Could your medication be causing your
histamine intolerance?
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. And this is
Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about
medications that can contribute to
histamine intolerance. Now, if you're not
histamine intolerant, or you're not on
any medications at all, then you might
want to skip over this video. But if you,
or someone you know, or someone you take
care of, or particularly if you're a healthcare
practitioner, listen in or watch on
so that you can see the many medications that
can contribute to histamine intolerance.
Once again, histamine intolerance is
symptoms such as headache, diarrhea, or
anything resembling an allergy in
response to foods that are high in
histamine. I'll link to the episodes that
are most introductory about
histamine intolerance in the description
of this episode in case you're just
joining in now.
Now, let's take a look at
this paper. The list of medications I'm
about to show you is from the paper
"Histamine, histamine intoxication and
intolerance" from 2015.
In this paper there is a very long list of
medications that can decrease DAO
activity, which prevents you from
clearing histamine, drugs that can
liberate histamine causing you to
produce more histamine, and then some
drugs that interfere with vitamin B6,
which is an important cofactor for
diamine oxidase, again, the enzyme that
helps you clear the histamine. So here we
have several of the antiarrhythmics. We
have a number of antibiotics. We have one
of the painkillers, metamizole.
We have antidepressants,
psychiatric medications, listing them here.
We have antiemetics, antihistamines,
antihypertensive drugs, antimalarials,
bronchodilators, diuretics, mucolytics,
muscle relaxants, and antiseptics. This is
a long list, so what I would recommend is
that you pause the video, check out each
of the names of these medications, and then
look at the Wikipedia page or
google them to see what
names they might go by. If you're on any
of these—if you're on any medications,
check them against what you might be
taking to see if any of them are the
same. Then there's a number of
painkillers, antiflogistics, antibiotics,
anti-hypotensives, anti-hypertensives,
so basically drugs that can
increase or decrease your blood pressure,
antitussives, cytostatics,
diuretics, iodine-containing contrast
medium, local anesthetics, muscle
relaxants, narcotics, anesthetics.
Again, pause the video and look at the list,
double-check the names to see if it
corresponds to anything that you're on.
These are the histamine liberators, and
then there's a much smaller list of
drugs that can inactivate vitamin B6.
These are the anti—one of the
antihypertensive drugs, a couple of the
antibiotics, and hormonal contraceptives
that contain estrogen. As I noted in the
last episode, estrogen downregulates
diamine oxidase activity, meaning it
lowers the amount of diamine oxidase
you have. Whether that's only from
interfering with vitamin B6 or whether
it also is independently decreasing DAO
doesn't really matter. Point being,
hormonal contraceptives are another way
to get more estrogen into your system as
would happen in estrogen spikes
according to your menstrual cycle like
I discussed in the last episode. And so
hormonal contraception should be
regarded as one of the contributors to
histamine intolerance.
All right, so if you're watching the video,
I recommend going back
and pausing it where you see
that list. And if you're listening to the
podcast, I recommend going to my website
chrismasterjohnphd.com, where you can
find the link—where you can find the
video embedded or find the link to the
YouTube or Facebook video. Go to the
video, pause the list, pause it where you
see the list, and see if any of those
categories of drugs might be something
you're taking. If you are, double-check
the specific names against the
commercial names they go by through
Wikipedia or just googling it and see if
that corresponds to anything you're taking.
If it does, then depending on why
you're taking it and how much you need
to be taking it and what the
alternatives are, you may be able to just
discuss with your doctor
getting off the medication or switching
to something else that can fulfill the
same role without interfering with
histamine metabolism. And if that's
the case, that might be one of
the important steps to improving your
ability to tolerate dietary histamine.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. This has been
Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next episode