So to get started I'm Taylor one of the dietitians
and nutrition consultants with the Diet versus Disease
Team. One area I absolutely love working with
in is Food Chemical intolerances such as
Histamine intolerance, which is why I decided
to do this series. And again today, we're going
to start with “What are Histamine?” So, food
chemical intolerance, histamine falls under
or histamine intolerance falls under part of that umbrella.
When people hear food chemicals, they often
get really nervous. Or think of things that
are made in a lab or think of manmade components. Food
Chemicals is pretty much just a compound and
in the sense of histamine these are naturally
occurring compounds and they can be quite helpful
in certain situations. So histamines themselves
their chemicals or messengers within our body,
specifically made from our immune system.
Ideally, they're made to protect our body from
potential invaders, or to help our body in situations
of allergy is when we often think of it. I often
try to refer to histamines almost like commanders
that are setting off a chain reaction to other
cells and systems within our body. They can
trigger a hot hive reaction, perhaps into our skin.
They can help set off a mucosal or mucus chain
reaction within our nasal passages, which
is why if we have a lot of seasonal allergies,
we often have a post nasal drip or lots of sinuses.
That are quite filled up a lot of the time. So
when we have a allergy or we have an invader
that our body needs to respond to histamines
are released often from mass cells within our body.
This accumulation of histamines help put off
a really quick response to prevent something
problematic from happening in our body. So
when does this helpful response turn into something
that's unhelpful or potentially harmful in
a sense of negative symptoms that continuously occur.
So, when this occurs is when, when we have a histamine
accumulation that doesn't start to deplete
or degrade with time. Now, there's a few different
processes that contribute to histamine accumulation
within our body. The first is going to be when
we eat certain foods, so certain foods or different
foods contain different amounts of histamine.
They naturally occur within these foods. Ideally
our body absorb some our DIO enzymes and
another methyl enzyme helps break these histamines down.
We eat something called Histidine, which is
a type of protein. Sometimes that converts
to histamine. A lot of the time summer absorbed
but then processed well with these enzymes
With a histamine intolerance, or when we're
accumulating too much or eating more than our enzymes
can keep up with, we actually see an increase
in this accumulation within our bloodstream.
So that's one way we're getting histamines
into our bloodstream or if we think of it almost
like a cup or a bucket are the food we eat is contributing
in part to that cup or bucket, but are enzymes
are working to deplete that or help regulate
that in our body. The second place that will
often get histamine accumulation within
our bloodstream from, is our own cells our mass
cells, like I mentioned earlier. So these mass
cells within our body they're triggered under
times of stress. If we eat foods that we call
histamine liberators. So these foods don't
release histamines themselves or don't contain
histamine themselves, but when we eat them,
they trigger a response from our body or they
tell ourselves to release a bit of histamine.
Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but can
be problematic if our body is not, then depleting
it or regulating it and processing it properly.
So, now we have all this histamine circulating
within our bloodstream. It's at this tipping
point and it's coming at our bloodstream in
our body from a few different directions. Our
cells, our medications. Can also sometimes
contribute and by no means, am I saying stop,
take your soft, taking your medications, but
that's another area that we can sometimes get
these from and then the third one is going to
be the food we eat. Now within the food we eat,
some foods contain histamines. Some foods
are histamine liberators. So, they increase
the amount of histamine our body cells release.
And then the third compound within foods, that
can impact the histamine accumulation in
our body are called DAO Inhibitors. So DAO is
one of the enzymes that helps with breaking
down and metabolizing histamines, within
our body, especially within our digestive tract.
When we eat food, some foods. They actually
use up our DAO or inhibit our DAO enzyme from doing
a good job at regulating histamine components
within our body. And so, there's a few different
moving parts with histamine and tolerance that
we have to start to look at to recognize, which
pieces are perhaps contributing more for our body.
Again, will dive into more of those pieces
in part 2, but for today, I really wanted to talk
about what is histamine. And what are those
chemical messengers doing? When is it helpful
for our body and protective? When is it harmful?
Or when is it starting to accumulate to that
point within our body that is starting to become
problematic and it's not starting to deplete.
And the last thing I'm going to talk about today
is why that happens and what the main symptoms
are and then you can stay tuned for next week
for part 2. But when those histamines accumulate
and I just reviewed the three main processes
and why that occurs? What happens is our the
histamine or those messengers of those commanders
are circulating in our body. They're not going
back for break. They're not going back to sleep.
Whatever we want to say for these commanders
or these kind of chain reaction starters. They
are circulating and circulating circulating
and they'll irritate different nerves within our body.
So a histamine reaction is quite different
than a FODMAP reaction that many people are
sometimes familiar with. FODMAP reactions occur
all within our colon or within our digestive
tract, histamines are absorbed right into our bloodstream.
They’re circulating. They're not depleting
or being regulated properly. They're much
too high as they circulate. They Irritate different
nerves in different parts of our bodies. We
have different receptors to get a little bit technical,
they’re called H1 or histamine 1 receptors
H2, H3, H4, H5, so different histamine receptors.
And when these excess histamines are triggering them.
So setting them off. It's starts a chain reaction,
different histamine accumulation levels,
in different people, start different chain reactions.
This might result in a migraine. This could
react in itchy skin. This could mean we have sinus issues
or sinus trip. This could result in bloating,
gas, constipation heartburn. So there are
a wide variety of potential symptoms. We want
to monitor a watch out for. They do overlap a
lot with fodmaps or a few other intolerances.
So we want to make sure we're not jumping into
histamine or a histamine elimination or a histamine
diet before really evaluating if that's the
route right route for us. Although there's
not a ton of research yet. The preliminary research
shows that about 1 to 5 percent of individuals
has a histamine and tolerance that we really
want to regulate. And then there's going to
be a few other areas that perhaps people fall
within two. If you fall within that area again,
please reach out to a health professional whether
myself where we'd be happy to help figure out
a plan that works for you. And if you're looking
for just some more information to get started,
comment “Failsafe” on this video and we'll
be able to get you connected with at least a little
bit more written material to go along with this.
But again, welcome to part 1 of our healing histamine,
series starting that baseline of what histamines
are what to look out for. I hope that was helpful.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback,
please let me know in the comments and I look
forward to seeing you next week for part 2.