What is the role of histamines in the body?
What is the link between histamines and unhealthy gut?
What are common signs and symptoms of histamine intolerance?
What are seasonal allergies and histamines have in common?
What is the impact of our diet on histamine intolerance?
What are natural remedies to support our gut health and reduce histamine intolerance as well as what are supplements that can be helpful?
[Video Transcript Below + Supplement Links Discussed In Video]
Today we're going to talk about an unhealthy gut histamines, seasonal allergies and what you need to know.
But first, before we dig into all of those questions, my name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a licensed nutritionist with Flusso Nutrients at Flusso Nutrients. We work hard to educate you on different supplements that can be helpful for different variety of different things such as gut health, and in today's topic, gut health and our histamines.
Now we always advise you to make sure you are taking the right supplements and if you have questions to speak with a supplement literate practitioner to help guide you in the right direction.
So let's dig into our topic today.
And first, let's talk about gut health and our overall wellbeing.
If you're someone who has really struggled with seasonal allergies your whole life, or you seem to be acquiring more as you get older, it's no wonder because oftentimes as we get older, our gut health also decreases for some people.
And little did you know possibly that the role of the gut is connected to our allergies.
If you have an unhealthy gut, you're oftentimes going to have more seasonal allergies and histamines. So if you have allergies and you also struggle with some gut health issues, this video is going to be for you today.
And first, I want to talk about understanding:
The role of histamines in the body
Now, histamines play a vital role in our immune system and how we respond. Histamines are released by specialized cells called Mast cells.
These cells are released when there is a foreign invader and they have to go and attack it.
And in this instance it's and the environment and possibly just these allergies.
Now when these histamines are released or these mast cells are released, what happens is that there's a big reaction and that reaction can feel like inflammation. It feels like excessive mucus, maybe it's watery or itchy eyes, and that is just your body fending off foreign invaders.
Now, in a healthy individual who has a healthy gut, these invaders might come in, but our response to it is much more, much less dramatic, meaning that our bodies can actually release the histamine and then let it go.
But in some individuals who are struggling with more histamine intolerances or allergies, what's happening is that the histamine is being released and the body is not able to excrete it or eliminate it, and it's getting built up in the system which then is expressed as all of these symptoms you feel when your allergies are flaring.
So what is the link between an unhealthy gut and histamine intolerance? (Allergies and Gut Health)
And this is really key to understanding the way that your body is responding to allergies.
What happens is that we have in our gut a microbiome, and that's just a ecosystem of all sorts of different trillions of different flora, bacteria that help to keep us healthy.
Now, when this microbiome is out of balance, then that is where histamine intolerance can occur because your body is unable to process and eliminate the histamine, and as I said earlier, is just kind of building up in the system, creating a lot of symptoms.
Now, symptoms of histamine intolerance are going to be different from person to person, just the way that our body works personally.
Common Symptoms of Histamine Intolerance
And so there are common signs though that are common symptoms of histamine intolerance and one can be headaches and even migraines.
Of course, there's digestive issues like bloating, gas or changes in your bowel movements.
We often see histamine intolerance express itself as skin rashes or hives, and even some of the common symptoms of upper respiratory symptoms like coughing or excess mucus of having to blow your nose, loss of congestion.
But there's also histamine intolerances can look like cardiovascular issues such as lower blood pressure or even irregular heartbeat.
And lastly, a histamine intolerance can also show symptoms of neurologically in the way of anxiety or maybe low mood or having a hard time concentrating.
So you can see that histamine intolerance really can be a variety of different things.
So it's important to understand your symptoms, understand when they're happening and how they're happening to help you understand what you should do next.
So now we know that an unhealthy gut can lead to a histamine intolerance.
How do seasonal allergies relate and connect to histamine intolerance?
And it's just basically what I had said earlier in the way that if you have an unhealthy gut, you'll have more a histamine buildup and therefore more reactive to certain seasonal allergies such as hay fever or molds or dust.
And those reactions build up giving you all of those common symptoms of upper respiratory stuff, maybe even some of the more uncommon ones that you didn't know about until I shared more neurological things or more cardiovascular symptoms.
So it's good to understand how these histamines can build up our allergies or build up our seasonal allergies or allergies in general and then what we can do about them.
So first and foremost, we're going to want to make sure that we are looking at our gut.
If you also have gut symptoms, you may see this connection really clearly, but sometimes we don't see that or maybe we're not feeling that, but our microbiome can still be not as diverse as we need it to be to help keep our allergies at bay.
Now of course, in addition to having a healthy microbiome, we need to look at what the connection is between diet and histamine intolerance.
It's basically the same thing as having an allergy.
A seasonal allergy is if there are certain foods that are higher in histamines.
And if you have a poor gut and you're eating these high histamine foods, you're going to build up a lot more histamine and then of course have symptoms.
Foods High In Histamine
A couple foods that are very naturally higher in histamines is going to be fermented foods or aged foods.
So you can think of things like sauerkraut as a fermented food, yogurt. You can think of aged foods such as aged cheese for an example.
If you eat those and you start having a lot of symptom, and maybe it's not just gut symptoms that you're having, but you feel like you're getting, all of a sudden you have, you're congested.
This is just one indication that maybe you're having a hard time eliminating these histamines.
So of course, if you've started to put a connection together with foods that you're eating and more of these histamine symptoms, what you're going to want to do first is take those foods out.
And in addition to that, you want to make sure that you are eating a variety of healthy proteins, healthy fruits and vegetables as well as healthy fats.
And getting your diet on track is going to be one of the first steps.
And then also we can think about:
Ways to naturally reduce this histamine reactions
And of course, there's going to be things to help or supplements that can help support your microbiome, and that would be number one would be probiotics.
Probiotics can help to diversify your microbiome and giving you more defense against these histamines and these allergies.
When you have a better balanced microbiome, we eliminate the histamine, we have less reaction.
Now, if you are eating foods that seem to create a little bit more stuffy nose or you get more mucus in your throat or you just can tell that something's off, you can always use digestive enzymes and digestive enzymes help to break the foods down in your stomach, and this way you can reduce the amount of histamine that might be more reactive once it gets into your microbiome or your lower intestinal tract.
Now, other ways to help support your gut and in turn support your seasonal allergies or histamine intolerance is going to make sure that you get enough rest.
And I know I talk about this all the time, but people really underestimate the importance of sleep.
And while we all know we need enough sleep, oftentimes we're not getting it.
So if you're really struggling with GI symptoms or maybe a lot of allergies rest to try to get to bed early, getting that eight to maybe even 10 hours of sleep if you can, but eight is going to be great. Another way is to reduce your stress.
Stress on chronic stress on our digestive system really weighs it down, creating an environment that isn't very healthy and can put a lot of strain on our flora, therefore increasing some of that histamine and your seasonal allergy reactions.
Now, in addition to the probiotics and even the digestive enzymes that can help to support the way that you break down your food and the way that your body eliminates histamines, there's also other supplements that can be helpful as well.
And one of 'em is L-glutamine and l-Glutamine is an amino acid that has been researched for years, but is one of the number one ways to improve the integrity of our intestinal tract.
So if you're struggling with a lot of these symptoms, we want to think about just improving that, the integrity of the tissue in your intestinal tract.
So L glutamine would be a great option.
There's also collagen, and collagen is another one that can help support tissues in our body and make them more resistant and also healthier to keeping our gut healthy and keeping our body eliminating these histamines better.
Zinc, zinc also plays a very important role in tissue healing as well as supporting our immune system.
So we want to make sure that along with having a really healthy gut, we have a strong immune system and approximately 80% of our immune system is actually in our digestive system.
So zinc is going to be another great option for just kind of management of a healthy body.
Now, if you've made those dietary changes and you've taken out trigger foods like the fermented foods that might be creating more histamines or age foods and you're really still struggling with symptoms,
It's best to talk with a health practitioner who specializes in gut health that can help kind of guide you along your journey and getting to more of that root cause,
Because sometimes there is other things underlying it in terms of maybe you have a pathogen in your intestinal tract that needs to be, that we need to get rid of, and then the environment becomes better just by doing that.
And then of course, those histamines are eliminated best.
So I hope that this gave you some more information and kind of opened your eyes to what seasonal allergies and histamines having connection to your gut.
So often we don't think about our gut health being bad and all of a sudden we're sneezing more during certain times of the season because of these allergies.
So now you have the connection. Now you have more information.
So start listening to your body and see what it needs. It's always telling us.
So thanks for watching today, and we'll see you next week.
Check out the high-quality supplements we discussed in this video - links below for your convenience!
1) Daily Probiotic: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com/ultrabiotic-daily
2) Digestive Support:Â https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com/digestive-complete
4) ALL PROFESSIONAL QUALITY SUPPLEMENTS: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com & https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/flussonutrients