The Histamine Problem Making Your Migraines Worse

So give, give my listeners a little bit of a rundown of how can they possibly tell that maybe histamine is part of their gut problem. Right. Because it's, it can look like a lot of other things, you know, and, and I think a lot of, a lot of well meaning practitioners overlook the role of histamine in gut symptoms and instead it gets labeled as other stuff. Mm.

It's. And it can be confusing because when, so when we're looking at histamine symptoms, they're overlapping with a lot of other symptoms because we actually have four types of histamine receptors. So when people hear the word histamine, they think of antihistamine and they think of allergies. So you think of. That's our typical opinion when we think of histamine. But. And that's your H1 receptor. So yes, you can have that. So you can have the runny nose, the congestion, the asthma symptoms, rashes, hives, all of those regular allergy, typical symptoms. We also can see migraine, headaches and migraines. We can see GI symptoms. So you can see reflux, the IBS type symptoms, diarrhea, you know, immobility issues, things like that. When we're looking at gi, we also see anxiety. We can see there's a really strong connection with anxiety that I see often with people. You can have sleep disturbances, you can have fatigue, we can, you know, so it's really looking at the whole body. So that's, I think, where it gets confusing because when I'm naming some of these things, you could say, okay, well some of those could be thyroid symptoms, some of those could be gi like where you're, it's really getting almost that practitioner who can pick out the symptoms. And so one of these things, like if you think, okay, well I've, I do have congestion sometimes. I also get headaches. I also will have GI symptoms. It's like sometimes you're seeing multiple systems. But then I also have people that it. People are getting so in tune with their body that they'll even come to me saying I have a histamine issue. And the only thing is that's happening is I'm getting anxiety in the middle of the night because we can get histamine dumping in the night. And they've done enough research, they've been able to figure out the connection. But I think it can, I think from what you're, you're saying it can be hard to figure out because it's all of these multiple issues.

Yeah, yeah. And we don't have the best of testing for that. You know, it's more of a, it's more of a really good intake and sort of an order of elimination to try and figure it out, you know, because it's just, we just don't. And you know, and I just think, I think a lot of, a lot of women out there, you know, struggle with that and they aren't getting good answers. Now I think there's also an important part, and you and I talked a little bit before we got on the call today or the, the podcast interview about the role of hormones, particularly the shifting, the shifting levels of estrogen and it's interplay as well. Right. I'd love to talk about that. And then we can kind of move into the, the headache migraine world. But particularly estrogen and mast cell and histamine.

Yes. So estrogen actually has, there actually has receptors on mast cells. So there's, there's estrogen receptors on mast cells. So, you know, your audience is very well educated. They know this. But as we're moving into perimenopause, into menopause, we often will see a decrease in. Before we see a decrease in estrogen. And estrogen can go up and down and, you know, be erratic in this time. And so we often see more mast cell issues, more histamine type issues with like if you're still menstruating with ovulation and in that PMS window right before your period, because that's when estrogen's higher, this compounds and gets worse during perimenopause because we'll start to see this decrease in progesterone. So you're leaving people with estrogen dominance. So we're seeing kind of a twofold thing happen here. So we're seeing estrogen is stimulating the mast cells to release histamine. It all. Estrogen also inhibits the breakdown of histamine, so it impairs diamine oxidase and you can't break histamine down as much. So you start to see estrogen promoting histamine promoting estrogen promoting histamine. And we can kind of get in this cycle. At the same time, we're seeing this lower level of progesterone, which is actually histamine protective because progesterone is actually going to support diamine oxidase and the breakdown of histamine. So we're having both of those things happen at the same time. And that's why women, as they're entering this phase of life, can often start to see symptoms that they never saw before because we're getting a dysregulation in the hormones.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's so, so very common. And you know, and women think they're going crazy because all of a sudden they're like, oh, I, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm anxious and I can't figure out why. And it's like, well, you know, is it your cortisol, is it your blood sugar, is it a hot flash or is it histamine?

I know, I know. And they can look similar. So it's really. Yes. Getting to the, to the root. And one of the things that listeners can do, I just actually am. Had someone I was on with earlier that I was like, okay, just for me, take two weeks and pull out high histamine foods. I think I can share. I have a 25 page guide that I can share with you and with the audience that we can link that will just actually tell you foods that are high in histamine. And so if you pull Those out for 20 for two weeks and you're like, hmm, you know, maybe my hot flashes are a little, it's not going to solve your problem. We don't want you on a low histamine diet. Long term, we actually want to expand your food. We want to get to the root and fix what's going on. But it can give you a little indication of, okay, you know, do I have less headaches? Maybe Do I have less hot flashes? Am I less anxious? Am I, am I less congested? Are some of the symptoms just improving even slightly to indicate that this could be a histamine? You know, that there could be a histamine component here because many of the healthy foods, strawberries, tomatoes, avocados, all these, like wonderful foods that we're encouraging are high in histamine.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's, I'm glad you also said, you know, that our goal is to not make the diet more restrictive because that's a guarantee to become more restrictive. You know, but therapeutically, like I, you know, I always try and tell people like a therapeutic diet might be to achieve a particular outcome in a short period of time, but it is not the long term side of, you know, the long term goal is to stay on this really restricted diet. Because I'm sure you also see a lot of people that come in that have been on a fodmap diet or, or histamine, you know, reduced diet for years.

Oh, yes.

And now they're so Darn reactive. That, you know, it's, it's like added its own level of kind of complexity.

It's worse. And then they get food veer and then cortisol, you know, then we could get into like the cortisol. Well, if you're, if you're anxious about what you eat, then that can actually create another dynamic. So you can, yeah. Start to get in this cycle. So we're always trying to expand. You know, my goal is like you're saying always to expand the diet, but sometimes you can use it as a tool therapeutically that can start to give you insights. We say we're like health detectives. We're our detectives of our own body. And what I love to see is I really like to educate people as I'm working with them. And, and I love to also see how people become so you can become so in tune with, with and really understand your patterns that you are like, I never even realized these things before, but now I can see and can like live in a way that I can be symptom free because of choices I make and understand. And then it's so empowering.

Yeah, so, so empowering. I, yeah, I love that over the last 20 years, it's like, oh, you know, it's so fun to see that. But I think, you know, a lot of times when people are getting those sort of cookie cutter experiences, they're not, you know, they're not, they're not getting to that final answer where they really see resolution of a lot of those problems. So, so now I'd like to shift gears because you've got a massive specialty in headaches and migraines, which, you know, again, men go through. But statistically, women are significantly more likely to be impaired by significant headaches and migraines. And so let's, let's talk about those. So let's first talk about what's the difference between a headache and a migraine? And I know there's like different forms and things like that and one can kind of become another. And let's talk about those.

Yeah, so attention headache, which is most of the, you know, when we're thinking, oh, headache, we're mostly thinking of attention headache. So that's generally like a band or a dull pain. And it's often across the forehead, the back of the neck. It can affect both sides. It typically doesn't involve nausea or vomiting. It generally doesn't get worse with movement. And it doesn't really have necessarily a typical pattern. It can last a few minutes, a few hours, where Migraines are going to have more characteristic patterns. You're going to see a prodrome often where you feel like vague early warning signs, like you can see it coming on. Some people will have auras which is a visual disturbance. Then you'll have the headache, which is often more of a. It can appear differently for people, but, but a lot of times more of an intense, throbbing, debilitating pain. It can last four to 48 hours, usually even up to 72 hours. It's usually more sensitive to light, noise and movement. So you know, like we're saying it has some of these other potential blurred vision, nausea and vomiting, other effects. So we're seeing a lot more of, you know, a lot of the tension headaches can be either. We'll get from sinus pressure, we'll get from like muscle tension, things like that dehydration where. And actually that migraines can, Dehydration can contribute there too. But we're seeing a, a neurovascular imbalance where we're often seeing a constriction and then a dilation of blood vessels which is going to be triggered by hyperexcited neural activity. So it there they come from different dynamics.

Yeah, yeah. And, and like you said, you know, migraines often follow, you know, particular patterns. Sometimes it could be like food related, like things in foods like MSG or whatever. But a lot of times like for women, they get hormone related migraines. You know, it's based on their cycle. So let's talk about that sort of interplay.