Histamine
Hands up if you’ve had a histamine overload? If like osteopath Sally you have hay fever, you would have experienced a histamine response.
Imbalances in histamine levels can lead to uncomfortable symptoms and health issues. Symptoms are likely to be sneezing, itchy skin, painfully sore eyes, tiredness, itchy throat and overall, feel drained.
This is your bodies way of dealing with an allergy or inflammation. Your body is doing its job and expelling these irritants away from your organs.
Histamine is a natural substance our body makes, mainly by immune cells, to fight off invaders like allergens (e.g. pollen) or germs, it can be found in some foods and gets released when we have allergies or inflammation. Histamine helps with increasing blood flow to where it’s needed sending the white blood cells to fight off threats, and even regulate stomach acid.
Why is histamine important?
A few important body functions:
1. Immune response: It helps our body respond to allergens, germs, or injuries by triggering inflammation and sending more blood to the area to help fight off the threat. For example, pollen get up your nose, your response is to sneeze.
2. Brain function: In our brain, histamine acts like a messenger, helping with things to stay awake, be alert and thinking clearly.
3. Stomach acid: Histamine helps our stomach make acid, which is needed to digest food. But too much histamine in the stomach can cause issues like acid reflux or ulcers.
Therefore, we need histamine production but as with most chemicals we don’t want them in overdrive!
If you’re sensitive to histamine or have too much of it causing problems, you can try these tips:
- Watch what you eat, avoid foods high in histamine like aged cheeses process meats and alcohol. Stick to fresh fruits whenever possible.
- Keep stress to a minimum, stress can make histamine issues worse. For example, you may experience hive temporarily. Try breathing techniques and deal with what is causing you stress.
- Stay hydrated drink plenty of water to help flush out excess histamine from your body.
- Consider supplements like vitamin C or quercetin as these might help your body breakdown histamine better.
- As always listen to your body pay attention to how your body reacts to different foods or situations and adjust accordingly.
- Manual therapy protocols within Neurological Integrated Systems can get to the root cause because it is a holistic approach that works with the body’s nervous system to restore balance and function. It can help identify and address underlying imbalances that may be contributing to a histamine issue.
By making small changes to your diet and lifestyle you can better manage histamine levels and improve your overall well-being
What a patient says:
(Patient gave consent on the basis that Sally is not qualified and in the process of studying).
“Last summer was stressful, more stressful than most of my life. My husband was poorly, and I came out in what the doctor told me was hives and to take antihistamines. I’m not one for taking medicine and was seeing Sally for a shoulder complaint, she saw this and asked if she could try something she was learning. I trust her, so happy to comply. She did a few movements with my arm, asked me to eat a small piece of dark chocolate and did more movements with my body/arm and that was it. Thought it was strange but 3 days later my hives had almost completely gone!
H.S of Lymington aged 57.
New Forest Osteopath, Sally Morris: This is part of my new training, which I will be introducing to patients when I feel it will benefit them. These new protocols are about bringing homeostasis to the brain and the body from the root. More details to follow as I progress further down this path.