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Critterina's Histamine Intolerance Journal

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
I have read about it re-setting the entire immune system (not just histamine) and am very curious about the fast. I rarely feel hungry anymore and feel worse after I eat and think I could do the fast as long as I could drink water and take electrolytes (like salt stick tablets or Nuun.) Are those things okay?
I know it's ok to drink all the water I want on this fast. I also take my prescriptions and most of my supplements. I used a Tums (antacid) and allergy meds. I would imagine salt is OK, but I don't really know - and only your doctor could tell you. I don't know what Nuun is.

Do you see a pulmonologist specifically for the histamine issues?
Well, when I started seeing the pulmonologist, it was for the respiratory issues, which turned out to be histamine intolerance. We didn't know that at the time. When none of the COPD-type meds worked, we tried prednisone, and that did work; after a 5-day course, I was good for 4-10 weeks. Then an acupuncturist looked at my hands and said "food allergies" and told me to cut out 4 things. I got some better, did an elimination diet, and was able to get off the meds. It was months later that someone on PR who mentioned tomatoes and spinach (my two arch-enemies) and pointed me to the article by Maintz. (I would love to know who I'm indebted to for this - PM me if you see this!) It took me over 2 months to start to challenge the differences between the Maintz article and my list, as I just didn't want to be sick again. But every time they were right (as in yes, I could eat oatmeal; the culprit had been cinnamon I was putting on it.) I showed my pulmonologist everything - the article, the lists, etc. We couldn't find a lab to do a definitive test, but he was comfortable with the diagnosis because of the return/remission of symptoms coincident with dietary histamines. I don't see the pulmonologist anymore, formally, as he retired. But he's still in my social circle and says he doesn't mind a "drive-by" now and then.

I take Daosin with every meal now. It is hard to say what it is doing.
That's expensive! I had no help from it before my first fast. But when I started reacting again, and I knew I was eating something with histamines, it would help.
 

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/5/1185.long Maintz is the woman who wrote the article on Histamine and Histamine intolerance.

Edit: you also asked about Nuun. I just saw it in a store for the first time - electrolytes, no calories, some flavor. I don't know why it would be a problem. I used sparkling water with lemon essence (Crystal Geyser) and it didn't seem to hurt me. But just guessing, of course.
 
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Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
So, realizing my ignorance about all the things you people are asking me about, I asked my pulmonologist (ret.) about published research, etc. His connection to this fasting for food intolerances had to do with someone he knew in medical school who had to eat sort of like Gingergrrl, a few boiled vegetables and a little meat; no leftovers. But he said that the effects of starvation in shutting down the immune system are well studied. No, I haven't gone to look.
 

maddietod

Senior Member
Messages
2,859
I just completed the 3-day fast, drinking water, and root teas - dandelion and burdock - in small amounts. I started after a small breakfast so the last stretch would be overnight. The fast was easy, maybe because I'm carrying 15 extra pounds.

Sadly, I slept terribly the past 2 nights, so I'm exhausted. I hoped to fix vertigo and constant throat-clearing. The vertigo went away on the second day. The throat clearing almost stopped, but started right up this morning after I ate. I'm not sure I would be able to recognize an immune reset if I got one.

I was right in the middle of an elimination diet when I decided to try the fast, but I hadn't yet started paying attention to the histamine influence. I ate foods this morning that I thought were safe from the elimination testing, but I had had the throat-clearing issue throughout, and results were messy.

So histamine is my next adventure. I'm eating up leftovers and putting up with congestion, and am starting to freeze all new leftovers.
 

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
@madietodd ,
Sorry you didn't have better results. How disappointing! So it sounds like you got rid of vertigo, but was that something caused by the fast, or did you have it before?
My first fast I slept very little and very poorly; this second one, almost 4 months later, I slept well. I don't have any explanation why, so that's no help.
I found only very limited improvement, if any, with respiratory allergies. It was my food sensitivity issues (mostly respiratory and skin) that improved.
Sounds like you were on the right track with the elimination diet. When you have figured out what foods bother you, please post, ok? Thanks.
 

maddietod

Senior Member
Messages
2,859
I have insomnia; 3 wakings a night is a given. But 5 is over the top!

I had vertigo for 5 months last year, starting in March. I was on my 3rd day, and it was getting worse each day, when I thought the fast might knock out whatever I have going on in my sinus/throat/gland areas, including the vertigo. It was actually a very big win for me to get rid of the vertigo; last year it was terrifying.

I know for sure that all dairy causes respiratory problems, and I suspect (hope) that that's part of my insomnia. I will let you know how the re-testing of everything else goes. I don't think I'm going to re-test right away. I might just avoid histamine foods and a few other things, and see if I can get rid of this congestion and swelling.

My neighbor's son is an EMT. I went over this morning and mentioned just finishing a 3 day fast to reset my immune system, and he just casually nodded.
 

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
@madietodd , it sounds like your issue with dairy may be more than histamine. For a year I avoided all dairy, including butter. But when I read the Maintz article, fresh dairy was the first thing I tested, and that was more than a year before the fast. Fresh dairy was ok for me. So who knows what is going on with that, with you? I think most people here have multiple issues.
Well, very happy about the vertigo being gone. That is so debilitating! My insomnia was more like not quite being all the way asleep, hard to describe. Like my body was standing guard against the fast, watching for what might come next. But I would attempt 3 nights with no sleep versus having vertigo again. At least you made some progress.
This whole thing is pretty much a mystery to me. I guess I could read the literature. :)
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
@Gingergrrl I don't have enough understanding of FMN to answer the how of it. That's why I included the links. I've not yet had the chance to properly understand the how FMN acts, nor to understand whether it's actually doing something different from B2, or just doing it more effectively for some of us. (In the same way that many of us need activated B vitamins, eg. Methylfolate.)

One or two of the links I included refer to MAO snp. This is my one homozygous snp. I decided to try it because @ppodhajski described it as the main thing he did for MAO. If you find that you have MAO, it's certainly worth a try. You can show this info to your Dr, see what he thinks.

It seems to have radically shifted my biochemistry. It's now 2-3 days that I've not taken any of my regular supps for histamine and mast cell, nor for ammonia/peroxynitrite. And I've just eaten a small amount of garlic, when the last time I ate anything sulfurous, my face pretty rapidly looked like rosacea. Perhaps the difference now is, as aaron_c noted when I was trying to understand my ammonia issues, b2 should help convert toxic sulfites to helpful sulfates.

Now that I've had such remarkable results, I need to spend some time trying to understand what actually is going on.:nerd:
 
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ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
I've now completed a 3 day fast. My concern wasn't histamine, rather high peroxynitrite. I did not enjoy the fast:grumpy:. But, now that I've resumed eating, I find my high peroxynitrite levels have dramatically reduced. The fast is a very powerful medicine indeed.
 

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
@ahmo ,
Thanks for letting us know! My first fast was pretty miserable too, but the second one was not so bad. I need a third one, and I'm hoping they keep getting easier. And I'm glad you found it worth it. The first time I was SO skeptical. Now it's a matter of when, not if.
Funny that B2 should have been such an important supplement for you. That was the biggest red flag on my NutrEval. I took R5P, not the FMN. Now I am using an active B complex instead of all the individual active Bs, but maybe I'll look in to FMN.
Edit: Now I read your post, I understand that R5P is the same as FMN.
 
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Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
OK, time for a new entry...

The first time I fasted, the effects lasted for 3 months then started to slip. The second time I fasted, I started reacting to foods again after about 4-5 weeks. Factors that may have played into the short duration of the benefit from the second fast include:
1. I didn't do any gut-rebuilding before the fast
2. I was on high-dose prednisone (my doctor's protocol for combating a strong histamine reaction) during the fast
3. I took antibiotics about 2 weeks after the fast
4. I was eating camp food (as in YMCA camp) when the histamines just got to be too much.

I did fine during the two weeks in Germany, though, eating out all the time. I caught a cold in Dresden that started in to my chest, thus the antibiotics. But I still didn't have much reaction after I finished the antibiotics. I was fine with streudel (cinnamon) and a little sauerkraut (fermentation products), although I tried not to push it. The camp food was over the top, though. Hard boiled eggs that were cooked when they purchased them, for example. I was sicker than I've been since I did the elimination diet starting 2012, including the constant coughing that twice broke my ribs before I figured this out the first time. Next year for camp, I need to assume I'll react and request a special diet BEFORE camp.

Home from camp, and having done another course of the high-dose prednisone to get over that reaction, I'm doing pretty well - the eczema has cleared, I'm not having much trouble with the lungs or anything. A little nasal swelling, but also pollen allergies, so who knows? I'm not being perfect on the low-histamine diet, just circumspect, and I seem to be getting away with it (using DAOsin if I know I'm going to sin.) Very busy these days, physically active to the point it increases my hunger, so not a good time to fast. Today I started some gut-rebuilding supplements. Maybe by the time I have a few days of that, I will be freed up enough to fast again. Meanwhile, there are ladders and power tools in my immediate future. I feel strong enough for that, for which I am thankful!
 

Timaca

Senior Member
Messages
792
Critterina~
I also have histamine intolerance, so your post captured my attention. I also live in Arizona! (In Flagstaff). Where do you live?

What supplements are you taking for your gut rebuilding?

All the best,
 

Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
Critterina~
I also have histamine intolerance, so your post captured my attention. I also live in Arizona! (In Flagstaff). Where do you live?

What supplements are you taking for your gut rebuilding?

All the best,
Hi @Timaca ,
I live in Tucson, so we're not quite neighbors in geography, only neighbors in spirit!
Oh, so now I'm accountable - I took the gut rebuilding stuff once today and posted, and now I'm going to have to keep it up! :nervous:

Ok, so you have to understand my methodology - I took notes from a few gut rebuilding programs, including one list on a forum here, then I headed to the vitamin clearance outlet and bought whatever they had from the list. After that, I ordered some stuff from Swanson. That's the stuff I'm taking. But I also ordered some triphala and slippery elm bark, some glutamine and some N-acetyl-glutamine, about $80 worth that has mostly sat unopened. One gut rebuilding program said that you could get everything you need in 2 supplements - but with histamine intolerance, there were ingredients I couldn't tolerate in one and I couldn't find the other, so I tried this haphazard approach. So, what it is:

Before meals: 1 DGL Ultra German chocolate flavor :)thumbsup:this is worth eating even if you don't need it) by Enzymatic Therapies

Between meals (empty stomach):
1 MegaNatural-BP Grapeseed Extract by Swanson ultra
1-3 Colostrum GI Health by Swanson ultra
2-4 IntestiNew by RenewLife
1 of..something. Well, now, this is embarrassing. I think it's Marshmallow Root by Nature's Way. That or it's something I ran out of. It looks like the Marshmallow Root, almost, but not quite. Could be bottle-to-bottle variation. Doesn't look like anything else I have. The thing is, I put out several doses in Tupperware containers at one point and didn't use them, and later I put 4 days' worth in a weekly pill container, in April, when I was doing the second fast - and then decided that it should really be a fast and I should take only bare bones - prescriptions and a very few supplements. That accounts for the different numbers of some things in the different containers. So I'm not sure, only that it was well thought-out at the time.

I also am using Swanson's soil based organisms probiotics and the occasional Costco 4-X Pro B, when I think of it.

I tried PepZinGI, a zinc supplement, but I felt awful. Turns out my mom feels bad when she takes zinc, too, so maybe it's a genetic thing.

Oh, I completely forgot: I was taking Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch, about 2-4 tablespoons. I need to add that back in. I mix it in milk with some agave nectar :p, or just mix in water. I think this with the soil-based organisms was really helpful. Without the soil-based organisms, it does cause flatulence. One of the key signs for me that I was improving was that I could take it without that happening.

When I did this gut rebuild the first time, my stools went from loose and light (about this color: :snigger:) with undigested food particles visible to dark (sort of like the wall in this emoticon::bang-head:), formed but not hard, and no apparent particulates. I did it for about 8 weeks. Then I stopped for a week and my stools didn't revert, like every other time when I'd been taking probiotics alone. After that week, I did the fast.

So, in May, when I took the antibiotics, my stools lightened and loosened again - not to the extreme that they were, but they are still considerable lighter. That's why I think the gut rebuild may be in order again.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
: Now I read your post, I understand that R5P is the same as FMN.
There seems to be some sort of difference. I don't understand the chemistry enough to explain it. The B complex I've been taking for a year as 25mg R5P. Earlier in the year I tried adding more R5P and poisoned myself with ammonia/peroxynitrite. But the FMN has done something very different for me.

correction: added B2, not r5p
 
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Critterina

Senior Member
Messages
1,238
Location
Arizona, USA
There seems to be some sort of difference. I don't understand the chemistry enough to explain it. The B complex I've been taking for a year as 25mg R5P. Earlier in the year I tried adding more R5P and poisoned myself with ammonia/peroxynitrite. But the FMN has done something very different for me.

@ahmo

Looking at this article http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/04/riboflavin-vitamin-b2-fmn-and-fad.html
in a separate tab. You can see what the FMN and the riboflavin are, in the first two drawings. (For our purposes, the part of the first drawing in blue is irrelevant. I would reproduce it here, except that I think it's probably a copyright violation, and I want to respect the intellectual property of the author.)

Then if you look at the drawing in this monograph http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/13/4/334.pdf
you see that the R5P has the phosphate in the same place as the FMN. So, I think we have two names for the same thing. If you get different reactions from FMN and R5P, maybe it's not the active ingredient you're reacting to.