronic inflammatory condition. When I arrived to meet with my new doctor at the Virgen del Valle hospital in Toledo, Spain, I was a little surprised by the tests they ordered to diagnose me with mast cell activation. While very thorough […]
Misdiagnosis: antibiotics as anti-inflammatories
For many the diagnosis of histamine intolerance or mast cell activation will come after decades of mis-diagnosis. Some of us will have been told it’s psychosomatic and prescribed antidepressants, benzodiazepines and sleeping pills, while others may have been told their severe gastrointestinal issues are caused by stomach bacteria, or chronic stuffed nose and frequent flu-like […]
Herbs treat SIBO as effectively as antibiotics
Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is a pesky issue which means that there’s abnormal numbers of normal bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. SIBO may cause intestinal symptoms ranging from diarrhoea and weight loss to anaemia and malabsorption. It’s believed to cause/aggravate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) [1] and some, like Chris Kresser, say it’s closely […]
Reacting to everything? This could be why
Why do many of us experience a gradual or suddenly increasing reactions to not just histamine, but foods on pretty much all the lists (salicylates, oxalates, fructose etc). Does going on a strict low histamine diet make you more sensitive to other foods? Are we on the wrong track? Yes and no. One of the concerns […]
Brain fog – the histamine connection and beyond
One of the most terrifying symptoms of histamine/mast cell disorders has to be the dreaded brain fog. In my case this manifested at an early age with an inability to understand or remember what was being said in classrooms. I relied heavily on my notes, when I wasn’t too exhausted or disinterested to write them […]
Antihistamines increase Alzheimers risk
UPDATE: A number of you wrote to me after this was posted asking if quercetin, a natural antihistamine and mast cell stabliser used by myself and others with histamine intolerance and mast cell activation has the same negative effect on acetylcholine. Dr. Theoharides, who has spent decades researching mast cell disorders, creator of Neuroprotek quercetin […]
The histamine-endometriosis infertility link
I’ve been avoiding writing about this for some time. Not because I’m worried about never having children, but because I don’t want to alarm anyone. And that’s still not my intention – please, take this post with a heaping spoon of salt. If you are suffering from unexplained infertility, or repeated miscarriage, you may want […]
The asthma-histamine connection
Just a few days ago I re-shared a post that garnered over 2,000 Facebook likes. I was totally shocked, as was mast cell/histamine researcher Dr. Theoharides, whom I spoke with right after re-posting. “I’m really surprised that people didn’t realise that eczema was related to histamine/mast cells,” he told me in response. And that got […]
Diagnosing histamine intolerance & mast cell activation
I’ve been told, by a number of doctors, that it takes, on average, a decade to diagnose someone with a mast cell disorder. I personally consider histamine intolerance to be a mast cell disorder. It took me almost 30 years and 68 doctors to get to histamine intolerance, and then another three years and two doctors to […]