The Histamine Connection with Yasmina Ykelenstam

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. Now, today's show is all about histamine and this is something that I saw posted in our mindshare community. I'm like, what the heck is this? And I have to have this woman come on my podcast. Early on, when I was working with Grant, we were trying to figure out what was going on with him in terms of a diagnosis of either bipolar or addiction. I went and did a lot of testing through a place called the Pfeiffer Institute and he came out high histamine. And, you know, they gave me a supplement. They didn't really talk much about it. And as I was listening to her stuff, I'm like, wow, this is actually, this is the information I needed years and years ago. So this is a very interesting topic and a fascinating woman. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Let me see if I can get her name correct is the first big challenge I'm going to have because her name is Yasmina Kellenstein. Turns out I was like, what the heck is that? She goes, it's Dutch, Lebanese. Like, all right, now here's what's interesting. She's an award winning ex CNN producer turned health journalist and author. And what happened was she got super sick and she was out in Iraq and she gets super sick and she has these crazy symptoms, this mystery illness. No one can figure it out. And she just, you know, she's a journalist. She dug in there and figured it out. So she has put this all at a site called Healing Histamine. And it's all the research you could ever want on this. And she's going to, we're going to pull back the kimono on this whole histamine thing, what it means, how you might be able to figure out if this is an issue for you, what you can do. She's got a great gift for everyone here, so you can just Start figuring this out right away. And I know if you're listening to this podcast, you have taken on your health as your own personal health detective, and this is another part of the journey. So I'm super excited to talk about the histamine connection today with Yasmina Kellenson. All right, let's do it. Yasmina, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Hi, jj. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

All right, this is just a fascinating topic, and I'd actually. I've known about high histamines because there's something that I had and one of my sons with some emotional stuff had, but I've never heard what you're talking about. So you talk about histamines and how healthy foods can trigger hidden inflammation. And before we get into this, I want to know how the heck you got into this. Like, what made you look at this?

You know, I was working as a journalist in Iraq at the time, and I just got too sick to function, you know, flying around in helicopters, incredible heat in the desert, under fire. Eventually, my body just imploded, and I spent the next couple of years trying to figure it all out, doctor after doctor, and then finally, believe it or not, Google diagnosed me, and I got the right search terms.

Lucky for you.

It was later verified by doctors. And.

Yeah, but I mean, this is one of those things. Like, you could have. You could have been going to doctors for years on this one.

Oh, and I was 30 years, to be exact.

Wow.

Wow.

All right, well, now that, you know, let's, like. Let's talk through it. Like, what exactly is. Like, what does this look like when you've got this issue with histamines? How do we know if we have it? What is it? Can we dive into that?

Right, so one of the problems with histamine issues, or mast cell activation, depending on which end of the spectrum you fall on, is that we present with so very many symptoms. They range from gastrointestinal things like ibs, bloating, nausea, acid reflux, to emotional. Like you said, we can have psychiatric disturb. We can be on the autism spectrum. We can manifest with symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, histamine triggers, anxiety. We can have sleep disorders. Narcolepsy has been linked to excess histamine, or chronic fatigue also has been linked to it. Everything from allergy like, symptoms that range all the way up in seriousness to anaphylaxis, which can be quite rare for people. I've only had it A couple of times in my life, thankfully, and not, not in the last five years or so. And so it's just really confusing for doctors and patients alike. People tell me, well, aren't you really upset and frustrated with the doctors? Well, of course, but at the same time I was going to about 10 different doctors each one for each little piece of the puzzle. And I don't think that's unique to histamine issues. I think it happens with many conditions that we're dealing with nowadays that involve inflammation.

Well, hopefully though, like you are making this very user friendly, very accessible and you know how to communicate well so you'll be able to get this out there. I mean if someone thought they had this, what would they, how would they, what would they do? What would be their first step? Like how would they get tested?

Well, there's a couple of different, yeah, I mean a couple of different approaches. If you're having all these kind of weird symptoms, brain fog, food intolerances, allergy like symptoms that can't be actually linked to actual allergies, you're going to want to. There's two approaches. One is to go to the nature and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. You can do them at the same time. One is to go the naturopathic route, which is to find somebody, a functional medicine doctor, a dietitian, anybody with some histamine experience. And I do recommend that people ask that first because you know, ask some probing questions, you know, how many people have they worked with before? What's their approach, things like that, before you actually make the appointment because you don't want to be disappointed when you turn up. So you can either go that route, the naturopathic route, and usually people will prescribe a four week elimination diet which gets rid of all of the histamine out of the diet. And that's considered really the golden standard. They want to see how you feel after those four weeks because testing is kind of hit or miss with histamine. Your one way of diagnosing via blood is diamine oxidase, which is one of the histamine degrading enzymes. It kind of flushes all the, breaks down all the histamine in the body and helps you flush it out once it's no longer needed. Because histamine is of course a necessary thing for us. We need it for healing, we need it for wakefulness, for controlling digestion, things like that. So it's very difficult to get an accurate reading on it because it is required by the body. So if we have Too little histamine, that's a bad thing too. So you can test the dao, you can test the whole blood histamine, and this information is on my website also. But you can test either of those or you go for the elimination diet or do them all at once. If you have more severe symptoms, things like verging on anaphylaxis or you know, after eliminating the foods for four weeks, you don't get significant relief, but you know those foods are causing you a problem, then it's time to perhaps look at master cell activation, M A S, T cell, at the cell activation syndrome. And that is a slightly more serious or more, it's just a worse presentation of histamine issues. And that would ideally require a functional medicine doctor or some other kind of medical practitioner. And there we would be testing for inflammatory mediators like interleukins, leukotrienes. They will have all of this information. It's enough to go to them and say I'm having unspecified food intolerances and some kind of weird allergy like responses, please give me allergy tests. If those come back negative, then it's time to move on to the inflammatory cytokine testing.

So here's what I take from all of this. Just kind of like simplifying it down is, you know, when I started to look at food intolerance and I was looking at the testing, I'm like, yeah, well it's. Testing is kind of doesn't really work because it depends on exposure. And I mean there are so many things going on and it's also there's other ways we could be intolerant. And I thought shouldn't you just pull it out and see how you feel and then test it back? And then if that didn't get you far enough, then go deep dive into testing. And it sounds like you're saying the same type of thing here, like start. Wouldn't it make sense for people to start with testing themselves with that four week program?

I mean what I tell people to do is, or I mean what I think is the sanest approach to this is testing absolutely is inconclusive on many levels. Even allergy testing, you know, the scratch testing, all of those can be inconclusive or can yield false negatives or false positives. So yes, absolutely. To test whether you feel better without the foods. And then the problem comes after that because you've removed the foods, you feel better. And then you kind of get stuck a lot of the time because you wonder, well, where do I go from Here, if everything is bothering, if these high histamine foods are bothering me, how do I survive long term without them? There's also the concern that if we remove histamine from the diet for too long, so four weeks is great. If you remove it for too long, there's a potential theory that, that the body might start producing more histamine to compensate for what is no longer being given to us because it is essential for the body. And it's unclear as to whether we need to keep producing more histamine or once it's released, if it's still usable. Kind of like when you use antihistamine nasal sprays, there's something called the rebound effect. So it works for a couple of weeks and then suddenly you need more and more and more and it just stops working. It's not just antihistamine nasal sprays, it's many medications.

So when you go through this, and we're going to talk next about like, which types of foods are these foods that can trigger inflammation, you'd pull these foods out to see where it is, then you could go in for more testing and then what's your, you know, and then you'd move into some kind of long term healing program or what goes next.

Yeah. My concern with people is that, and I went through this myself, is that I, excuse me, have frog in my throat. The concern is that once you feel better on the elimination diet, to continue removing foods from your diet. Because many of my readers, and it breaks my heart every time I get one of these emails, somebody who's down to just a handful of foods and can't eat anything but that. And they're eating like these giant bowls of rice three times a day with salt. And salt is one of their safe foods, you know, So I try and impress upon people the need to add back foods. So you take a food out, try and find another food that you can add instead of it rather than just continuing whittling down your list.

Yeah, because I do see those people that, like, they're now gotten themselves down to one thing, you know, and it's like, that's it. I actually just had a, an email from someone going, what do we do now? I'm like, oh, my gosh.

So, yeah, exactly. And we just, we want to avoid that. So what I. So I have an online workshop, for example, where I talk about how we need to be aware of the foods that we maybe shouldn't be eating. But that doesn't mean we should never eat them again. It just means we should keep them on a longer rotation or be aware that if we eat these foods too frequently, we might not feel so great. I talk about the body being a giant inflammation bucket, and it's not just histamine that causes the inflammation, as you know and you know. So we need to be mindful of everything that we put in the bucket that makes the inflammation eventually spill over. Because if we can adopt behaviors that empty out the bucket with cutting more foods out of the diet or affecting the way we approach our diet, things like meditation, stress relief, you know, exercise that's not too cardiovascular, which at times can temporarily raise inflammation for up to 72 hours before settling back down again. If your bucket is already about to overflow, adding very frenetic exercise can be problematic. But exercise generally is amazing. So we can adopt all of these different behaviors to generally lower our inflammation. Because, as I tell people, these foods are not inherently evil. There is no reason to demonize them. We need to just have a healthy appreciation for the fact that some foods don't work for us as well as others do. So I advise people to make their own list of safe foods. And that means you can be aware of the foods that are on the high histamine list, the high salicylic fructose, whatever list, but be aware of them, but make your own list. So I talk about putting together a spreadsheet with your symptoms across the top, and then you just write down everything you can remember of what you ate that day and the day before when you have one of these symptoms. And then eventually you'll work out. Well, salicylic acid triggers dizziness, you know, oxalic acid triggers bladder pain. Histamine triggers anxiety. And you have a list of all of the foods that cause that specific symptom. And then once you're done tracking all of this, I tell people, just put it away in the drawer. And then if you have the dizziness or whatever kicks off, then you can say, well, what have I been doing? Go back, find the list, take it out and look at it and say, oh, well, it could be oranges, pears, or bananas. Well, I've been having a lot of bananas these last few days. Maybe I should lay off them for a little bit, you know? And so it kind of takes the guesswork out of it and the stress out of it, because you're creating your own list rather than trying to fit, like, a square peg through a round hole.

That makes a ton of sense. And, you know, I know, and we've kind of jumped all over the place here with this. So I'm going to kind of take it back to sort of a beginning area of for you with things that. That can trigger histamine related inflammation. What are some of the more common foods that do that?

Okay, the most common ones would be fermented foods, which is a bit of a nightmare because we're trying to heal the gut ultimately. But, you know, that needs to be done incrementally adding fermented.

It's interesting that you say that because we do hear all the time time that, you know, when I've had people go on fermented foods and feel worse. Now, some of it could be sibo, I would assume, but maybe this is part of the issue too.

Oh, absolutely. Sibo. Any kind of bacteria, any kind of viral infection will trigger histamine release. Anything that makes the immune system go crazy will release histamine. So, you know, sibo. Yes. That was something I suspected with myself when I think I literally lost my mind for a while when I added too many fermented foods and I thought I was going crazy. I was having really bad psychiatric symptoms that were then misdiagnosed. But all I had to do was remove those foods. But yeah, so I addressed sibo and many people do, and we kind of feel like it's the holy grail. You know, a lot of us are running after this whole sibo thing. But what I'm finding time and time again is that it is a piece of the puzzle. And as with so much of histamine, there are so many different little pie. But certainly the foods like tomatoes, pineapples, strawberries, generally most things that are red colored, which I find interesting because I tend to associate histamine with burning because that's what it feels like sometimes. But you know, mostly red colored berries, tomatoes, for example, A lot of people find that yellow or green varieties don't bother them as much. It might be because they're less ripe and the histamine hasn't built up. Things like cacao. There are foods, foods that are liberators and ones that are inherently high in histamine. Cacao is a liberator. So chocolate, for example, is a liberator. Generally, store bought chocolate would be more of a problem because it has lots of additives, flavors, things like that. Anything that is unnatural, that is not found in nature is generally a trigger for our immune system. And the thing is, people with mast cell activation, and it's now estimated that maybe one in six Americans had mast cell activation. One of the theories is that we just have very highly developed immune systems and we are very sensitive to danger. And so we are triggered to things that just shouldn't be in our environment, but things like avocados. I mean, avocados.

When I went avocados, oh, my gosh, it was a travesty.

Here.

I love guacamole. It's my favorite thing. And yet it combines tomatoes and avocado, which are two of the highest histamine, vegetable, fruit type things, fruits rather. So, you know, it's really very unlikely foods. We read on the Internet that pineapple is great for allergies, that oranges are great for allergies. And I'm there with my hand in my head and I'm screaming, no. You know, because these are just super high histamine foods and people aren't aware of it. A lot of us exhibit our first histamine symptoms when we try to get really, really healthy. For me, raw veganism was an absolute nightmare with all of the nuts, the walnuts, most of the nuts are high histamine, except for almonds and pecans and a couple of others. This is all debatable. Everybody has different lists that drive people insane. And there's many reasons for that, but mostly just because different testing methods, varieties of food. And it's really hard to measure histamine accurately in foods that are not fermented and foods that are not animal foods or spoiled in some way generally. So anything that's spoiled, anything that's left over, that is a histamine problem. That's why fermented foods like yeast, probiotics are such a mess for us.

All right, that was curveball at you. No, that's okay. So I'm moving away from inflammation and histamine and straight over to you for a total curveball. What's the one thing you do every day that you feel makes the biggest difference in your life?

Okay, I'm gonna combine them because they're related. But it's meditation and yoga, and that's because that I've discovered that I can have the best diet in the world. I mean, really the best diet. But if my mental state is off, my inflammation will go through the roof. And that's because stress. This is scientific. We're not talking about, you know, like, woo woo stuff. Stress triggers histamine and mast cells. The mast cells release not just histamine, but tons of other inflammation. So to me, we need to interrupt the process at its genesis. And for me, a lot of that is stress. Everybody will be different, but I'M finding that for more and more of my readers, stress is the biggest trigger.

Oh, yes, it is. No question. I, I have a quiz. Is stress making you fat, old and tired and, you know, lose your sex drive? And so it is one that absolutely I can see people doing every single thing right and they're totally under stress and it blows it up so completely with you on that. Plus, it triggers food intolerance, the other issue we don't love. Now, I know you have because I, I know for people listening, this is probably the first time you've heard about this and you're like, your head is spun. But thankfully you've got something perfect to give everybody so that they just have a simple guide in their hand. So why don't you talk about your gift that you're going to give everyone? And for everyone listening, I put it@jjvirgin.com histamine and it will be be in the show notes.

I just want to say thank you first of all for taking an interest in this topic because it affects so many women. We have very complicated immune systems and it's a huge problem for us. And I'm really excited to get this information out to as many people as possible. It's a little digital book that I put together that explains the basics of histamine. It explains a little bit about the diet, and there's some recipes in there to give you an idea of what the diet looks like.

That's awesome because honestly, you know, for me, I really believe that we need to be our own personal health detective. You, like, just embodied all of this. When I started to hear your story, I'm like, this is the coolest thing. And that we really, this isn't about being afraid of food. It's really connecting the dots between what you're eating and how you feel. And once you get that information, then you're in control. So I love this whole approach. This is another thing to look at for so many people. When you can't figure out what's going on, you still don't feel good. This is, this is another place to go. So your website, too. I want to make sure everybody has that. It's healinghistamine.com and you've got a bunch of cool resources, workshops, etc, so you can dive into. But be sure to grab the ebook that Yasmina's Right written so that you can dive into this and start going on the next level of your health journey. And I want to thank you so much for being with me today.

Thank you so Much. Jj, it's been an amazing experience. Lovely talking to you.

You too.

Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from George in Mobile. Did I say that right? Is it mobile? Mobile, right. Alabama, he says, JJ, what do you think about that diet, the 5:2 diet where I can eat great five days of the week and cheat two days a week? Do I have to say anything else, George? You know, so here's the thing. I loathe the idea of cheat meals, cheat days, because here's the thing, the foods that hurt us are foods that we tend to get hooked on and addicted to. It's pretty interesting. First of all, I've never heard of anyone addicted to broccoli ever, ever, ever. Or salmon. And quite often those foods that are hurting us, we have an immune response that can actually trigger a craving cycle. And so what I see with people when they're doing a cheat meal, a cheat day, is that they're not reaching for, you know, say, gosh, I think I'm gonna have some strawberries today. No, they're reaching for the pizza, the cake. These things that are triggers for them that do two different things. One, they set you off into a total, like, binge. They wake you back up and you go, I want more of that. But two, they create inflammation throughout your body. And so, you know, it's not a simple calories in, calories out thing. It's not that your body's a bank account. You can eat this little thing and then you'll be good for the rest of the week and you'll work it off. See, the problem is these foods create an inflammatory response, and that's not something that your body just recovers from in a day. I mean, if you eat something that doesn't work for you. This can trigger an inflammatory response response for days. Shift some of your hormones. So that is why I am not a fan of these things, because it's not a simple bank account situation. So my answer to that is, I can't stand them. Don't do it. Instead, just like we were talking about today, I want you to go through your own personal health discovery process. Really find out which foods work for you and which don't. What meal timing works the best for you. And then you'll. You'll know, hey, if I'm going to go off today, you'll know exactly what's going to happen because of it. And then you can make an informed decision. It's not that you can never not have those cheats, but if you knew that, hey, when you eat pizza, you feel rotten for four days and your face breaks out, maybe you'll think twice, right? It's just empowering and it's putting the responsibility back where it should be to you. All right, if you have a question for me, here's a couple places you can go. Jump over and leave one. First off, go to Facebook, JJ Virgin official look for the little blue check. I answer questions, we pull them off of there. And I also do Facebook lives every week. Then the other option is to go to Instagram, JJ Virgin, little blue check, same thing. And we're always coming through there finding the questions. We answer questions all the time. I say we because there's a team now that will repost some blogs and things like that to help and. But I like to pop in there, answer your questions, and I pick the ones that are relevant to the show and I pull them on in. So thank you, George, for that one. Now, the gratitude portion of the show, I love. This is when I get to read and one of the awesome reviews on itunes and just a big shout out. I so, so, so appreciate all of these reviews on itunes. We, the whole team reads them. This is, this is kind of how we get our grades. And it matters a bunch. It also matters a bunch out there to the world because social proof is the strongest, you know, hands up vote that we can get. So the best thing that I can do to continue to get this podcast out in the world is to get these amazing reviews from you. So just big gratitude for doing it. I super, super, super appreciate it. And I am going to read one by Mom Candy 2009. All right, Mom Candy, thank you for this. Says love it. Five stars. This is my favorite podcast. I never miss one. Always informative and inspiring. Thank you, jj for speaking the truth and sharing people who have something valuable to teach. Ah, thank you. And if you would love to leave a review on itunes and have me feature you on our podcast, we are also starting to put you up on Instagram and Facebook. Just head on over to itunes and leave your review and also appreciate it. I'm going to do a double ask here if you'd share it with your friends. It is one that is my personal mission to get out into the world all of the simple things that we can do to take personal responsibility for our health. Because the biggest thing that will change the world is us all being healthier emotionally, physically, right? So here you go. I'm doing everything I can on my end to make it simpler for us to get this out into the world. Now here's the deal. Every show we do, we share some super cool, very useful information, but it only matters if you do something with it. So my big, biggest ask of the day is if you heard something today that you go, I need to take action on it. Take action now, because tomorrow you'll go, what?

What?

What did I think I needed to take action on? Right? So do it now. Alrighty. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshould I read next podcast.com to find out more.