Everything You Need To Know About Histamine Intolerance

Everything You Need To Know About Histamine Intolerance

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-11175/everything-you-need-to-know-about-histamine-intolerance.html

Do you experience unexplained headaches or anxiety? What about irregular menstrual cycles? Does your face flush when you drink red wine? Do you get an itchy tongue or runny nose when you eat bananas, avocados, or eggplants? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you could have a histamine intolerance.

What is histamine?

Histamine is a chemical involved in your immune system, proper digestion, and your central nervous system. As a neurotransmitter, it communicates important messages from your body to your brain. It is also a component of stomach acid, which is what helps you break down food in your stomach.

You might be most familiar with histamine as it relates to the immune system. If you’ve suffered from seasonal allergies or food allergies, you may have noticed that antihistamine medications like Zytrec, Allegra or Benedryl provide quick relief of your symptoms. This is because histamine’s role in the body is to cause an immediate inflammatory response. It serves as a red flag in your immune system, notifying your body of any potential attackers.

Histamine causes your blood vessels to swell, or dilate, so that your white blood cells can quickly find and attack the infection or problem. The histamine buildup is what gives you a headache and leaves you feeling flushed, itchy and miserable. This is part of the body’s natural immune response, but if you don’t break down histamine properly, you could develop what we call histamine intolerance.

Because it travels throughout your bloodstream, histamine can affect your gut, lungs, skin, brain, and entire cardiovascular system, contributing to a wide range of problems often making it difficult to pinpoint and diagnose.

Common symptoms of histamine intolerance include:

• Headaches/migraines
• Difficulty falling asleep, easily arousal
• Hypertension
• Vertigo or dizziness
• Arrhythmia, or accelerated heart rate
• Difficulty regulating body temperature
• Anxiety
• Nausea, vomiting
• Abdominal cramps
• Flushing
• Nasal congestion, sneezing, difficulty breathing
• Abnormal menstrual cycle
• Hives
• Fatigue
• Tissue swelling

What Causes High Histamine Levels?

• Allergies (IgE reactions)
• Bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)
• Leaky gut
• GI bleeding
• Fermented alcohol like wine, champagne, and beer
• Diamine Oxidase (DAO) deficiency
• Histamine-rich foods

In addition to the histamine produced inside your body, there are also a variety of foods that naturally contain histamine, cause the release of histamine, or block the enzyme that breaks down histamine, diamine oxidase.

Histamine-Rich Foods:

• Fermented alcoholic beverages, especially wine, champagne and beer
• Fermented foods: sauerkraut, vinegar, soy sauce, kefir, yogurt, kombucha, etc
• Vinegar-containing foods: pickles, mayonnaise, olives
• Cured meats: bacon, salami, pepperoni, luncheon meats and hot dogs
• Soured foods: sour cream, sour milk, buttermilk, soured bread, etc
• Dried fruit: apricots, prunes, dates, figs, raisins
• Most citrus fruits
• Aged cheese including goat cheese
• Nuts: walnuts, cashews, and peanuts
• Vegetables: avocados, eggplant, spinach, and tomatoes
• Smoked fish and certain species of fish: mackerel, mahi-mahi, tuna, anchovies, sardines

Histamine-Releasing Foods:

• Alcohol
• Bananas
• Chocolate
• Cow’s Milk
• Nuts
• Papaya
• Pineapple
• Shellfish
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes
• Wheat Germ
• Many artificial preservatives and dyes

DAO-Blocking Foods:

• Alcohol
• Energy drinks
• Black tea
• Mate tea
• Green tea

Whew! That was a long list. You might be wondering now what on earth you CAN eat, so I've made a list of low histamine foods as well. Remember that freshness is key when you have histamine intolerance!

Here's a list of low-histamine foods:

• freshly cooked meat, poultry (frozen or fresh)
• freshly caught fish
• eggs
• gluten-free grains: rice, quinoa
• pure peanut butter
• fresh fruits: mango, pear, watermelon, apple, kiwi, cantaloupe, grapes
• fresh vegetables (except tomatoes, spinach, avocado, and eggplant)
• dairy substitutes: coconut milk, rice milk, hemp milk, almond milk
• cooking oils: olive oil, coconut oil
• leafy herbs
• herbal teas

How do I break down histamine?

Once formed, histamine is either stored or broken down by an enzyme. Histamine in the central nervous system is broken down primarily by histamine N-methyltransferase (HMT), while histamine in the digestive tract is broken down primarily by diamine oxidase (DAO). Though both enzymes play an important role in histamine break down, the American Society for Clinical Nutrition found that DAO is the main enzyme responsible for breaking down ingested histamine. So if you’re deficient in DAO, you likely have symptoms of histamine intolerance.

Causes of Low DAO

• Gluten intolerance
• Leaky gut
• SIBO
• DAO-blocking foods: alcohol, energy drinks, and tea
• Genetic mutations (common in people of Asian-descent)
• Inflammation from Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, and inflammatory bowel disease.
• Medications:

• Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, aspirin)
• Antidepressants (Cymbalta, Effexor, Prozac, Zoloft)
• Immune modulators (Humira, Enbrel, Plaquenil)
• Antiarrhythmics (propanolol, metaprolol, Cardizem, Norvasc)
• Antihistamines (Allegra, Zyrtec, Benadryl)
• Histamine (H2) blockers (Tagamet, Pepcid, Zantac)

Although histamine blockers, a class of acid-reducing drugs, seem like they would help prevent histamine intolerance, these medications can actually deplete DAO levels in your body.

Testing for Histamine Intolerance

Elimination/Reintroduction

Remove the above high histamine foods for 30 days and reintroduce them one at a time by following the guidelines in my eBook.

Blood Testing

I use a test through Dunwoody labs to test for histamine levels and DAO levels. A high ratio of histamine/DAO signifies that you are ingesting too much histamine and that you don’t have enough DAO to break it down.

Trial of DAO

If testing is unavailable to you, you could simply try a diet low in histamine and add DAO supplementation at each meal. If your symptoms resolve, you could have low DAO.

How to Treat Histamine Intolerance?

Remove the high histamine foods for 1-3 months. Add in a supplement of DAO by taking two pills at each meal. Most importantly, find the root cause for the histamine intolerance. If you're on a medication that is causing the intolerance, working with your physician to wean off of these medications is essential. The main causes I see in my clinic are SIBO and gluten intolerance, which cause a leaky gut. In this case, I suggest reading my post on healing the gut and over time you should be able to stop the DAO and go back to eating histamine-containing foods.

If you're currently suffering from histamine intolerance, you may not have to avoid these foods forever. It can be a short-term solution until your histamine or DAO levels return to their optimal ranges. Depending on your unique situation, you may find that you tolerate some foods better than others, so I encourage you to stay optimistic as you learn important information about your body!

 

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Omega-3 Fatty Acids Studied in Autism

Omega-3 Fatty Acids Studied in Autism

http://www.cpmedical.net/breaking_news_page/omega-3-fatty-acids-studied-in-autism?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ProThera,%20Inc.%20%28newsletters@cpmedical.com%29&utm_content=June+9+2015+BN+Med

A study epublished in March 2015 reports that omega-3 fatty acid supplementation benefits symptoms in subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that the prevalence of autism in the U.S. increased by 119.4% from 2000 (1 in 150 births) to 2010 (1 in 68 births). Autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability, increasing by 6% to 15% each year from 2002 to 2010.

In this open-label trial, researchers supplemented 41 children and adolescents seven to 18 years of age diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder with omega-3 fatty acids for 12 weeks. The investigators measured levels of blood fatty acids at the beginning of the study and again after the intervention period. They also assessed the subjects using the Social Responsiveness Scale and the Social and Attention Problems Syndrome scales of the Child Behavior Checklist.

The subjects markedly improved on all subscales of the Social Responsiveness Scale and the Social and Attention Problems Syndrome scales of the Child Behavior Checklist. Increases in blood fatty acid levels also were associated with improvements in the primary symptoms of autism. Furthermore, concentrations of blood fatty acids at the beginning of the study predicted how well the children responded to the omega-3 supplementation. Supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids was well tolerated without serious side effects reported.

The researchers concluded, "Our findings lend some preliminary support for the use of omega-3 fatty acids supplementation in addressing ASD. Future randomized controlled trials of omega-3 fatty acids in ASD with blood fatty acid measurements with a larger sample and longer follow-up period is warranted."

Reference:

Ooi YP, et al. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2015 Mar 25. [Epub ahead of print.]

 

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The Epidemic of Breast Cancer and Thyroid Disorders: The Common Link

The Epidemic of Breast Cancer and Thyroid Disorders: The Common Link by Dr. David Brownstein

http://blog.drbrownstein.com/?utm_source=eblast&utm_medium=email&utm_content=blog_link&utm_campaign=blast_new_blog

A recent study found higher levels of free T3 (a thyroid hormone) as well as thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin antibodies in patients with breast cancer when compared to healthy controls. (1) Nearly one in seven (14%) U.S. women have breast cancer. Thyroid disorders are the most common endocrine disorder present in the U.S. There are estimates that from 10-40% of the U.S. adult population suffer from a thyroid disorder. Could there be a link between the 40-year epidemic rise of breast cancer and thyroid disorders?

The answer is “yes”.

And the link could explain not only the breast and thyroid connection but also why we are suffering from an epidemic of other glandular illnesses—including cancer—of the ovary, uterus, pancreas, and prostate. What is the link?

The link is iodine deficiency.

Our iodine levels have fallen over 50% during the last 40 years. I (along with my partners) have tested well over 6,000 patients for their iodine levels and have found that over 96% are deficient in iodine. Most are severely deficient. As I wrote in my book, Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It, iodine deficiency is responsible for the epidemic of thyroid and breast disorders that we are seeing today. This includes autoimmune thyroid disorders such as Hashimoto’s and Graves’ disease, thyroid cancer and hypothyroidism as well as fibrocystic breast disease and breast cancer. Every cell in the body requires adequate iodine levels to function optimally. In the glandular tissue—the thyroid, ovaries, uterus, breast, pancreas, and prostate–iodine is responsible for maintaining the normal architecture of the glands. When iodine deficiency is present, it sets in motion a cascade of events. This cascade starts with glandular cysts forming. If iodine deficiency continues, the cysts become hard and nodular. The next step is the glandular tissue starts to assume a precancerous appearance—called hyperplasia. The final stage in this sequence is cancer. The good news is that in vitro (in test tubes) and in vivo (in animals and people) studies have found that iodine therapy can halt the progression of  glandular events and even reverse it.

What can you do? One of the most important ways to ensure your optimal health is to maintain adequate iodine intake. Unfortunately, our food supply is woefully lacking in iodine. Iodine can be found in seafood, but the levels vary depending on the pollution levels of where the seafood was harvested from. In today’s toxic world, I feel it is best to supplement with iodine. How much iodine is required? My research has found that most patients require 6-50mg/day of iodine to achieve whole-body iodine sufficiency. However, before starting to take iodine, it is best to work with an iodine-knowledgeable health care provider who can check your levels both pre- and post- iodine supplementation.

More information about iodine can be found in my book: Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without it. You may also click on the link: Iodoral by Optimox Corporation

Video on Vaccine Dangers: "54 Percent of Children Suffer Disabilities Caused by Vaccination"

Please take the time to watch this short video at this link http://immunizationalternatives.com/vaccine-dangers-videos/

"54 Percent of Children Suffer Disabilities Caused by Vaccination" 11:09 minutes

It is the very top video on this page with many other videos on the dangers of vaccines on my new website at www.ImmunizationAlternatives.com under Vaccine Dangers: Videos which includes many others on this topic. 

Please watch, share and increase your knowledge and others about the dangers of vaccination!

·            Share with your spouse.

·            Share with pregnant moms!

·            Share with moms of young children.

·            Share with moms of college bound students.

The only safe and alternative to toxic vaccinations is Homeoprophylaxis (HP) which has been used by millions of people, worldwide for hundreds of year to protect against all types of contagious diseases. 

This method has been found 90% effective in clinical studies. http://immunizationalternatives.com/homeoprophylaxis/clinical-research/

We now offer HP services in my homeopathic practice and I was trained and certified to provide Homeoprophylaxis (HP) by Dr. Isaac Golden, also a homeopath and the world's foremost authority on HP from Australia.
This HP Program is customized by client for people of all ages, from infants to adults, and is especially designed for partially vaccinated, selectively vaccinated or unvaccinated children.

Learn much more at www.ImmunizationAlternatives.com._,___

Great Article: Why Homeopathy Works!

Why Homeopathy Works!
http://alternative-doctor.com/body-stuff/why-homeopathy-works/?inf_contact_key=f4b70254f5070bfccaf94a7fb429f2fd2e24b62d8dbe88c0f4372a15b5ef1db0

by ProfKeith

I’ve been meaning to produce a short paper like this, which I can use to answer the many enquiries about homeopathy. Against the background that the FDA in America is investigating if homeopathy works (2015), I thought it was time to get down and write it!
The large numbers of holistic practitioners who don’t actually hold with homeopathy constantly surprises me. Many express surprise that I should champion it at all. When I tell them the evidence is abundant and clear, they seem to go through a shock moment. Doesn’t everyone know it’s a con; just dilute water with no actual substance left? It can’t work!
Right! Like the Earth can’t be round and heavier-than-air machines can never fly (so scientists assured us). Steamships could never carry enough coal to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, according to the science of the day! X-rays are a hoax said Lord Kelvin, the leading physicist of his time. Even Sir Isaac Newton was full of reactionary bluster and insisted that meteorites could not possibly fall from the sky. Man on the moon? Moonshine more likely (or not in my lifetime was one I remember hearing often).
The truth is that homeopathy has been the most effective and widely used Western medical model for over 200 years. The usurper doctrine of Big Pharma medications is costly, ineffective and a veritable hoax, yet they have the audacity and arrogance to claim theirs is the only valid model of treatment. Homeopathy is relentlessly challenged as fraudulent, because it threatens their very lucrative pretense of healing.
If you don’t know and don’t use homeopathy on a regular basis, you need to wise up! Here’s some compelling evidence, to help you make up your mind.

The 1994 Lancet Fiasco

Here’s stunning proof that homeopathy is effective, published in the prestigious and oldest medical journal: The Lancet. Since randomized, cross-over, placebo controlled trials show that homeopathy does actually work, there must be something wrong with the randomized, cross-over, placebo controlled trials, said the editor of The Lancet!
This is remarkable, to say the least. They are so far into their dogma that they cannot even admit that their own specified method of investigation shows homeopathy is highly effective.
Note that this trial was excluded from a recent so-called “systematic review” or meta-study. Don’t be fooled by the term “study”. Nothing is tested at all! It’s simply science fraud in which authors gather together papers which support their prejudice and ignore any which they don’t like because it contradicts their stance).
“No good-quality, well-designed studies with enough participants for a meaningful result reported either that homeopathy caused greater health improvements than a substance with no effect on the health condition (placebo), or that homeopathy caused health improvements equal to those of another treatment,” the Australian report states.
Check out this paper.
Now, look at what follows and you will know they are simply accomplished professional liars. ALL OF THEM.

Part 1. They Called It The Pilot

It shows the benefits of a homeopathic remedy over placebo. In this graph, lower is better (reduced airways obstruction or easier breathing). Hence the lower line, showing BIG improvement over the placebo).
Was that enough to convince the skeptics?
No. They decided to call that the “pilot” trial. They would follow up with the “main” study.
Here’s the result:

Part 2. The “Main” Study

Result? The same, great benefit over the placebo.

So they decided the result was so controversial (homeopathy works) that they had better to a “confirmatory study”.

Part 3. The Confirmatory Study

The result? Exactly the same. Marvelous benefit. But it is clear that if the third study had been doubtful or negative, that’s the only trial which would have been published.

That’s the bigotry and bias that holistic specialties have to put up with (you can see why this trial was ignored by the writers of a paper purporting to show that homeopathy didn’t work). Here is a great and irreproachable study, published in no less a journal than The Lancet and yet it was totally ignored¹.
There was no new investigation in such a review, just a gathering together of prejudice.
In fact, one intellectual idiot challenged the Cochrane Database, which had called for further studies into the validity of homeopathy. This person claimed that homeopathy is an obvious fraud and doesn’t work, so why do we need more studies? The writer referred to a “disregard for non-RCT evidence in Cochrane Reviews of homeopathy” and “Homeopathy is, in essence, a placebo in itself, with no plausible mechanism of action” and “Is it really not possible to comment on the use of homeopathy in dementia without an RCT?” (Meaning, we already know it’s a hoax).

Homeopathy Works Against Cancer

It’s quite a historic day when a study showing homeopathy works as well as a major (very expensive) drug gets published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal (International Journal of Oncology). This 2007 trial, too, was of course ignored by authors of the Australian paper showing homeopathy was worthless.
So: what did this landmark paper show? Four homeopathic remedies, Carcinosin 30C; Conium maculatum 3C; Phytolacca decandra 200C and Thuja occidentalis 30C, had a pronounced cytotoxic effect against two breast cancer cell lines. All four remedies were capable of inducing apoptosis, the “cell suicide” effect that causes cancer cells to self-destruct.
Phytolacca is better known as pokeweed root, which grows as a towering weed in the US and elsewhere. Conium maculatum is poison hemlock, while Thuja occidentalis comes from the Eastern Arborvitae tree. Carcinosin is the only non-botanical in the group. It is made from a highly diluted extract of breast cancer tissue.
The trial was conducted by scientists from the Integrative Medicine Program, the Department of Molecular Pathology, and the Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology of MDA, and appeared in the February 2010 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. There were two Indian collaborators from the Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, Kolkata, India, where these same remedies are employed clinically with reasonable success.
What was especially interesting to me was that the cell-killing effects of Carcinosin and Phytolacca appeared similar to the activity of paclitaxel (Taxol), the most commonly used chemotherapeutic drug for breast cancer, when it was tested in the same two adenocarcinoma cell lines investigated in this study.²
The use of poisonous plants to treat cancer is commonplace in orthodox medicine. The periwinkle plant (Vinca) has given us vincristine and vinblastine, two very powerful chemo drugs. The aforementioned drug paclitaxel (Taxol) is derived from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree.
But these compounds are used at full strength and are very toxic to the patient, as well as the tumor. The great benefit of homeopathy is that it is so dilute (which is why orthodox doctors and scientists say “It can’t work”), that it is pretty harmless.

Finally, Homeopathy For Thyroid Disease

This 2014 study was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of individualized homeopathy in these cases. The decision to treat subclinical hypothyroidism with or without autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) in children. TSH levels were studied (thyroid stimulating hormone, the one that comes on strong when thyroid hormone levels drop low), as well as anti-thyroid antibodies (looking for autoimmune attacks on the patient’s thyroid).
The results were crystal clear: homeopathy works!
Baseline characteristics were similar in all the subgroups. The post treatment serum TSH returned to normal limits in over 85% of those who took homeopathic medication, compared to 64% of controls, while anti-thyroid antibodies returned within normal limits in over 70% of those who took a homeopathic remedy, compared to only 27% of controls.
Eight children progressed to full-on hypothyroidism, all from the placebo control group.
Judge the worth of homeopathy for yourself. There are many hundreds of published trials of this sort.
So when you read “homeopathy is proven not to work” or “there is no credible evidence that homeopathy works”, well… you know what you are up against. Lies!

Please comment to FDA during public comment period about the importance of homeopathy to you! Open until 6/22/15

The next phase of the FDA hearing on Homeopathic medicine and its current use in the USA is a period of public comment, which is open until JUNE 22, 2015.
That means that we each have an opportunity now to make our opinions heard!
Please take the time to write your positive comments about the access and use of homeopathy in your lives at this link. You do not have to live in the USA to make a comment.

http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment%3bD=FDA-2015-N-0540-0001