Episode 251: Histamine, “Reacting to Everything,” and the Overprotective Immune System

0:00Welcome to the Natural Super Kids Podcast where you will discover practical strategies to inspire you to boost the health and nutrition of your kids. I'm Jessica Donovan, a qualified naturopath specialising in kids health and I want to make it as easy as possible for you to raise healthy and happy kids. Let's get into it. Hello, I hope you are having a lovely day and it is a pleasure to be in your ears, talking about histamine today. Now, most people would have heard the term histamine. Maybe has taken some antihistamines. We know that histamine is involved in allergic processes. Most of us, we know antihistamines can reduce allergy symptoms but I want to take a deeper look into histamine and particularly histamine intolerance or problems with histamine.

1:12This is an issue that is increasingly being recognised by medical professionals but often medical professionals will not recognise histamine intolerance or histamine issues but the awareness is growing and it is not necessarily a formal disease or even a formal diagnosis. It is more of a functional non-allergic sensitivity so similar to what we talked about last week in terms of FODMAP intolerance and fructose malabsorption. It is not directly an allergy but it can definitely sort of definitely. Let's be more definitive here can cause a lot of those allergy symptoms. I have a bit of a personal story when it comes to histamine issues and this only came last year and it was an awful experience but I am now grateful for it because I can now have a little bit of a sense as to how it feels in the body when histamine becomes an issue.

2:23And this particular challenge that I had or issue that I had was when we were in Fiji so we were out on an island in Fiji in a resort like miles from anywhere and I ate this delicious tuna salad fresh tuna salad for lunch and very soon after pretty much immediately after I finished this delicious tuna salad it did not taste like there was anything wrong with it at all. I started feeling my face become hot and hotter and hotter and hotter and the kids are saying to me mum why are you so red and I'm like I don't know but I'm not feeling great. So a few days prior my husband had had a similar reaction but we'd sort of put it down to maybe heat stroke but he'd eaten this tuna salad as well. And so immediately I get on my phone and I Google red face after eating tuna and pops up with scumbroid poisoning which is also known as histamine fish poisoning so it's you know I guess an illness that's caused by eating fish that has not been refrigerated properly.

3:44Commonly you know with tuna, mackerel, Maui Maui so how do you say that fish sardines and so I'm reading this explanation symptoms appear rapidly facial flushing, sweating, headache, dizziness, diarrhea, peppery or metallic taste, heart palpitations and I am panicking because my heart pumping yeah my face is like it honestly felt like my face could burst it was so hot it was so red like when I looked in the mirror and I started just feeling off dizzy and we were due to catch the ferry back to the mainland you know in the next hour or so. And so it was a very it was a nightmare but at least I knew what it was and what what I knew from reading this is that like it usually resolves within a few hours up to 24 hours and anti histamines can be used as a treatment so my husband ran off to the medical.

4:54Like room and like said my you know my wife's having a reaction we need some anti histamines got some anti histamines and it took a while but that definitely settled things down now because we would it was a very eventful day so our ferry because the seas were really rough this day of course and the so the ferry couldn't come in where it normally would come in. So you had to go around the other side of the island where the seas were calmer so the resort I like anyone who's due to get on the boat needs to walk across to the other side of the island and we've done this a few days prior to go visit the village because the other side of the the island was where the village was and so I knew that it wasn't just a little quick walk it was uphill and then downhill you know it was hot humid I was feeling terrible and I'm like oh my god I can't. I can't walk over there like I'm feeling awful so my husband organized me to get in a boat a little tiny boat with a couple of the villagers to take me around to meet the ferry I felt like I was going off to see none of my family were allowed to go on this boat because there was already a couple of villages going on and the seas were rough so you can imagine me with this bright red face feeling like I'm about to die because my part was pumping so much.

6:20Getting sent out into the rough seas with some local villages they didn't speak English so they were laughing and joking and I had no idea what they were saying they're probably like I don't know making fun of the white lady in the boat while my family sort of walked over anyway it all worked out okay and when we got onto the big ferry I started feeling better oh that's what I also had I had hives I've never had hives before I'm not an allergic type person and so this is all to say that after this I'm like okay so this is what a histamine reaction feels like that was a one off obviously you know incident and I don't have you know ongoing histamine issues but a lot of kids do and we're seeing this more and more and more so kids and adults with histamine issues will often have a range of symptoms so they'll often have gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea pain bloating as well as skin symptoms

7:26exma is commonly correlated with histamine intolerance or histamine issues but also rashes hives really itchy skin and then there are those familiar in my story symptoms as well the rapid or a regular heart beat headaches migraines dizziness and often respiratory symptoms as well like hay fever type symptoms nasal congestion sneezing running nose itchy eyes so these are the this is the sort of typical presentation of kids and adults with histamine issues you don't have to have all of them but when we see kids that are struggling with for example exma and digestive issues and respiratory issues we are you know putting a little it's planting a seed in our minds as practitioners that this could be a histamine issue so what do I mean by a histamine issue it's really when the histamine load in the body exceeds the bodies ability to break it down so some people just can't break down histamine that well

8:37and the main I guess cause of histamine issues is a deficiency in a particular enzyme called DAO so the DAO enzyme breaks down histamine so if we don't have enough of this enzyme it will mean that we have an overload of histamine in the body that will cause the symptoms now load DAO enzyme can be caused by genetic factors it can be caused by medications and it can be caused by gut imbalances as well to name a few of those those causes and so really you know we're looking at yes we want to reduce the histamine load in the body but we also want to try and encourage and increase the amount of this enzyme that is being produced and that can come down to you know looking at gut function and microbiome contributions to you know overall gut function as well so it is a little complex

9:44but what we do to start is we you know want to reduce that histamine load and I also want to be clear that histamine is really important you know histamine is not the enemy we don't want to get rid of all histamine you know histamine plays an important role in the immune system in digestion in neuro transmission in wound healing so it's not histamine that's the issue it's the ability of the body to break down that histamine that can be an issue in people with histamine issues or histamine in tolerances and to make this issue even more complex there are certain foods that are high in histamine that can really trigger symptoms as well so things like fermented foods like sauerkraut, comchi, sorry kimchi, yogurt, kefir, kombucha they're high histamine foods so a lot of people will increase fermented foods trying to improve things like exma and allergies but they'll get worse

10:49so if your child is getting worse with fermented foods that is a signal that histamine could be an issue high histamine foods also include things like aged or processed meats like bacon, sausage, smoked fish, salami, alcohol which obviously isn't relevant for kids but you know if you're flushing when you drink red wine or beer or champagne they're the sort of high histamine alcohol sources if you like that can be a sign that your body's struggling to break down histamine but also certain fruits and vegetables are high in histamine things like tomatoes, spinach, eggplant, citrus fruits, strawberries, chocolate is high in histamine, nuts, soy sauce, vinegar so the list is pretty extensive and yes reducing that histamine load by reducing high histamine foods in the diet can reduce symptoms

11:50but it's really a short term fix because we want to be able to improve the body's ability to break down histamine as well and so you know as we were talking about last week with the low FODMAT diet we only want to look at a low histamine diet short term because it can be quite restrictive it doesn't fix the core issue and it doesn't sort of fix the why as to you know why that clearance of histamine is impaired so as always we want to look deeper when we recognize that our kids or ourselves might have issues with histamine now the way we approach this in an individual person a child is to look at the person as a whole so a child that has histamine issues that has eczema you know that's main symptom is eczema for example

12:50we're going to treat differently to a child that might have histamine issues and their main symptoms are more sort of gut related you know often there's a whole mix of symptoms involved and so we as always with naturopathy we don't want to be looking at okay the child has eczema let's slap on a steroid cream and get on top of that eczema yes that's going to help control the inflammation of the skin which is going to improve the eczema but again it's not getting to the root cause of what's going on which is that the body is struggling to break down histamine and I will also say that not every child with eczema has histamine issues or histamine intolerance it's just one of the common kind of triggers that we see in kids with eczema so as always it's really important to look at each child individually and you know really importantly is get that the body

13:52are tolerating and clearing histamine more effectively and I'll give you one example so the enzyme that breaks down histamine the DAO enzyme that I was talking about before to produce that enzyme the body requires zinc it's one of the key nutrients needed to produce that enzyme so many kids are zinc deficient not all kids are zinc deficient and zinc might not be the answer for every child with histamine issues but you know if we can provide more zinc through food sources or through supplementation we can potentially get more of that enzyme being produced and that will help to the body to clear out histamine so that's just one example of you know what we would be looking at to support the body to be able to clear excess histamine and that will go hand in hand with yes potentially reducing those high histamine foods in the diet

14:54hopefully short term and we've shared some stories on this podcast from members and clients that we've worked with where they've come to us because their child has eczema for example you know we sort of figure out that histamine is a key part of their picture their inability to clear histamine or histamine intolerance is a key part of their issue and so we would reduce high histamine foods while improving their ability to be able to break down that histamine and that will look different for every child but then over time that child can start to tolerate more of those high histamine foods and their eczema is more under control their allergy symptoms are more under control as well so kids with histamine issues will generally have a hard time during sort of spring and summer the pollen sort of hay fever season but their symptoms can be all year round as well because they're not the only things that sort of create that histamine build up in the body

15:59but if your child reacts to you know a range of different foods that you can't work out and when they have a combo of symptoms so there's more than just one system included in their symptoms so for example they have eczema and they have hay fever or they have you know itchy, hibiskin plus they have gut symptoms and that these kids generally get sort of more reactive over time if things aren't addressed and changed so it's just telling us their immune system is on high alert their bodies are struggling to process the histamine that is in their body and so we want to really calm down that immune system and improve their gut function and some of the you know like the enzyme that breaks down histamine among other things

16:59so as you can hear you know histamine can be a bit of a complex issue it's something we see commonly it's something we see commonly in kids or we sort of you know identify in kids when they've been through a whole range of different you know maybe practitioners or remedies that haven't sort of been able to figure out because it can be you know hard to pinpoint that that is the particular issue and the other big thing to remember and I know I've already mentioned this but I want to make it clear like a low histamine diet is not the long term answer to histamine intolerance you know anti histamines can help as well but again they're just more of a bandaid fix and often don't actually fix all of the symptoms anyway so I hope this has been helpful next week I'm going to be sharing you know it's a really good follow on from this episode

18:00because I'm going to be sharing a little bit more about the immune system and how we can maybe look at the immune system in a bit of a different light to help it calm down and to support immune regulation so that our kids are less reactive, less sort of prone to allergic symptoms and XMA which is something that we've been talking a lot about recently because it's such a big issue in so many kids I hope this episode has been helpful please pass it on to someone who might benefit or find this information helpful I so appreciate any sharing that you know you guys can do who are listening to people who might not come across this podcast because you know often this information isn't sort of widely available I hope you have a really good day and I will be back in your ears with a new episode next week

19:02Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today Head on over to our website naturalsuperkids.com for the show notes for this episode as well as a whole heap of inspiration to help you raise healthy and happy kids I'll see you next week you