Short video/personal presentation by Natalie Jill discussing histamine intolerance and mast cell activation syndrome, explaining histamine’s roles, symptoms of excess histamine (hives, bloating, flushing, food/medication reactions, anxiety-like symptoms), and recommending a temporary low-histamine diet with examples of low-histamine foods and preparation tips (cook meats fresh, avoid leftovers, avoid fermented foods and bone broth).
Get one thing straight. A low histamine diet is definitely not for everyone. Heck, if your gut is happy, your hormones are happy, you're not stressed, everything is balanced and working fine, then sauerkraut and fermented foods and avocados, those are your BFFs. But if you've been stressed or something just feels really off or you're not detoxing your hormones, well, you might want to consider temporarily a low histamine diet first. What even is histamine? It's not bad. It's something that your body uses to regulate stomach acid, keep your brain alert and help fight infection. So we all need it on some level. But when your gut, your liver or your hormones are not clearing effectively or efficiently, think like estrogen dominance, then it is something that can get over created in your body. What happens when it builds up in your body and it's not working effectively? Well, you can start getting hives, you can get bloating after meals, you can get intolerance to heat, you start getting flushing. You can have reactions to different foods, medications, supplements that you weren't having before, and even have things that feel like anxiety. If you've been following my stories, you've seen me have a whole host of things over the last several months that I was not connecting to mast cell activation or histamine intolerance. Now, histamine tolerance is typically temporary. It's not a permanent thing. But if you're wondering if that could be something that is going on with you, it doesn't hurt to try a low histamine diet for a little while. Let me show you what I'm eating today. So today I got chicken that I'll cook fresh for lunch. I have beef for dinner, and then my size will be very limited, but it's sweet potatoes. I've got apples, pears, green beans, some actual coconut, which is fine. Blueberries are low histamine. Bok choy is a vegetable that's low in histamine and apples. Now, I've always taught unprocessed, natural, real food eating. I'm a fan of eating real, natural, unprocessed foods. Today. What I'm showing you is how to take it up a notch if you're looking at histamine in foods. So when you're looking at histamine in foods, you don't want to eat any leftovers. Reheating and leftovers are high in histamine, but bone broth unfortunately is out. Fermented foods would be out and then with fresh fruits and vegetables. You just have to look. Some have more histamine, some have a lot less. So that's why I picked the very low histamine ones for today. As far as meat, you want to cook it fresh, not reheat, not leftover. So it's just taking the unprocessed up a whole nother notch temporarily.
