The Role Histamines Could Play in PMS

Histamine intolerance is a relatively new thing. Discover how it could be making your PMS symptoms worse. You'll also hear what to change to have less PMS symptoms related to histamine intolerance.

Take Aways

• My terrible experience with severe PMS symptoms last week. 
• My symptoms were likely heightened by high histamine levels.
• About histamines from Healthline.com
• The body can get overloaded with histamine and have an allergic response
•  "Histamine intolerance is the temporary state of having too much histamine, which is the part of the immune system that causes allergies and swelling. In addition to its role in immune function, histamine also regulates stomach acid, stimulates the brain, boosts libido and plays a key role in ovulation and female reproduction." -Lara Briden, Naturopathic doctor, Period Repair Manual, page 123.
• If you're healthy, your body should be able to clear histamine with the DAO (diamine oxidase enzyme).
• You may be more vulnerable to histamine intolerance at different times of your menstrual cycle.
• During ovulation and right before your period your body is higher in estrogen. Estrogen stimulates histamine production. Having too much histamine stimulates the body to produce more estrogen. The cycle continues.
• " Taking steps to lower histamine can dramatically improve PMS, period pain, and heavy periods." -Lara Briden, Period Repair Manual, page 124.
• "Steps include avoiding cow's dairy (histamine-stimulating food), avoiding fermented foods (histamine-containing food), and taking vitamin B6 which clear histamine by up regulating the DAO enzyme." -Lara Briden, Period Repair Manual, page 124
•  Treatment for histamine intolerance can include enhancing progesterone or taking progesterone as well. -Lara Briden, Period Repair Manual, page 205
• Note: natural progesterone (also called micronized progesterone) is different from progestin.

Want to feel better? I'd love to help. Book a 30 minute call with me (Heidi) here. 

Heidi's links:

• Heidi's website
• Heidi's Instagram

Are you here for pmdd support? I've got you.

• 5 Ways To Feeling Better with PMDD: I created this free download to help women with pmdd feel better. I wish it had been around when I first learned I had pmdd. 
• Semaine PMS and Period Support Supplements: These supplements have reduced cramps and helped level emotional downs that I (and my teen daughter) experience. Book a one off support call Just need some friendly advice about your pmdd journey? A support call is Free support call with me. 

Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

Episode 90: The Role Histamine Could Play in PMS Symptoms

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

 today I want to share with you, um, a little bit about histamine and specifically as it relates to women and PMS. And having PPMS symptoms or PMDD. If you don't think you have any of that, this is still really interesting information to know about for your teenagers, for other people. And also you might recognize that, "oh, I think I do have some histamine intolerance and I didn't really recognize that." 

This month I had a really, really hard [00:01:00] time in my luteal phase. I was laying on my couch under a blanket, feeling awful, thinking terrible things about myself, my marriage. My teenage daughter was home and happened to come downstairs. She held me and I cried and I vented all this yucky negative stuff. She reassured me and she made some positive statements that really did not sink in. They didn't. But I felt her support and after I let all of that out, I was able to just shift to my work stuff.

Even though I didn't feel very good. I didn't have this little light inside of me that's usually there, I was in a better place than I had been just hours before.

Somehow I remembered about histamine. I did a search and I [00:02:00] discovered that it's not just about low histamine foods and high histamine foods or what you're sensitive to, but also the process of how the food is prepared and made can increase or decrease histamine. Slow cooking and smoking meats increase their histamine. When I thought about the food I'd eaten, I realized maybe that set it off. Like maybe that's why I'm having this terrible time. The day that this happened, I'm in my luteal phase, no longer in ovulation. But it was shifting into luteal phase where that depressive state came.

The past seven days we had had slow cooked loin, slow cooked shredded chicken, my husband smoked ribs, which I love, and having it as leftovers [00:03:00] the other days. Again, Slow cooking and smoking meats increase their histamine. I thought, you know, I'm just gonna go with that. I'm gonna think that that's what it is. Let's find a list of low and high histamine foods, and then also how they need to be prepared. Okay, so lettuce, romaine lettuce is low. I'm gonna have that and I'm only gonna have a little bit of the pork loin.

I did that. I had mostly salad and then the pork loin. Even before dinner, I saw that apples are histamine healing is what the thing I read said, and so I had apples and I didn't have a little clementine. The past few days I've been having a clementine every day. Just having the apple and then having that for dinner, I already felt better. [00:04:00] Physically and my mood.

There's not like one thing that's gonna make us always feel better, but getting these little nuggets and plugging them into our life and trying to remember them for different times, which I know just sounds like it's a pain. But if that's what will help us, we ought to do it.

I want to share with you, a little bit about histamine in general from healthline.com. Histamine is a substance your cells produce to help your immune system respond to allergy triggers. Histamine is an important part of your allergic response. That's why people use antihistamines to treat allergy symptoms caused by having too much histamine in their bodies. Histamine is also involved in various bodily functions that can affect your gastrointestinal tract, your [00:05:00] brain, and your overall immune response.

Essentially, the body can get kind of overloaded with histamine and have an allergic response. In Lara Brighton's book, the Period Repair Manual. She's a naturopathic doctor right now based out of New Zealand. I wanna read some of what she has in here about histamine intolerance.

I think I shared some of this in the podcast about a one versus a two milk. Inflammation you get because of cow's dairy can also make your PMS symptoms worse. Well, histamine, can be tied to that. One of the ways that casein, the A one Cain drives period problems is by contributing to something called histamine intolerance.

That's one of the things that, um, Ryden [00:06:00] says. Her definition or her little blurb in her book about histamine intolerance says, "histamine intolerance is the temporary state of having too much histamine, which is the part of the immune system that causes allergies and swelling. In addition to its role in immune function, histamine also regulates stomach acid, stimulates the brain, boosts libido and plays a key role in ovulation and female reproduction." Histamine is really, uh, important. I hope you heard that. Stomach acid, stimulating the brain, libido, a role in ovulation, in female reproduction. Like that's huge. Histamine intolerance is the temporary state of having too much histamine.

She goes on to say, "histamine is not bad. It's an important part of physiology, but too [00:07:00] much histamine can cause a variety of unwanted symptoms, including period symptoms. Too much histamine can be the result of several different inputs. For example, your body makes histamine. Food sensitivities like dairy, stimulate histamine, and many foods like fermented foods contain histamine. That's a lot of histamine coming in, but if you're healthy, your body should be able to clear it all with an enzyme called diamine oxidase or DAO. If that enzyme is not functioning well, or if there's just too much histamine coming in, you will develop symptoms of too much histamine or histamine intolerance.

"There are times in your cycle when you are more vulnerable to histamine intolerance, for example, you may experience it at ovulation and just before you period. Why? Because that's when estrogen is high compared to progesterone and [00:08:00] estrogen increases histamine. It does so by stimulating your immune system to make more histamine and by downregulating the DAO enzyme that's supposed to break it down. At the same time that estrogen stimulates histamine, too much histamine stimulates your ovaries to make more estrogen.

"The result can be a vicious cycle of estrogen to histamine, to estrogen to histamine. Taking steps to lower histamine can dramatically improve PMS, period pain, and heavy periods. Such steps include avoiding cows dairy or histamine stimulating food, avoiding fermented foods, histamine containing food, and taking vitamin B six, which clears histamine by upregulating the DAO enzyme.

Just a warning. Histamine intolerance is not yet a recognized medical diagnosis, so your [00:09:00] Dr. May not be responsive when you ask about it. "

Isn't that just interesting and like fascinating? There are times in your cycle when you are more vulnerable to histamine in intolerance. For example, you may experience it at ovulation and just before your period. I just have to wonder how many women have a hard time at ovulation and get diagnosed with something or they just feel terrible and they're like, I don't know what to do about it. It's awful. But what if just changing the histamine containing foods and the histamine stimulating food, like foods that make your body wanna build more histamine. Just by limiting that, you might be able to have a better life during the luteal phase.

That has been my experience. When I was looking at a one dairy I was onto this [00:10:00] and I did a good job of watching out for it. When I shifted from using a one milk to a two milk. I felt so much better. I think the inflammation was so much less, that I could still have some cheese here and there. I could still have, uh, desserts or food that had milk, a one milk, uh, pasta sauces and stuff. And it was okay because I had a two milk more of the time. So I wasn't getting a ton of that a one casein.

Later in Rab Brighton's book, she says, and this is under "a special topic, the curious link between PMS and histamine". If your PMS symptoms include headaches, anxiety, or brain fog, then you might be suffering histamine intolerance... Histamine is a normal part of your immune system, but too much histamine can cause symptoms.[00:11:00] 

"Histamine intolerance is often worse just before the period because estrogen increases histamine and vice versa. Progesterone, on the other hand, decreases histamine, which is one way that progesterone relieves PMS. Treatment for histamine intolerance can include enhancing progesterone or taking progesterone, reducing histamine stimulating foods such as dairy and alcohol.

"Reducing histamine containing foods such as red wine, cheese, bone broth, and fermented foods. Or taking vitamin B six, which upregulates the DAO enzyme that breaks down histamine. Histamine intolerance can also be a factor in period pain and ovarian cysts... histamine reduction is a big part of why vitamin B six and natural progesterone works so well for PMS and other conditions."

Now, since she mentions enhancing progesterone or taking [00:12:00] progesterone, just know that that is different than progestin, like taking progestins. Um, our medical world here, in the United States , they claim the side effects are the same with natural progesterone and a progestin. They're not. The synthetic is the progestin. I'm actually gonna do an episode about that. I think it's gonna be my next one. But it might be in a few.

Hopefully this has given you something to think about, a new tool to use if it seems like it could apply to you, and we'll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.