Today I'm going to talk about how to work with your food to minimize symptoms if you
have histamine intolerance, so stay tuned.
If you're new here, welcome.
My name's Amanda Malachesky.
I'm a Certified Functional Health Coach and a Digestive and Allergy Detective, for tips
and tricks on how to eat without triggering your symptoms and how to recover your digestive
health, please be sure to subscribe and click the bell to be notified when I post a new
video every week.
Histamine intolerance is a frustrating condition that you might be dealing with, and I find
that a lot of people who have histamine intolerance get really confused about the food part and
how to deal with that.
So in today's video, I'm going to talk about how to work with your food to identify your
worst triggers so that you can minimize your symptoms while you work on resolving the root
causes of your histamine intolerance.
I work this way to help all my clients customize their diets and minimize their symptoms, and
I know that you can too.
So let's get started.
Histamine intolerance is when you have a reaction to foods that either have high levels of histamine
or are what's called histamine liberators.
The common symptoms are things like flushing and skin rashes, headaches, brain fog, in
some cases diarrhea, and also sneezing or itching in the throat, the ears, or in the
mouth.
Quite a few foods have histamine or are histamine liberators so it can be a little confusing
to figure out how to best customize your diet without removing a lot of foods or drastically
changing your diet.
So the first thing you want to do is get ahold of a good histamine food list.
I have one linked for you below this video so you can go ahead and grab that.
As with other general category food intolerances, I find that people with histamine tolerance
often aren't sensitive to every food on the histamine list.
But a lot of times what happens is people get that list and they think, "Oh my God.
I have to remove all these foods from this list," but it's not really true.
What we really want to focus on is having you remove the foods that are the very worst
triggers, but the trick is is that we need a way to identify them for you.
So chances are you look at this lists and you'll see some foods on there where you think,
"Oh, yeah.
I definitely know that I react to that food."
And there might be some foods where you're like, "I'm not sure.
I might have a reaction to those foods."
And then you'll see some where you're like, "I don't have a problem with that food."
That's totally normal.
So using the histamine food list, I want you to make a list of the yes, no, and maybe foods
for yourself, just ... This is unique to you.
Go ahead and make that list.
One additional thing to remember about histamine foods that isn't covered by the list itself
is that histamine increases over time in leftover foods that are being stored, even refrigerated
foods.
So if you are someone who eats a lot of leftovers, just keep that in mind as you're making your
list.
Next, you'll want to do some food symptom tracking.
You can either do this with a food tracking app that also allows you to track symptoms.
You could do it on some just good old-fashioned pen and paper.
You could make one yourself.
Or if you'd like, you can grab a copy of mine.
I'll leave a link for that below this video, my food symptom diary.
So in the food symptom diary, what you want to do is take note of what you eat, when you
eat it throughout the day, and also note your symptoms.
This could be anything from mood changes, skin changes, stool changes, headaches, any
sign or symptom that comes up.
Note that you had it and note ... In the food symptom diary in the column marked symptoms,
you want to write down what you're experiencing.
And I want you to take at least five days, maybe up to seven days, of data to start.
You don't have to analyze it at all.
You just want to write it down and note the symptoms.
Once you have five to seven days of the data, then you can go back and start looking to
see if you can make any connections.
Are you noticing any patterns?
Do you notice any symptom patterns that happen at the same time of day?
Well, what do you eat in the meal before that symptom comes up at that same time of day,
for example?
If you think that you see something that's correlated, you can do an experiment where
you trial that food intentionally.
Then, using the food symptom tracking tool, keep track of your symptoms and see if you
can get a repeat on that symptom.
And if it turns out that that symptom seems to be triggered by that food, then you can
remove that food and move on to the next test.
It's helpful here to remember that sometimes symptoms can be delayed one, two, or even
three days after the fact with histamine symptoms so definitely using the tool can be helpful
in this way because otherwise it's kind of difficult to remember what you ate three days
ago.
So what if you're someone who's really reactive to a lot of foods, or the whole list, or another
list of foods that you've been looking at?
In this case, I highly recommend finding a medical provider that can help guide you through
this process.
The best case in this situation is going to be a functional medicine doctor, a naturopath,
or someone similar that can help you investigate the underlying causes of your histamine intolerance
and potentially help you have more tools to work with rather than just changing your diet.
If your intolerance is this developed, diet alone isn't really going to help you resolve
it.
It might help you resolve a lot of the symptoms, but it's not really going to help in the big
picture.
Chronic severe histamine intolerance is often triggered by things like severe gut dysbiosis,
mold illness, or sometimes a condition called MCAST which stands for mast cell activation
syndrome.
These issues definitely require a higher level practitioner to help you manage, so check
that out for sure.
What are your histamine food triggers?
Tell me about it in the comments below.
I hope that this short video has helped you figure out how to work with a histamine food
list to get some relief from your worst histamine triggers and symptoms.
If you still got more questions about how to figure this stuff out for yourself, I've
put together a Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
It's an action guide that puts together the steps that I've seen help people find resolution
from their digestive challenges and allergy challenges.
So if you'd like to get a free copy of that, you can head over to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap
and download that there.
There's also a link for that below this video.
Or if you're ready for some help customizing what you're already doing, I do work with
private clients.
To find out more about doing that, you can schedule a free 30-minute assessment session
with me by heading over to confluencenutrition.com/contact, and I'll be happy to meet with you and answer
all your questions.
So get out there and start tracking your food with your symptoms to assess what your worst
histamine food triggers are.
And if you liked this video, please consider liking and sharing it with your friends and
family.
I will look forward to talking to you next time.