Allergies
Histamine Intolerance Symptoms
Jun 7, 2016Symptoms Of Histamine Intolerance (Include):
- Headaches including migraines
- Sinus congestion
- Flushing of skin (reddening)
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Dizziness
- Nausea
- Hives
- Breathing troubles
- Acid reflux or heartburn
- Skin rashes
- Aches and pains
High-Histamine Foods: The Red List And Yellow List
how to clear histamine from body
If you have symptoms after eating histamine-rich foods, then histamine intolerance may be an issue for you. What foods are considered high histamine? While the lists vary, here’s a general consensus of foods that are often a problem for those with histamine intolerance:
Very High:
- Aged meats, like bacon, salami, prosciutto, bologna; beef is usually aged, as well as lamb and pork but for shorter amounts of time
- Aged or fermented vegetarian/vegan foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, kombucha, vinegar, and alcohol
- Fish (unless frozen immediately after harvest), especially canned and smoked fish )
- strawberries
Moderate:
- Spinach
- Mushrooms
- Tomatoes
- Canned Vegetables
- Dried fruit
- Eggplant
- Raspberries
- Pineapple
- Papaya
- Bananas
- Refrigerated leftovers
Histamine Liberators
These are food that may be troublesome especially for people who have trouble breaking down histamines. They are called histamine liberators and while they don’t all necessarily contain high levels of histamine, they cause the body to release stored up histamines, causing symptoms.
- Citrus Fruits
- Papaya
- Strawberries
- Tomatoes
- Spinach
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Pork
- Chocolate
- Nuts
- Raw egg Whites
- Banana
- Cow’s milk
- Alcohol
Histamine Intolerance: Know What Sets You Off And Deal With It
Step 1: Eliminate The Red List
As you can see, many of the foods listed are healthy! So don’t go to cutting out all of these unnecessarily. Testing for histamine intolerance is difficult, so the best plan of attack is to try cutting out the highest histamine foods for a period of time and see if your symptoms subside. Some people are so sensitive that they cannot tolerate any high-histamine foods. For others, they only have to cut out the foods very highest in histamines like fermented and aged foods, vinegar, and alcohol.
Step 2: If You’re Still Having Histamine Intolerance Symptoms, Go With Your Gut
It’s different for everybody, so you have to experiment with one food at a time. Almost always, we have some idea of the foods that set us off. Eliminate them one at a time and see which one makes the biggest difference to your health.
Step 3 : In Parallel to 1 And 2 – Build Up Your Vitality
Histamine tolerance can and often will change based on the state of our health. Maybe during the springtime, when our system is bombarded with outdoor allergens, we have a hard time with histamine-containing foods, as our body is already working overtime to deal with all the allergens.
“During times of stress, worry, overwork, exhaustion, and more, our body will have a harder time doing its job of breaking down histamines, both from within the body and from food”
So as always, supporting the system for overall health and vitality is a good idea.
Barring people who face severe allergic reactions—like going into shock or asthmatic attacks—the rest of us, who face mild histamine allergies, need not rule out a food for life just because it gives us some issues now.
Try it again in small amounts and see how you do; a healthy, varied diet is most important in the long run.
Antihistamine OTC and prescription medicines can help in the short term, but they come with side effects and don’t solve the root cause. Dietary supplements can produce surprising results when it comes to histamine allergies, because they address several aspects of the root cause, instead of just suppressing the symptoms.
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Kristin is a Board-Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Functional Medicine Practitioner. She has graduated from the world's largest nutrition school, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Kristin loves helping people get happy and healthy, and encouraging and supporting those with chronic illness.
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