Hey, Donna. How are you today?

I'm okay. Megan. What's up? What's. What's up? With a sigh. This has been a rough morning, babe.

Yes, recording in the morning is a little difficult sometimes. At least we've been talking for an hour before this, so at least my, my mouth is working. But hey, this is a mini and we only have 10 minutes.So I wanted to ask you because this has come up so many times in so many episodes that we've done where I talk about everything's healthy, all things are healthy. And you're like, no, but histamines. And I'm just like, God, Donn. Why do you always have to bring up hist.And inherently I understand, but I just thought that would be like a good 10 minute topic to. To talk about. So I don't know, just download your histamine history on me.

Histamine history. I mean, I. As we discovered at the beginning of this call, Megan has no energy, so she's tossing talking to me, which I am so happy about. I don't.

I don't mind.

Hopefully the listener is okay with it too. Dude, histamine intolerance is big. Histamine intolerance is big because of a few reasons.One is that a lot of people who have certain symptoms will immediately think, okay, I need to eat healthier or wtf, I am eating healthy, right? Why am I still feeling crap? I remember the first episode that I actually mentioned this on was kombucha.And I love kombucha and I love Gina to death, but like, but I was like, gina, but I'm really sorry, but you know, people with histamine intolerance, they can't handle this. And it kind of stayed a. A mystery. Also touching it throughout other episodes.But I realize now how much it is an issue for so many people and I. I definitely would love to talk about it forever and ever. Where do I start? So where do you start?

What is it? What is it?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Because I think a lot of people hear histamine with antihistamine medication relevant to allergies. That's where I think most people would start. Right.

And that's a good place to start. Just because our body reacts the same way. Right.So when we have seasonal allergies, our body is just overreacting to, you know, some flower sperm, basically. Right. That's all it is.

I juice and flower sperm. That should be our new T shirt merch. Okay. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

Go ahead. Flowers. Yes. Flower sperm. So histamine intolerance on its own is basically the same. It's overreacting to an amount of histamine going into our body.So it's more of a. Like a bucket overflow problem. We'd love to explain it in functional medicine as.Imagine yourself as a bucket, and the bucket is empty, and if you're having just a little bit of something, you're still okay. But if you're having a lot of it, the overflow is where the body overreacts.So it's not terrible for a person to have things that have higher histamine. But if they have a lot of it every day, that's when they'll be experiencing symptoms. So the kombucha has histamine in it,.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

So I will name a couple of things, but mainly when you think about histamine, we think about things that are fermented, that are aged, that are pickled, you know, that are all the good. Sitting long. All the good stuff. Leftovers, leftover food, so. Or.Or even like meat that you bought that isn't fresh or that you didn't cook immediately. Fish that wasn't frozen or like food that is not. That is sitting too long is collecting histamine. Minced meat has more histamine than.Than other pieces of meat just because of the mincing process and it having more like surface. Surface area, in a way. Yeah, and stuff like that. So it collects it much faster.

Okay.

Common symptoms. Although, you know, I always say with symptoms, it could literally be anything, usually because it's just a body overreacting.But what we do look at immediately when people come up to us with chronic migraines. Chronic migraines are a big one. So headaches in general as well. Skin flushing when you get, like, all red.Like, do you know people who drink wine and become. All of a sudden, my sister, she drinks wine, her chest becomes red, her face becomes red, like that kind of thing.Runny nose, heart palpitations, brain fog, period pain. Thank you very much. So, you know, it's very difficult sometimes to pinpoint that it is histamine just because of the range.Symptoms that we get from it.

Okay, so then how do we. Is there a way to pinpoint it? Or is it like IBS and it's just like this general symptom overload, and there's no real, like, diagnosis?

Well, I. You just opened a can of worms, Megan. Let's not touch ibs, because I think IBS is just. No I mean, I always think as.

Like ibs, like, but yeah, I get it. Can histamines be tested for like allergies or other things?

Yes, 100. So you can test histamine. Usually they test it in stool.There might be other ways to test it, but yes, you can test for histamine intolerance with a stool test in Switzerland. Surprising enough, it's even covered by insurance, which means that you can, you know, you can get it tested. Yeah. Cool.And, and basically when you find out that you are histamine intolerant, again, it can also be a combination of things that you're sensitive to, meaning it could be histamine, but it could also be other things.But it's always good to just completely remove high histamine foods and products and then let the body relax, see that the body is actually reacting to leaving those things out for an extended amount of time and then slowly reintroduce it. And then again, notice that when you reintroduce it, how big is your bucket? Right. So it could be that eating like a tomato or avocado.Those are actually high histamine spinach. I mean, can you imagine Popeye? Poor guy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe it's bloating, maybe that we had. Maybe it wasn't even muscle. Maybe it was just a reaction to, to all the spinach he was eating. But I mean, it is it.There are many foods that you don't think of, so not necessarily the leftovers and the age stuff.

So can I do this at home? Like, is there a way to kind of play around with my food?I know you're working on something now that can help people, but in general, like, what, what can I do at home? We're, we're, we're creeping in on the 10 minute time period.

Yeah, no problem. So, I mean, a low histamine diet, it's an elimination diet. You should not be doing it long term.Those should only be happening short term and hopefully with an expert behind your back. But just lowering histamine foods, you can look it up online. You will find a list of things. It's generally, you know, but I am working on a.This is a teaser. No one knows this yet, but we're working on an app that is combination of elimination diets.So if someone has a few elimination diets and they're just unsure how they coexist and what they can actually eat. Yeah, this app gives recipes, information and everything and a lot of other amazing things.But yes, so we will have that hopefully within, within the next Few months. But you do you definitely want to test it out first.I mean, and if you don't, you can test it out by just taking, you know, lowering those foods in your diet. So again, fermented stuff, yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut. It's all healthy food. Like, most of it is healthy food, which is what sucks.You know, avocado, tomato, eggplant. So.

Yeah. Another quick question. So, like, for example, right now is a high environmental histamine period for me because of seasonal allergies.So I would say I inherently, I would think now is not a good time to do an elimination diet because my might confuse the results with allergy histamines. Or is ingested histamine, like, different in such a way that it's not confounded or conf. Yeah. With allergies.

Let's say this. Yeah, good. Really good question. So let's say this. Your body. We talked about your eye juice. I love that terminology. I'm going to use it forever.We talked about your eye juice. You know, how your body is reacting to the histamine in the environment right now that you're experiencing right when you're lowering.And then maybe you also have other symptoms that you're trying to figure out what they're coming from or where they're coming from. So if you're going on a low histamine diet, actually, it might actually help also with the seasonal allergies.Just because you're rocket is not overflowing.

Yeah, was that was my second question was would it be better at this time of year to really concentrate on eating low histamine foods to help with allergy symptoms? So that's a.

Yes, I would say that's a. Definitely worth trying. Exactly. Doesn't hurt. Definitely worth trying. And if it helps, amazing.And if it doesn't, and you've done it for like a month, you've cut out all these foods, and you're like, there's zero difference. Then go back to eating those foods, because obviously those weren't a trigger.If you go back to eating those foods and you see that the symptoms get worse, stop again, and then maybe you just needed to do it for a little bit longer because you're, you know, there's so many things involved like leaky gut and stuff like that. If we don't correct certain things, they're gonna, you know, we're gonna be more sensitive for a longer period of time. So. Yeah.

Okay, Donna. Well, that's our. That's our 10 minutes.

Thank you.

For. I do feel like I understand histamines better now. So I appreciate your time and your patience with me with the histamine stuff. Always.Talk to you later.

Bye.

Bye.