Histamine Health Coach

Episode 2 - How Stress Triggers Histamine Intolerance and MCAS Symptoms

• Teresa Christensen • Episode 2

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Stress isn't just a feeling—it's a physical response that can wreak havoc on your body when you have histamine intolerance. Welcome to a deep dive into the powerful connection between stress and histamine reactions that could be triggering your unexplained symptoms.

When your body perceives stress, it releases cortisol and adrenaline, sending your mast cells into overdrive and flooding your system with histamine. This creates a perfect storm where even "safe" foods suddenly trigger reactions, sleep becomes elusive, and social situations feel fraught with danger. As someone who's been there—scratching my arm before television broadcasts until hives appeared, experiencing migraines from exercise, and navigating family gatherings with food fears—I understand the isolation and frustration that comes with these unpredictable symptoms.

The most challenging part? Stress creates vicious cycles in every aspect of life with histamine intolerance. Fear of foods makes digestion more sensitive. Poor sleep from nighttime histamine dumps increases daytime stress. Social isolation from explaining your condition strains relationships. Even healthy movement can trigger reactions. But there's hope in understanding these connections. Simple techniques like extended exhale breathing, mindful eating environments, and gentle movement can help regulate your nervous system and reduce histamine reactions. Perhaps most powerful is reframing stress itself—not as an enemy to eliminate, but as your body's signal to slow down and practice self-care.

Have you noticed stress triggering your symptoms? You're not alone on this journey. Subscribe for more insights as we continue exploring histamine intolerance together, including our next episode on histamine and brain fog. Ready to break free from the fear and take control of your health? Let's walk this path together, one mindful breath at a time.

Speaker 1:

Hi, welcome to Histamine Health Coach, the podcast for women navigating histamine intolerance and looking for real answers. I'm Teresa Christensen and I know firsthand how overwhelming it can be to deal with food triggers, environmental sensitivities and unpredictable symptoms. But you don't have to figure it out alone. Each week, I'll share my personal journey and practical strategies to help you break free from fear and take control of your health. So let's get started. Have you ever noticed that stress makes your symptoms worse? Maybe your stomach tightens, maybe your skin gets itchy and you feel exhausted or can't put two sentences together. I've been there too, although I didn't realize it. Stress has been triggering my histamine symptoms for years. Hi, I'm Teresa Christensen, a functional medicine certified health coach and histamine health coach.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're talking about how stress affects the body and why it can send your histamine levels soaring. So before we dive into how stress affects the body, let's just take a moment to define it. How often do you hear the phrase I feel stressed, probably saying it yourself. Well, stress isn't just a feeling. It's a physical response. When your brain perceives a challenge or a threat, your body kicks into high gear, releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This is called the fight or flight response and it's meant to help you survive. But here's the thing Our bodies don't always know the difference between real danger and everyday stressors. Whether you're running from a bear or just stuck in traffic, the same chemical response gets triggered and when stress is constant it starts to take a toll, especially on people with histamine intolerance. As a functional medicine certified health coach, I'm trained in lifestyle factors and how they affect stress and the overall toll that stress takes on the body. But as a woman with histamine intolerance, I know firsthand how the lifestyle factors can be limiting due to the fear of how our mast cells will react at any given moment. The lifestyle factors I help women with are nutrition, sleep relationships, movement and, of course, stress is a lifestyle factor all in itself. So let's talk about these lifestyle factors and how they affect your stress and their connection to histamine intolerance.

Speaker 1:

Let's start with nutrition. I've shared before that I suffer from a fear of foods. When a woman with histamine intolerance develops a fear of food and her everyday diet is narrowed down to just a handful of safe foods, the world can feel really small. As a result, your nutrition is set aside and your gut will struggle to heal. The overall problem is that your body is perceiving your fear as stress. This in turn activates the nervous system and makes digestion even more sensitive. So the more we stress about our food, the harder it becomes to tolerate it.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about sleep. Sleep is something most women only dream about. When was the last time you had a good night's sleep? Because of our hormones, sleep disruptions are common among women. Because of our hormones, sleep disruptions are common among women. But women with histamine intolerance not only have hot flashes that come from the histamines, but also hormones which are exaggerated due to the histamine dump.

Speaker 1:

My nightly histamine dump doesn't happen as often as it used to, but for years, even going all the way back to my college days, my legs itched all night long. Eventually I learned to wear pajama pants and that kept me from scratching my skin until it would bleed. So then came vertigo and the restless leg pain, which makes it very difficult to get a restful night's sleep. A histamine dump can make it so difficult to fall asleep or even stay asleep when our bodies are in overdrive and our cortisol levels are off. This creates a vicious cycle. Poor sleep increases stress, stress increases your histamine levels and everything makes your sleep quality even worse.

Speaker 1:

Next up relationships. Managing histamine intolerance can feel isolating. Whether you're struggling to explain food restrictions to people who don't get it, avoiding social gatherings or even dealing with people who just don't understand your condition, relationships can be strained. I remember one time being at a family celebration with my husband's family and the stress of being around people I didn't know I'd never met them and trying to fit in while being terrified of becoming sick from foods that I knew would trigger GI issues. My solution's always been to go to a local market and just buy my safe foods in whatever city I'm visiting, but the host was very offended that time and just thought I was extra and controlling. Admittedly, I can be extra at times, but this was not one of those times. So the emotional stress of these situations isn't just frustrating. It's almost guaranteed to activate your mast cells and produce symptoms. So movement and exercise Movement is a very important part of reducing stress, but many women with histamine intolerance experience exercise-induced reactions known as exercise anaphylaxis. Making it feel unsafe to push their bodies can prevent some women from moving at all, which can make stress and inflammation worse over time. In my case, I usually get a migraine and experience extreme fatigue if my body gets overheated, so I have had to learn how to cool my body down afterwards to prevent from over activating my mast cells.

Speaker 1:

Bottom line stress isn't just about external pressures. It can come from within too, fueled by fear, uncertainty and limitations we feel in our daily lives. When stress builds up, it puts us in a cycle that keeps triggering histamine reactions. So let's talk about exactly how stress affects the body, because stress is a natural response. Our bodies release cortisol and adrenaline to help us handle challenging situations, but when stress becomes chronic, these hormones are thrown off, throwing off our immune system, our digestion process, the histamine. So ever notice how some people just break out in hives when they're nervous or get an upset stomach before a big event? That's your body reacting to stress, and for those of us with histamine intolerance, these responses can be even more intense.

Speaker 1:

Before I even knew histamine intolerance could be related to or even activated by stress, I saw stress show up in my body. Tons of examples I could share, but here's a simple one you may be able to relate to, involving stress in the workplace, which can prove to be challenging. So when I worked in television, I produced live graphics for broadcast of major sporting events. I produced live graphics for broadcasts of major sporting events. One day, out of the blue, I noticed I was unconsciously scratching my left arm before going on the air. This would happen before every show and it was my body's way of saying hey, you pay attention? Sure enough, hives would appear. At the time I didn't really connect the dots. I thought it was just a weird nervous habit and eventually learned it was a sign of stress. And now I know it was my mast cells reacting to my stress, releasing histamine and causing those red itchy whelps that I would get.

Speaker 1:

So when stress is affecting women, our bodies release chemicals like cortisol and other stress hormones. In a balanced system, these help regulate inflammation. But in women with histamine intolerance, mast cells are already hyperactive and stress can push them into overdrive. Stress doesn't just cause hives, though. It can trigger headaches and, in my case, migraines, gut issues, extreme fatigue, brain fog and, yes, even food reactions, because the way histamine levels rise under stress. So if your histamine levels are already rising due to the stress and you eat foods high in histamine, chances are you're going to react to your foods.

Speaker 1:

So if stress is unavoidable, what can we do? Here are a few things that have helped me First recognizing my body's stress signals. For me, it was when I noticed I was scratching my arm before going on the air. At times and this may be possible for you too it can be a tightness in the chest, your face flushing, irregular body temperatures. I go from being hot to cold to hot to cold, sudden digestion issues. So what can we do about it?

Speaker 1:

Breathing techniques are something I like to fall back upon because they're simple and can be done almost anywhere. The one I use the most is the extended exhale technique. You inhale for a short amount of time, about four seconds, and then you exhale for a longer period of time, which is about six to eight seconds. I can do it with you right now. So what we're going to do is we're going to inhale through the nose for four seconds and exhale slowly through the mouth for six to eight seconds. Here we go. So my suggestion for you would be to repeat this a few times just to get comfortable with the, with feeling your breath and the idea of a breathing exercise, and then slowly work your way up to repeating for a few minutes at a time, a couple times a day if you need to. The extended exhale signals the body to shift into a parasympathetic state, and the parasympathetic state is the relaxed one. What I used to do to remember that that was the relaxed one was I put a post-it note on my computer and you could probably do this too that just said be parasympathetic. That was my way of reminding myself that that was the good one. That was my way of reminding myself that that was the good one. So a word of caution, though If you inhale longer than you exhale, it can trigger hyperventilation, and that will give you absolutely the opposite effect, and you will not experience the calm from the extended exhale breathing from the extended exhale breathing.

Speaker 1:

Another way to ease your stress is gentle movement into your day, which can also help reduce your stress and lessen your histamine reactions. Things like yoga, stretching or even a short walk can help regulate stress hormones. Movement also helps your digestion and by moving things around in the gut. So another way to regulate your stress levels is incorporating mindfulness and reframing stress. Instead of thinking of stress as the enemy and fearing it, I now recognize it as my body signaling me to slow down. Recognize it as my body signaling me to slow down. Best reframe I can think of is that stress is something our bodies need to signal us to get up in the mornings, go to work and get through our daily lives.

Speaker 1:

When you view stress as something you need to totally remove from your life, you're not managing it and it can have a more troubling impact. It and it can have a more troubling impact. So, to help you find calm and lower your stress levels, for your meals, choose a relaxing place to eat, instead of eating in a hurry or while watching television. Try enjoying your meals on a plate that's a color that soothes you. I have different colors. I have yellow and pink and blue, black. Just yeah, soothing plate colors just make me happy. So eating in a room without a lot of clutter can help also, and enjoying the flavors and the textures of your meals. It can also be helpful to eat with people you like. Enjoying meals with your family and friends takes your minds off of what you're eating and who you're sharing your meals with. It also brings about laughter, and laughter is great for your nervous system and also for your digestion, so laughter can calm you down. So having meals with people you like just makes you happy.

Speaker 1:

Stress may not be something we can eliminate completely, though, by understanding how it affects our bodies, especially for those with histamine intolerance, we can take small steps to manage it better.

Speaker 1:

Have you noticed stress triggering your symptoms? Let me know in the comments and if this video helped, be sure to like and subscribe so we can keep this conversation going. I would love to hear about the way you handle your stress with your histamine intolerance. In the next episode, I'll share what I know about histamine and brain fog, and if you have questions or topics you'd like for me to cover, please feel free to reach out at Teresa at histaminehealthcoachcom. And if the stories I share sound familiar, know that you are not alone. You can take control of your health, one small step at a time, and I'm here to walk this path with you, share what worked for me and show you that you have what it takes to live without fear. Thank you so much for being here today. If you found this helpful, please feel free to share it with someone who you think might need it. Have a great day. Bye-bye.