As you may have read in my “3 days off diet = 3 weeks recovery“, I ditched the histamine intolerance diet for a few days. It didn’t agree with me, so now I’m back on the horsey. Giddyup I say! I then realised this is the perfect time to share some of my tips and tricks for bringing down my histamine level in a hurry. Now I’m a natural healing kind of gal and as such I don’t rely on herbs or any other such 21^st century malarcky. Ok, so not true, but I’m not a doctor. So we’re down to the bare bones – which is really how I do it most of the time.

THE LOW HISTAMINE DETOX WEEK 1

BLOOD. I NEED BLOOD!

I’ve just had my blood work done. Not only will your test results tell you it’s safe to embark on a high nutrient low histamine diet, checking in with your doc is a must before changing something as crucial as your diet. Lay out your plans for the next few weeks and ask for his blessing. When you bring back your test results to him, he’ll have to eat a number of his words. I usually like to squeeze an “well if you manage to do that through diet I’ll eat your test results.”

It has happened.

Honest.

Not that they actually went through with it, but for them eating their words is just as hard.

DETOX YOUR KITCHEN

I’m blessed to live with a man who is as healthy an eater as I am. More so even. Luckily he loves my tasty low histamine food – when I’m whipping up new recipes for the low histamine recipes books or blog anyways. Otherwise I’ll sometimes just skip real food and brew up whatever’s in the fridge, zap it in the blender and call it soup! Here’s the thing. I wasn’t always able to live with marmalade or gingerbread cookies lurking in the cupboard. The idea of Ben and Jerry’s languishing in the freezer, unattended, forlorn, made it impossible for me to sleep without a midnight skulk into the kitchen for “one last” spoon, till not a scraping was to be had.

At that point I just said “Stop the insanity.” Yes, I watched a lot of 80s informercials and lusted after Susan Powter’s incredible charisma! But that’s what I did. I cleared out EVERYTHING that was on the high histamine lists. Nothing remained but a pack of rye crackers, two measly carrots and a shaker of himalayan sea salt.

 STOP LUSTING

The supermarket was my next challenge. I found myself lingering in the naughty aisles, having nervous breakdowns over whether I should take home a box of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. After all, they were the first brand in over a year (compulsive label reader right here) that didn’t have soy (which I’m allergic to). But I was in TOTAL denial. Really, the minute amount of  soy lecithin in those cookies was the least of my worries. For despite being organic, sugar was the first ingredient on the list (meaning it’s the main ingredient), and white sugar makes me degranulate faster than a bag of demerara being attacked by cannabinoid receptor testing rodents.

The answer was simple. Yes I could have the cookies as long as I was prepared to spend the next few days in a histamine induced coma, hugging the toilet like my long lost war buddy. Eventually I was not ok with that. So now I order my groceries online. I have a regular low histamine shopping list and I run out for fresh foods or get an organic seasonal box delivered right to my door. I do still love going to the supermarket, and occasionally bad stuff still does happen, but now my poison is usually dried mango, olive oil rice crackers, or other such tasty treats. It’s funny how taste buds adapt so quickly…

FIND YOUR CRACK

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Sweet Potato Pizza

I spend a lot (a LOT) of time on the net chatting with people who are in various stages of eliminating high histamine foods. While going low histamine does mean binning a number of high histamine foods, eliminate too many and you could end up worse off in the long run. I know because I spent a number of years doing it myself. Cut cut cut was all I did, but I soon became reactive to the “safe” foods and I just wasn’t getting any better overall.

A little dabbling in supplements showed me they’re (mostly) out. I just don’t tolerate them. So I eat them instead. I’m quite convinced that their magical qualities, in balance with other nutrients, renders them effective, thought I do realise I’d have to wear a trough around my neck to ingest a therapeutic dose (100mg per kilo??) of some herbs.

Why this emphasis on nutrition rather than antihistamines? Well, antihistamines only work on one or two of the four (known) histamine receptors. Is that bad? Depends – do you enjoy eating obsessively till obesity? How about suffering from chronic infections, liver damage, heart failure or antihistamine toxicity? I personally don’t. Also, my experience on them was, ok, I can eat more – well – I don’t have a choice really – I’m desperate to fill every minute of my day stuffing my face (read is your anti-histamine making you fat). Oddly, if you eat enough, you’ll need more antihistamines! It’s a vicious cycle of filling your bucket, then instead of emptying it, fooling your body into thinking it’s ok to fill it even more.

While my On the Go Cookbook is (and will be) my most commercial/crowd pleaser of a book, I managed to sneak in as many natural anti-histamines and anti-inflammatories as I could.

Take the sweet potato “pizza” for example:

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Histamine induces migraines even in healthy subjects

At some point I finally came to the conclusion that my headaches, which made me bang my head against the wall on occasion, had something to do with my diet. I was vindicated by the person who diagnosed me with histamine intolerance in London, and now by the growing number of studies clearly spelling out the allergy/histamine migraine link.

I cannot even begin to properly thank my lucky stars for curing me of this blight. I was about six weeks into the low histamine diet when I was able to trash the 600mg ibuprofen that I had been scarfing daily by the handful for most of my adult life. Not to mention the migraine injections. Youch! You truly haven’t experienced hell till you’ve had a constant migraine for six months. Interestingly, in Spain (and France), it’s commonly acknowledged that migraines are caused by a lack of the histamine-lowering enzyme diamine oxidase (DAO). Seems that the US and UK are way behind the curve on this one.

But histamine can also cause migraine in “healthy” people:

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