Anybody tried a low histamine diet?

[SamanthaCarter]

I’m thinking of trying it for year round rhinitis, asthma, eczema symptoms with no known food allergies except citrus. Zyrtec keeps my life tolerable, but not comfortable. It works the best of the antihistamines I've tried. 

So I’d like to hear some experiences, and maybe a link to a meal plan for three weeks or so, so that I don’t have to research all my food.

I know about food handling. 

[Katy]

I'm just responding because it's worked very well for me.  I'll come back later & fill out details, or you can DM me if I forget.  I'm too sleep deprived to be detailed right now.

[Katy]

I just sent you a private message with details of the diet and a few other changes I've made that I thought were very effective.

[SamanthaCarter]

Thank you! It was very helpful! 

[Amy in NH]

Just coming online to research this as a possible remedy for some horrible asthma symptoms I'm experiencing.  Please share!

[SamanthaCarter]

There doesn’t seem to be much out there in terms of menu plans. I’m thinking maybe an anti-inflammatory plan with some ingredient and methodology swaps for low histamine. There is so much conflicting information on high histamine/low histamine ingredients out there I feel doomed to failure or an inconclusive experiment. 

[Mbelle]

12 hours ago, Amy in NH said:

Just coming online to research this as a possible remedy for some horrible asthma symptoms I'm experiencing.  Please share!

Me too!  I'm miserable.

[Nicholas_mom]

Sometimes I was wondering about doing this diet.  I know the AIP helped me tremendously, just by eliminating dairy and gluten.  But for some reason I sneeze after a meal a couple of times in the row, I keep wondering if it is something I ate.  After AIP, and then adding histamine diet, there won't be much for me to eat.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Nicholas_mom

[kbutton]

I seem to have better luck finding specific foods that "put me over the edge" and removing them, avoiding them, or eating nearly none of them. In my case, just taking antihistamines and "eating normally" meant epi pen worthy reactions, out of blue, and I couldn't be sure what was getting to me. (I don't test as allergic.) I was already gluten free, so a general low histamine diet was rather daunting. I also have some really weird stuff that happens, like having my throat get tingly and feel like it could swell if eat things that are super cold or pretty hot, but it's not consistent. It's also a fine line--if I acclimate bites of things in my mouth first, it seems to not really be a big deal. So weird!

Eliminating a small handful of things seems to have allowed me to eat a broader variety of foods otherwise.

I consider myself allergic to grapefruit, tomatoes, peppers (and all spices made from peppers), and coconut. 

I am extremely wary of gelatin, other citrus (seems to be okay baked into things in tiny quantities, so it may just be oral allergy syndrome but quite bad), and anything MSG or similar. 

Things I eat sparingly--aged stuff, nuts, anything from grapes. I think I might have had a bad reaction to raw apple cider vinegar. Cream cheese and sour cream. 

Monitor supplements too! 

My symptoms are worse in the summer. There have been times during the year I can avoid antihistamines totally, but other times when I take Allegra, a double-dose of Claritin, and then still have to avoid some things that are iffy.

I have some things that consistently make me itch but don't seem to be worse than that, but I avoid them if I'm in a situation where my levels are getting iffy. The itching is also accompanied by parasthesias (feels like I have a bug crawling on and/or biting me but I don't have any bites, red spots, etc. It's REALLY pronounced.). They typically occur on my head, neck, shoulders, and bum, but they can also occur head to toe. I used to have a great deal of itching on my shins (like dry skin), but lotion didn't help much. That went away when I eliminated trigger foods too. Moderate reactions usually involve some dermatographia or persistent redness. Oddly enough, sometimes you can't see it until you look in a mirror at me or take a photo! Then it shows up dramatically. (My DH noticed this independently of me--I thought maybe I was crazy when I'd see it, and he wouldn't until he stood next to me and looked in a mirror.)

[SamanthaCarter]

I tried an elimination diet once when I was about 20. Just plain meat and vegetables with no seasoning but salt for two weeks and then add back one food at a time. Nothing seemed to be a trigger for me. My asthma, eczema, rhinitis didn’t get better or worse. I continue to find it impossible to pinpoint food triggers (other than citrus), which is why the idea of histamine intolerance is intriguing. 

[Katy]

So without including a bunch of personal health information, I ordered every book and read every website I could find on low histamine diets. I've been doing this diet over a year, and it made a HUGE positive difference in my health, not just in subjective things, but in lab tests and ending years of early miscarriages. The different books and websites all contain conflicting information, and unfortunately my favorite site got moved and is now much more commercial (buy all the stuff to get the information!).  This is because just like with allergies, triggers can be individual.  There seem to be a few universal rules to start with though.

The universal ones seem to be foods that are high in histamine without the compounds to help you break down histamine.  This is the delicious and "healthy" foods like aged meats, ALL pork, leftover proteins, anything fermented (yogurt, sauerkraut), all the traditional foods that are supposed to "heal your gut."  So the easiest way to approach this is to 1) batch cook and freeze proteins the SAME day you bring them home, or 2) keep all proteins in the freezer until you cook them, and then freeze leftovers immediately.  I find that poultry is a lower histamine option, primarily because it is usually kept frozen.  I've replaced bacon and sausage with turkey versions, and I find I can even use them in something like bolognese sauce with delicious results (but don't skip the sausage, you need it to replace the flavor!).

Wheat is another food in this category of containing high histamine but no compounds to break it down. I haven't experimented with that one because I have a true wheat allergy.

Another category of foods, like tomatoes, tend to release histamines, but they also have compounds to help break down histamines, so while you might need to be careful of them sometimes, if you're feeling good you might tolerate them fine, and you probably should try to incorporate them back into your diet, not only for variety, but for nutrition.  These are mostly the plant foods on the iffy list.

Then there are the cross-reactions. For me this is bananas.  Most of the year I can have one banana per day and be okay, but during ragweed season I can't tolerate much banana at all without feeling very sick.

As far as condiments, I limit but don't eliminate things like vinegar. Some people are more sensitive to that than others.

[SamanthaCarter]

Here’s the most practical guide I’ve found for free on the internet. https://wendybusse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Practical-Guide-to-the-Low-Histamine-Diet.pdf

[kbutton]

1 hour ago, SamanthaCarter said:

I tried an elimination diet once when I was about 20. Just plain meat and vegetables with no seasoning but salt for two weeks and then add back one food at a time. Nothing seemed to be a trigger for me. My asthma, eczema, rhinitis didn’t get better or worse. I continue to find it impossible to pinpoint food triggers (other than citrus), which is why the idea of histamine intolerance is intriguing. 

I am not advocating an elimination diet. I'm just pointing out that sometimes there is a lynch pin food or set of foods that once eliminated help clarify things--before I got rid of the worst offenders, I was having reactions to everything--even the most benign foods. I didn't do an elimination diet to figure this out. In fact, I had done an elimination diet several years before this, and the only thing I removed after that was gluten. Once someone mentioned it could be histamine tolerance, I just started paying better attention, and looked at combinations of things I'd eaten when I had the worst reactions, and a pattern emerged. Then I could "try" things to confirm it. And a few things were super obvious--at one point, if someone peeled an orange on the same floor of the house as me, I was in misery. 

[Katy]

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

I am not advocating an elimination diet. I'm just pointing out that sometimes there is a lynch pin food or set of foods that once eliminated help clarify things--before I got rid of the worst offenders, I was having reactions to everything--even the most benign foods. I didn't do an elimination diet to figure this out. In fact, I had done an elimination diet several years before this, and the only thing I removed after that was gluten. Once someone mentioned it could be histamine tolerance, I just started paying better attention, and looked at combinations of things I'd eaten when I had the worst reactions, and a pattern emerged. Then I could "try" things to confirm it. And a few things were super obvious--at one point, if someone peeled an orange on the same floor of the house as me, I was in misery. 

 

This made a difference for me too.