Episode 15 - The Female Hormone-Histamine Connection

Ever wondered why your symptoms seem to flare right before your period? The answer lies in the fascinating and often overlooked connection between female hormones and histamine intolerance. 

Women are twice as likely to suffer from histamine-related issues compared to men, and it's not by chance. Your body's natural hormone fluctuations create a perfect storm for histamine sensitivity. When estrogen rises before ovulation and menstruation, it activates mast cells throughout your body, triggering histamine release. Meanwhile, this same estrogen suppresses DAO, the enzyme responsible for breaking down histamine in your digestive system. Adding to this challenging cascade, progesterone—which normally helps stabilize mast cells—drops dramatically before your period, removing one of your body's natural protective barriers.

My own journey with histamine intolerance took an unexpected turn after my complete hysterectomy in 2017. Following surgery, I experienced months of symptom relief that seemed miraculous—energy returned, digestion normalized, and food sensitivities disappeared. This personal revelation led me to investigate the hormone-histamine connection that affects so many women during various life stages including perimenopause, menopause, pregnancy, and throughout the monthly cycle.

Understanding this connection isn't just fascinating—it's empowering. Once you recognize how your hormones influence histamine levels, you can begin to anticipate symptom patterns, identify triggers, and work with your body's natural rhythms rather than against them. Share your own experience with hormones and histamine by emailing Teresa@histaminehealthcoach.com, and don't miss our previous episodes on DAO (episode 7) and HNMT (episode 10) to deepen your understanding of histamine metabolism.

Chapters

• 0:48 Podcast Introduction
• 1:30 My Post-Hysterectomy Histamine Relief
• 3:40 The Estrogen-Histamine Connection Explained
• 5:19 Enzymes, Hormones, and Histamine Breakdown
• 6:40 Why Women Are More Vulnerable
• 7:46 Looking Ahead and Resources

Transcript

Teresa: 0:00

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. Hi welcome to histamine health coach, where we navigate life with histamine intolerance and find ways to feel our best. I'm Teresa, your histamine health coach, and today we're diving into a topic that affects so many of us but often goes unexplained. Why are women twice as likely to struggle with histamine issues than men? We'll take a closer look at how your hormones can influence histamine levels and how natural shifts in estrogen and progesterone might be making your body feel more reactive than usual. So let's get into it.

Teresa: 1:02

The first time I realized histamine might have something to do with hormones was after my complete hysterectomy. Don't get me wrong. I'd had symptoms for years and had even been diagnosed with MCAS. Some of my symptoms were headaches, bloating, anxiety, brain fog and painful, heavy periods, but I just assumed it was endometriosis. I was diagnosed with that in my late 20s or my early 30s sometime in that time frame, so all of my symptoms seem to point back to that. Then, in 2017, I had a complete abdominal hysterectomy and after my surgery, something incredible happened. I felt amazing. Once I recovered, I had had energy again, my digestion calmed down and I could eat without restriction and wasn't reacting to everything. It was like a circuit breaker and my body had been flipped and I suddenly came back to life. I mentioned this to my allergist and he immediately brushed it off, but I knew in my gut that something big had changed. This amazing shift and relief from histamine symptoms lasted a few months, but eventually the symptoms came back. Taking into account the histamine issues I'd had in the past and complications with medications, I made a decision to not participate in hormone replacement therapy.

Teresa: 2:24

With this, my body transitioned naturally into surgically induced menopause. That's when the fatigue, food sensitivities, itching and inflammation started to creep back in, and I began asking myself what exactly happened to trigger those few months of relief. When I began looking closely at helping women with histamine intolerance, I found that women were twice as likely to suffer from histamine intolerance than men. But why so? Let's break this down. Before we go further, though, let me just say I'm not a physician or a medical expert. I'm a certified functional medicine health coach and a woman who has lived through this. What I'm sharing is based on research, personal experience and what I've learned from helping other women navigate histamine issues too.

Teresa: 3:17

So it all starts with estrogen. Estrogen isn't just a hormone that controls your period. It actually activates your immune cells, especially mast cells, which are the cells that release histamine. And guess what? The uterus is packed with mast cells. So every time your estrogen rises which it does right before ovulation and again before your period mast cells are triggered to release histamine. More estrogen leads to more mast cell activation, which leads to more histamine. And as histamine builds up, it slows down estrogen breakdown, which means you now have more estrogen floating around too. It's a feedback loop.

Teresa: 3:57

Meanwhile, progesterone, which usually helps stabilize mast cells and keeps things calm, drops in the second half of your cycle, especially right before your period. So in the days when you're already releasing histamine, your body loses one of its only natural buffers. Estrogen ramps up, progesterone drops, mast cells go wild, histamine builds and you feel like your body is fighting itself. Now let's bring in the enzymes, because our body does have a system for cleaning out histamine. You may have heard of DAO, which works naturally in the gut and the bloodstream, and HNMT, which works inside your cells, especially in your brain and nervous system. Here's the thing, though Estrogen has been shown to suppress DAO. So just when your body is releasing more histamine around ovulation or before your period, your ability to break it down is reduced. So while we don't have much data on HNMT, we do know it depends on nutrients and methylation, which can also be disrupted by hormone imbalances or stress. So now you've got estrogen triggering histamine release. Estrogen lowering DAO activation, which makes it harder to break the histamine down. Low progesterone, taking away your body's natural ability to calm your mast cells and possiblyuggish HNMT, making it harder to clear histamine from your brain and your tissues.

Teresa: 5:30

And men? They don't deal with this. They don't have monthly estrogen spikes, they don't experience progesterone drops, their hormone levels are stable. Their mast cells aren't getting constantly activated by hormonal waves. Women are living in constant fluctuation. While that's not a design flaw, it does mean we're more vulnerable to histamine buildup, especially during times of hormonal change. That includes ovulation, the luteal phase, perimenopause, postpartum and menopause, where progesterone flatlines.

Teresa: 6:04

So if you've ever thought I feel fine one week and terrible the next, or my skin, stomach or anxiety flares before my period, you're not imagining it. It isn't random. It's your hormone rhythm of being a woman and how histamine gets tangled up in the cycle. In future episodes we'll dive deeper into how histamine shows up across different life stages perimenopause, menopause, pregnancy and your monthly cycle Because once you understand the connection, you can begin to identify your triggers, stop fearing your symptoms and start working with your body, not against it. If you're new to histamine metabolism and want to go deeper, you can check out episode 7 for an in-depth look at the DAO enzyme, and in episode 10, which covers HNMT and how it affects the brain and the nervous system. If you have a story to share about your experience with hormones and histamine, I'd love to hear it and I may feature it in a future episode. You can email me directly at Teresa at histaminehealthcoachcom. But until then, stay curious, stay kind to yourself and keep listening to your body. Have a great day, bye.