How to Lower Histamine Effects at Home | Dr. A Explains

So supporting all 3 ways out is very important. You've got the B5 one with NAT, you got DAO or DAO support on DAO, and then HMNT uses sort of all of the B vitamins and some minerals and vitamin C. And then there's also— Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to the YouTube channel. I use this channel to answer questions. I've been involved in teaching and research in the integrative and naturopathic medical community for over 30 years now, and I've been practicing for a very long time, and I get lots of questions. So this is just an easy way to answer them. We've done lots and lots of content on here about histamine problems, allergies, mast cell activation, mast cell disorders. And I wanted to answer a question we probably get every day, which is, can you break down just a really close, tight grouping of the things that might be able to be done beyond drugs like antihistamines and steroids to help with the histamine in my body? So usually our problem with histamine is we have too much of it and we're trying to get rid of it, and we might already be taking an antihistamine drug, whether it's over-the-counter or prescribed, might be on steroids if we're real bad or other stuff. So all of these things I'm about to tell you are things we commonly use. They have different effects on people. And obviously this is not medical advice. Please seek your own medical advice, but just tell you what we commonly use. So there's 3 major places to interact with histamine in the body. Now there's other related things, but there's 3 major targets. One is to slow down the release of histamine from the mast cells and other cells that produce Histamine. So slow it down on being released. One is to increase, speed up the metabolism of histamine out of the body. And then the third target is, if all of that fails, to block the histamine when it attaches to your cells and causes the inflammatory reactions that histamine causes. Now, the drugs tend to work on the binding, the third part. That's what antihistamines do. And the other things that I want to talk about here, which are non-drug treatments, work on the first 2 Primarily, so what would slow the release? So you got these cells that produce histamine, then you get a histamine response. What would slow it down? The production end. That's where things like flavonoids, bioflavonoids you might call them. So the rind of plants are where a lot of bioflavonoids are, and you might see supplements like quercetin or hesperidin or rutin or luteolin or many of these other things. Those are all things that are flavonoids. Now there's a drug that's a flavonoid called chromalin, and it of course. Fits in the flavonoid compound area, but over the counter we've got all these other things. Now they're immunomodulators too, so they can do other stuff. But bioflavonoids—they're going to go to the mast cells and the other granular cells that release histamine and try and slow them down. A clinical pro tip with flavonoids, whether it's a drug or a natural product, is that you want to give them time to work because you can't take a flavonoid today and have it slow all of your mast cells down today or tomorrow. You got to keep taking it. It's a long game with. the flavonoids, whether it's a drug or a natural product. Quick plug here, if you're a healthcare practitioner working with patients with these issues, I have a CE website and I do webinars on this topic and others. So we're going to put a link in the description below to the CE website link and the particular webinar of interest. Thank you. The next category is the middle category, which is assisting the metabolism. Let's help get rid of the histamine. And there's 3 primary pathways to get rid of histamine. There is an acetylation There is a DAO pathway, and then there's a long pathway called HMNT+. So what are those and how do I support them? Well, the acetylation pathway is run through N-acetyltransferase, NAT, and that is a single pathway. It's like a release valve on histamine, and it's supported by a single nutrient, primarily vitamin B5, pantothenic acid. So a lot of times we'll give vitamin B5 in higher doses to people to help support acetylation through N-acetyltransferase. acetyltransferase, and that actually carries histamine partly out of your body. So very good. The other pathway that's fairly short is the DAO, diamine oxidase pathway, which used to be called histaminase, but now we just call it DAO. And you see there's DAO supplements. Now, some DAO supplements are actually the enzyme diamine oxidase, which is not a bad idea because a lot of DAO is in your gut. There's DAO elsewhere, but the DAO in your gut, so that can be supportive. Also, DAO uses cofactors, the enzyme, and some support supplements for DAO are cofactors, which are vitamin B6, magnesium, vitamin C, and sometimes copper. And so sometimes those are used to support DAO as well. And the third way out is a big long train. So it's a bunch of enzymes stacked up. We call it the HMNT or HMNT+ pathway because it starts with histamine and methyltransferase. And methyltransferase enzymes usually use methyl donors. So that would be methyl B12, methylfolate. Now, one caution is if you have histamine problems and you go and you take methyl B12 and methylfolate and You speed up the HMNT, the first way out for histamine, but you can't run the rest of the pathway, which we're going to get to, you'll build up more methylhistamine and methylhistamine might make you sicker temporarily. So with a lot of people, if you don't know what your tolerance is to methyl B12 methylfolate, or you've taken methyl B12 methylfolate and you got worse allergy symptoms, then you should not take that and fix the rest of the pathway and then take the B12 folate later on. But that's the first step, methylation. The next step though, where things get stuck is the cousin of DAO over here, and that's MAO, monoamine oxidase. Now you hear about MAO inhibitor drugs. Those are used for depression and other stuff in the central nervous system. Monoamine oxidase is very important because it gets rid of a ton of things, not just histamine. Monoamine oxidase is the second step in the HMNT+ pathway, and it helps to take histamine from methylhistamine and turn it into histamine aldehyde. The problem is that tons of other guys go through MAO as well. So it's a common backup place because not just methylhistamine goes to MAO, but a lot of reproductive Reproductive hormones like estrogen goes through there. Your catecholamine hormones like dopamine and norepinephrine go through there. And so everybody's trying to get through MAO, so it's often slow. Monamine oxidase has similar cofactors to diamine oxidase, being vitamin B6, magnesium, and vitamin C are huge for MAO. Once you get past monamine oxidase and you have histamine aldehyde, obviously that's sort of marked to leave your body, but you have to go through another enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase. Now, aldehyde dehydrogenase Has a cousin that is at the final step that that also gets involved in the removal not only of other aldehydes, so histamine aldehyde and other aldehydes, but also the removal of alcohol. So if people are consuming alcohol, drinking alcohol, sometimes their histamine problems will get worse, and it's because they're bottlenecking at the aldehyde dehydrogenase step. Can't get all of it out of there. Aldehyde dehydrogenase is supported primarily by two B vitamins: thiamine, vitamin B one, and NAD as. Part of vitamin B3. So when we're trying to support the HMNT+ pathway, we usually give all of the B complex of vitamins. As I said, there's also some magnesium used in there and vitamin C, and then there's some other nutrients used in there as well. So supporting all 3 ways out is very important. You've got the B5 one with NAT, you got DAO or DAO support on DAO, and then HMNT uses sort of all of the B vitamins and some minerals and vitamin C. And then there's also bacteria or microbiological degradation that can be supported by antihistamine metabolism probiotics. The one that I usually recommend for patients, it's not, I don't have any financial connection to it, but it works really good, so I recommend it, is a supplement called Histaminex Probiotic. So it's like Histaminex from Seeking Health, and they researched and put together probiotic strains that specifically help you to digest, as it were, or metabolize histamine, and that can be Very, very helpful as well. Plus it's good for your digestive tract. All right. Well, I'm Dr. A. I get a lot of questions about what can I do outside of antihistamines and steroids to help my histamine levels? Those are the ways to do it naturally. There's other ways, of course, but those are the core ways. Thank you for liking, sharing, doing notifications, subscribing. Appreciate all you people that listen in, and I'll be back on the next video.