The Histamine Bucket

In this episode, Coach Cate talks about the histamine bucket, what fills your histamine bucket, and why allergy season hits women so hard. She also talks about the histamine + estrogen connection - why women struggle with heightened allergy symptoms around ovulation. 

DM "Histamine Bucket" to @_coachcate on Instagram for her free histamine bucket guide! 

Transcript

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Hey, hey, welcome back to Healthy Period. I'm Coach Kate, and honestly, for this episode, I am recording it on my phone outside on my front porch. So if you hear chirping birds or if my dog goes crazy at the mailman, like I'm sorry, but I'm not because it's just so beautiful and I'm sitting out in the sun, and that's just where I want to be. And if I'm gonna record this podcast episode for you guys, it's just gotta be here right now. So, anyway, jumping in, I've been wanting to record this episode for you guys for over a week. But between my marathon and seasonal allergies, which we're gonna talk about in this podcast episode, you can probably tell by my voice, I'm a little bit stuffy, but you know, you're just gonna have to deal with it uh for this episode to actually get it out to you guys. Um, this episode, I want to talk about why allergy season hits us harder as women. And I want to talk about our histamine bucket because I feel like we are so apt to talk about leaky gut and PCOS and all of these different signs and symptoms. But when it comes to allergy season, we're just like chalking it up to allergy season and let's just take our allergy meds and call it a day. And I think that there is a correlation and causation with histamine that not a lot of people understand, and we just chalk it up to the fact that our allergies are just kicking our butt. And I'm talking about your itchy, watery eyes, sneezing constantly, congestion that doesn't go away all spring, brain fog and fatigue are histamine issues, um, and also digestive issues can be histamine issues. So I just remember when I was younger, I would stand on my parents' back porch and I would look at the yellow pollen that was coating every surface outside, and I would literally be scared of it. Like there were moments in my life when I was high dealing with endometriosis symptoms and digestive issues, and I wouldn't want to go outside in the spring. Like, I didn't want the pollen anywhere near me. And I was taking Allegra like every single day just to get through the spring, and sometimes I would even take it like morning and night, even though it's a 24-hour, just to manage and just so I could sleep. And then I started doing something. I tracked my histamine symptoms with my cycle because my allergies wound up always being significantly worse, like one or two random days of the month. And it took me until like two years ago to be like, hmm, I should probably track this with my cycle. And I found out that that like one to two days of each month where my ears felt like they were full, I felt like I had a little scratchy throat, I was more mucusy than normal. It was always worse during my ovulation week. I didn't know why, but I noticed it. And every month, like clockwork, the week I was ovulating, my allergy symptoms would spike. And I went from manageable to totally miserable. And I used to think, like, why does this keep happening? And I never thought to bring it up to a doctor. I don't go to an allergist, so I was just like sitting in this knowledge by myself. So after having healed my gut, supporting my hormones, you guys know my story. Now that I understand what actually happens in our bodies and understand how our bodies work as a unit and not just by itself, I rarely have issues during allergy season anymore. I have them right now because Mother's Day was a couple of days ago, and my sister and my mom wanted to spend the entire day in three different greenhouses. So I was like in three greenhouses in the flowers for probably three to four hours on Mother's Day. And of course I'm ovulating this week, so just a little bit of pollen is gonna throw my histamine bucket over the edge. Um, but since I've changed my internal environment, my body responds much differently on a normal day. Um, and that's what I want to talk about in this episode. I want to talk about the histamine bucket, why it changes everything, how your histamine, your leaky gut, all these things are connected. Um, so let's just jump right in and start with a framework that makes everything else make sense. So I've alluded to this histamine bucket a couple times already, and that's what I want to talk about. So histamine is a chemical compound that our body produces, and you also get it from food in your environment. But histamine plays a role in your immune system, your digestion, your brain function, uterine contractions, and ovulation. So histamine isn't inherently bad, even though that's what we think of it. Your body does need it. The problem is not the histamine itself, it's that too much histamine with not enough capacity to clear it is the problem. So here's how your histamine bucket works. So your histamine tolerance is a bucket. So imagine a bucket. And every day, in that bucket, you're receiving or putting into your bucket food, what's in your environment, your hormones, stress, gut dysfunction, immune activation, mold exposure is a huge one, infections are a huge one, and inflammation. So as long as that bucket doesn't overflow, your body can manage and you feel okay. But when that bucket gets too full, it's gonna overflow at some point. And that overflow is what we call histamine intolerance or histamine excess. So this is what shows up as seasonal allergies, hives, headaches or migraines, flushing, heart palpitations, anxiety, digestive issues, itchy skin, brain fog, painful periods, worsening PMS, and sleep disruption. So this histamine bucket, that's why a little bit of pollen in the seasonal, in the spring in this season, makes that histamine bucket overflow. And that's why this season is so hard. But most women with severe seasonal allergies, we're not walking into allergy season with an empty bucket. We are walking around with a bucket that's already 80 to 90% full. So, like I just said, when the pollen season arrives, even the smallest amount of pollen is going to trigger overflow into that bucket. So it's not the pollen, it's the fact that there was no room left in your bucket to tolerate the pollen. So let's talk about the conditions and patterns that are pre-filling your histamine bucket long before we even get to allergy season. Because, like I just said, it's chronically overloaded and you might not have any idea. And a big one is endometriosis. So endometriosis is a profoundly inflammatory condition. And histamine is deeply involved in this. So here's why. You have mast cells, these are the immune cells responsible for releasing histamine. They're found in significantly higher concentrations in endometrial lesions. So histamine promotes the growth of endometrial tissue outside of the uterus, it drives inflammation at lesion sites, it stimulates estrogen production, and estrogen stimulates more histamine release. So it creates a cycle: more mast cell activation, more histamine, more estrogen, more endometrial growth, more histamine. So women with endometriosis are often living with chronically elevated histamine, which means your bucket is already at 90% full before any external trigger arrives. So this is why women who have endometriosis often feel like they have severe seasonal allergies, food sensitivities that seem to multiply, they react to things that never bothered them before, and they get worsening symptoms around their ovulation and before their period. Leaky gut is also a big one, too. Your gut is one of the most important histamine clearance pathways. So your gut lining produces an enzyme called DAO. DAO is responsible for breaking down histamine in the digestive tract before it enters circulation. So when the gut lining is compromised, and this is what we call intestinal permeability or leaky gut, that production of the Dow drops, which means that histamine from food is not being broken down efficiently. It passes through the gut lining into your bloodstream, and that bucket fills faster. And then leaky gut also means that bacterial byproducts enter circulation, immune activation increases, mast cells become more reactive. There are mast cells in your gut lining, and inflammation rises. All of that adds to your bucket. So that's why women with leaky gut are highly reactive to fermented foods, alcohol, aged cheeses, leftovers, or vinegar-based foods, processed meats, and high histamine fruits. It's not often connected to histamine. You just feel like your body reacts to everything, but it is a histamine issue. And mold exposure. This one is significant and not a lot of people think about it, but mold exposure, whether from a current living situation or a past exposure, is one of the most powerful activators of mast cells in the body. So mold triggers chronic mast cell activation, histamine release, immune dysregulation, gut barrier breakdown, and nervous system inflammation. So women who have lived in or been exposed to water damage buildings often carry a significant mast cell burden, meaning your immune system is chronically primed to release histamine at the slightest trigger. And for these women, you're gonna find allergy season is brutal, food reactions are constant, and you react to everything, and your symptoms are often just like dismissed or misdiagnosed, and nothing is helping you. So mold exposure fills the histamine bucket quietly and it also keeps it very full. And then there's SIBO. So certain bacterial, certain bacteria in the gut produced histamine when there is a bacterial overgrowth, particularly in the small intestine, which we call SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, histamine production increases significantly. So if you have SIBO, you might experience worsening food reactions, bloating after high histamine foods, increasing food sensitivities over time, or allergy-like symptoms year-round. So SIBO is filling your bucket from the inside of you. And then there's chronic stress. Stress directly activates mast cells. So cortisol, your primary stress hormone, primes the immune system to be more reactive. So when cortisol is chronically elevated, mast cells become more easily triggered, histamine release increases, the Dow production decreases, and then your bucket is just filling really fast. And this is why, if you are under chronic stress, remember you do not have to feel stressed in your brain for your body to be under stress. So if you are under stress, whether that is mentally or physically, you're gonna find that your allergies are gonna worsen, your food sensitivities might increase, and that you just like feel like you react overall to everything. And stress is not just emotional, it's biochemical. So it has a direct impact on your histamine load. And this goes back to sort of with the endometriosis, estrogen dominance and hormone imbalance. Like, I'm gonna go deep on this in the next section, but estrogen is one of the most powerful histamine bucket fillers for women. So high or fluctuating estrogen stimulates mast cells to release histamine, reduces the Dow production, and creates a hormonal environment where histamine is gonna build. And histamine in return stimulates more estrogen. It's a bi-directional relationship, and it's one of the most important pieces of this conversation that women miss because as histamine rises, estrogen's gonna rise. But histamine loves estrogen, so as estrogen rises, histamine is gonna rise, right? So around ovulation, typically mid-cycle, is when your estrogen peaks. That's normal, that's what's supposed to happen. But because of estrogen and histamine's intimate relationship, estrogen stimulates mast cells to release histamine. So histamine in return is gonna stimulate your ovaries to produce more estrogen. So at ovulation, estrogen peaks and histamine is gonna spike. And with that histamine spike, more estrogen is gonna be stimulated. For women with a bucket that's already 80% full, this mid-cycle estrogen and histamine peak overflows everything, which is why you might experience around ovulation worsening allergy symptoms at ovulation, headaches or migraines mid-cycle, flushing or hives around ovulation, increased anxiety or heart palpitations mid-cycle, worsening skin reactions or heightened food sensitivities in the days around your ovulation. And in the spring, when environmental pollen is also adding to the bucket, ovulation week becomes almost unbearable. And that's exactly what I was experiencing, and honestly, what I'm experiencing this week. Like I just knew that every month during that week, I felt like I was dying and I was taking a double dose of Allegra just to function, not realizing that I needed to reduce and drain my histamine bucket. And when it comes to the luteal phase, which is the weeks, two weeks leading up to your period right after ovulation, the luteal phase, the second half of the cycle, that's when progesterone rises. So progesterone has somewhat a protective effect on histamine, but only when it's sufficient. So when your progesterone is low, which is common with PCOS, perimenopause, chronic stress, under-eating, irregular ovulation, the estrogen to progesterone ratio becomes imbalanced, and estrogen's histamine stimulating effects are not balanced out by progesterone's calming effect. So that means that your luteal phase becomes highly reactive, your PMS symptoms worsen, your histamine symptoms flare, sleep is completely disrupted, and your anxiety rises. This is why so many women feel worse the week before their period and why their allergy symptoms often spike then, too. So let's talk about the gut because this is where histamine intolerance gets really complicated and misunderstood. So your gut lining is one of the highest concentrations of mast cells in the entire body. Mast cells are your immune system's first responders. They release histamine the second that they detect a threat. So when the gut lining is healthy and intact, your mast cells respond appropriately, histamine is released in measured amounts, the Dow breaks it down efficiently, and gut functions normally. But when your gut lining is compromised, your mast cells become hyperreactive, histamine is released excessively, your Dow production drops, histamine is going to enter your bloodstream, and your entire system is going to become reactive. So hypermotility, which is one of the most common, and we never really discuss it, effects of histamine in the gut is hypermotility. So histamine stimulates gut contractions. So when your histamine is high, your gut moves too fast, your food is not broken down properly, nutrients aren't absorbed efficiently, you might experience diarrhea or loose stools, that's more common. And urgency after eating is frequent, right? So feeling like food goes right through you is pretty common. And this is why many women with histamine intolerance are always rushing to the bathroom after meals. They have loose stools that seem super random. That urgency feels unpredictable, and they feel like certain foods just go right through them. And this often looks like IBS, and it's often diagnosed and treated like IBS without ever addressing the fact that histamine is the issue here. And histamine affects stomach acid production, digestive enzyme release, and gut motility patterns. So when your histamine is dysregulated, these processes, food sits longer in your stomach, fermentation increases, gas production rises, and bloating becomes significant. This is why high histamine meals like wine, aged cheese, fermented foods, or leftovers often cause dramatic bloating in sensitive women. It's not always a food intolerance in the traditional sense, it's like a histamine overload issue. And here's where it becomes a cycle. So leaky gut leads to reduced Dow, which is more histamine in the circulation, which means more gut inflammation, which means more leaky gut, which means even less Dow, which means even more histamine. So the gut both contributes to the histamine excess and suffers because of it, which is why healing the gut is one of the most powerful things a woman can do to reduce her overall histamine load. And why my seasonal allergies improved so dramatically when I healed my gut. So for so many women, the histamine bucket is being filled by multiple sources at the same time. Endometriosis, we have chronic mast cell activation here, leaky gut, we have reduced Dow and increased histamine absorption. We have mold exposure, SIBO, chronic stress, estrogen dominance, thyroid dysfunction, that impairs your histamine clearance, nutrient deficiencies, reduces your Dow production if you're deficient in vitamin B6, copper, and vitamin C. Alcohol is going to block Dow enzymes directly. A high histamine diet is going to be constant input into that bucket. If you have infections, immune activation and mast cell priming, autoimmune conditions, that's chronic immune dysregulation. So all of these things are filling your histamine bucket, and then spring comes and the pollen walks in, and now your bucket overflows, and you think you just have bad allergies. You don't just have bad allergies, you had a bucket that was already almost full, and no one ever told you this. And I want to be clear: this is not about eliminating histamine from your life, it's about reducing what's filling the bucket unnecessarily, supporting your body's ability to clear histamine and creating more capacity so that normal triggers don't overflow your bucket. So Dow enzyme production, DAO is your primary histamine clearing enzyme. So supporting that looks like B6, copper, vitamin C, zinc. So food sources are like pea shoots, fresh meat and fish, not leftover, egg yolks, and colorful vegetables. And you could use a nettle tea. That's a nature's antihistamine. It's one of my favorites, and I use this. You've probably seen it on my Instagram more than once. I use it all the time. I steep two nettle tea bags in a mason jar for 12 to 24 hours before I drink the entire mason jar because it naturally inhibits histamine release. It acts as a gentle antihistamine without any side effects, it supports your adrenal glands, and it provides minerals that support immune function. So it's not a quick fix, but it's a consistent, gentle support, which is what I like. And then healing the gut. This one is again the one that changed everything for me. When your gut lining is healed, your Dow production increases, histamine absorption decreases, mast cell reactivity calms down, and your bucket can empty more efficiently. So, what does gut healing look like? That's removing inflammatory foods that damage your gut lining, supporting stomach acid production, addressing SIBO if that's present, reducing gut inflammation, supporting the good bugs, the your good gut bugs, your microbiome, and nourishing your gut lining with amino acids. It's not a one-week protocol, it's a process. It takes months to do this. But it is the most powerful thing you can do for your histamine intolerance long term. And because estrogen and histamine feed each other, supporting your estrogen metabolism is going to reduce your histamine load. So supporting your liver detox pathways, ensuring regular bowel movements, eating cruciferous vegetables, reducing your alcohol, which blocks both estrogen clearance and Dow, and supporting your gut microbiome, again, all coming back to the good gut bugs in your gut. So when estrogen clears more efficiently, that mid-cycle histamine spike becomes less traumatic. And then during high histamine seasons, we want to reduce your mast cell triggers. So we want to reduce or temporarily avoid higher histamine foods, aged cheeses, fermented foods, alcohol, vinegar, canned fish, leftovers, processed meats. You want to eat fresh, right? Histamine increases in food as it ages. And then keep antihistamine herbs on hand. Nettle, holy basil, chamomile, those things are definitely going to help. And if you don't support your nervous system already, stress fills your bucket every single time. You cannot empty your histamine bucket if you have a dysregulated nervous system. So you need to prioritize sleep, you need to reduce unnecessary stressors, you need to avoid over exercising or underfueling, and you need to eat consistently to reduce your cortisol. A regulated nervous system is a less reactive immune system. And I'm a definitely a Supplement second type of person, I rarely make blanketed supplement recommendations. So message me if you want to talk about targeted supplements for your histamine support because I'm not gonna just talk about a blanket statement on my podcast. So if you've made it to the end of this episode, I want you to sit with something. Your seasonal allergies are not just bad luck. It's not just genetics, it's not just the pollen being worse this year. It's your body's way of telling you that your bucket is too full, you need more capacity, and something underneath this needs attention. And that's when you address what's underneath, right? Healing your gut, allergy season stops being something you fear, and it becomes something your body can handle. Like I went from taking Allegra twice a day, refusing to go outside, and being terrified of yellow pollen on the back porch to rarely needing any help. It's not because I got lucky, it's because I changed the internal environment. And you can do that too. So thanks for listening to Healthy Period, and I'll see you in the next episode.