In this episode, we dive deep into the world of histamines—what they are, how they affect our bodies, and why it's crucial for breast cancer survivors to be aware of them.
For those with histamine intolerance or sensitivity, these compounds can lead to symptoms like headaches, digestive issues, skin reactions, and more. Understanding this balance is key, especially for breast cancer survivors who might experience heightened sensitivity due to treatments and hormonal changes.
We touch on low histamine diets, foods that support histamine breakdown, and the intricate relationship between histamines and estrogen.
Check out this episode to empower yourself with knowledge and practical strategies to enhance your recovery journey and overall quality of life.
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You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis if you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey there. Welcome to episode 371,
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of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura lummer, and this is our Tuesday terrain talk. So let's talk about something I want to share, something that's been going on with me recently. I'd say over the last two months, maybe I started noticing that I feel like I'm having an allergic reaction to things, itchiness in the eyes, itchiness in the back of my throat, in the back of my nose. And I've started more closely tracking my food to try to kind of pinpoint what foods might be triggering this, because I've never been one to have seasonal allergies. Never been one to have allergies to food. In fact, one of my kids has allergies to just about everything, and I've always been so grateful for how easy my life is because I don't have to worry about things like food allergies and environmental seasonal allergies. But lately, something's definitely been bothering me, so I've started digging into histamines. And when I did my nutrition genomics report, I had kind of an elevated reaction to histamines, a histamine response in my body. So I started to get really curious about that, and what that meant, and what are histamines, and where are histamines coming from, and what's a low histamine diet, and why would that have any impact on me as a person who's been diagnosed with breast cancer, and I found some really interesting stuff that I'd like to share with you, because a lot of times I think we can have uncomfortable symptoms in our body, and we think it may just be the medications we're taking, because we often are taking different medications, or maybe going through treatment. And what I found is that if we have a histamine intolerance, or if our bodies have trouble breaking down histamines, and I'll go into that in a minute, that some of the symptoms we might experience could be similar to things that we might experience going through cancer treatment, and that maybe, if that is an issue with you, if you experience some of these symptoms that reducing histamines or eating foods or Having lifestyle practices that support the breakdown of histamines might help reduce some of the discomfort. So let's talk about, first of all, what histamines are. Histamines are organic compounds, and they're involved in our immune response. They also help to regulate some of the functions of our gut, and they act as neurotransmitter so signaling. They're basically produced by two different kinds of cells in our body, basophils and mast cells, both of which are part of our immune system. So these cells are making histamines in our body. And let's talk for a second about why that's an important thing, specifically for us in this population of breast cancer survivors. And one of the reasons is that histamine and estrogen have a complex relationship. But histamines can stimulate the production of estrogen because they have an influence over enzymes that are involved in estrogen synthesis and in estrogen production in our bodies, and so that produces, they have this feedback loop. Their relationship is what we would call a feedback loop, and that means that histamine release can increase estrogen production, and higher estrogen levels can lead to more histamine release. So it's a vicious cycle. We can call it right. And as people who may have a hormone positive diagnosis, one of the things that we want to control, two things we want to control for our inflammations and estrogen, right? So one of the things that histamines or histamine intolerance can increase is estrogen levels. And another thing is inflammation. So other hormone influenced disorders like endometriosis, can also be affected by higher histamine levels, and it can kind of exacerbate that condition. As survivors, as breast people who've gone through breast cancer treatment or had a diagnosis, we can also become more sensitive to histamine so we can have the bigger reaction to it, and that's because some medications and chemotherapy can alter our gut microbiome, our gut flora and our enzyme levels, and then that can reduce our ability to break down histamines so they stay in our system longer when we're going through cancer treatment that can have an effect on our immune system, lowering white blood cells. Is definitely a side effect of lots of chemotherapies and other cancer treatments. So when we're lowering our immune function, and we've got two cells in our immune system, part of those white blood cells that are playing a role in this histamine production, that can have an effect also, and we can have genetic snips that influence the enzymes that break down histamine. So that's going to happen whether or not you have a breast cancer diagnosis, but if we're someone who has a histamine intolerance that can be affected by genetics, and then, as I said a minute ago, some of the symptoms that we might experience from having a histamine intolerance can be similar to some of the symptoms that we might experience going through cancer treatments, so they may overlap each other, and that's things like headaches, digestive issues and fatigue. So I want to share with you a few histamine overload symptoms. So if you have a histamine intolerance, and we're eating high histamine foods, or our body is making his demands, and we're not breaking them down effectively, and they're kind of building up. Some of the symptoms you can experience in your gut can be diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramps, bloating, vomiting and nausea, and all of those are very similar to things that we can experience in some cancer treatments as well, and also especially when it comes to bloating and nausea. Sometimes, if we've not been following a diet that's right for our bodies, we think that Bloating is a natural occurrence after eating and it isn't. We shouldn't feel bloated, right? Some of the skin symptoms we can experience from histamine intolerance are things like hives, eczema, flushing, redness and warmth of the skin itching. I said to you, but ago, I was getting like itchy eyes, itchy throat, itchy in the back of my nose. Some of the respiratory symptoms of histamine intolerance are stuffy nose, lots of mucus production, sneezing, shortness of breath, wheezing, even if it's really severe, we can even have cardiovascular symptoms that are related to histamine intolerance, like unusually low blood pressure, rapid heart rate or tachycardia, abnormally fast heartbeat. We call them palpitations, right? Like i My heart is raising, that can also be related to histamine overload. And I think that a lot of times when people experience that, we associate it with panic attacks or anxiety, which it very well may be, but if you listen to a lot of these symptoms, and they're resonating with you, and maybe you are experiencing them in different categories, you might want to consider changing up some diet and lifestyle habits to try to lower this histamine response. So we can also have neurological symptoms, like headaches, fatigue, as I mentioned, anxiety. So that's interesting, because we can have anxiety can increase, and then we can also have palpitations or tachycardia, which makes us think we're having anxiety. So again, kind of a vicious cycle there, and another histamine reaction can be feeling unusually hot or unusually cold. Now I know once we go into menopause, or Frank chemically induced menopause, or lots of times the side effects from some of the treatments we're on we think of as hot flashes, which I'm sure many of them are. But could managing histamine a little bit better in your life, in your body, maybe relieve some of that discomfort from hot flashes? So what can we do about that? If we've got cells making histamines. How do we have any control over that? Well, we can practice certain lifestyle habits and take in certain foods and avoid other foods that actually help our body to break down those histamines. So we can be mindful of what we're eating and how we're supporting the breakdown of histamines. So two really important players in the breakdown of histamines are two different enzymes. One is Dao, diamine oxidase, and we can actually eat foods that are rich in Dao. I did a podcast a while ago, several weeks ago, I think, and it was about eating organ meat or taking organ supplements. And pork kidney is one of those foods that is high in this enzyme that helps break down histamines in our body. There are several different kinds of fish that do that, Mahi, Mahi, cod, haddock, Pollock, halibut. These all are high Dao foods, so they're high in the enzyme that help break down histamines. But I want to give a couple of caveats here. When we're eating fish, what's important is that this is very fresh fish. So if you buy these fish and you want to incorporate them into your diet, and you're not sure you're going to eat them right away, freezing them is a good way to maintain this enzyme activity and make sure that you're keeping them as fresh as possible. There can be a lot of food safety issues around fish. For not handling them properly. There are other nutrients that support the breakdown of histamines by helping to increase the production or the activity of this Dao or the second enzyme is hm and T enzyme, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But the B vitamins are very good, so b6 is a great is a cofactor for the enzyme of Dao. So that means it's going to help increase the activity of Dao, and we can get b6 in foods like poultry, fish, again, the fish that I just talked about, chickpeas, bananas, or a few foods. Vitamin C is something that helps break down histamine in our body. So making sure that we're including foods like broccoli, brussel sprouts, bell peppers, strawberries and citrus fruits in the whole fruit, not too many and not in juices, because we just don't want to be spiking our blood sugar all the time. A good probiotic can be something that's helpful in the breakdown of histamines, and I'm going to touch on that a little bit here, because here's an interesting thing, when we talk about the health of the gut, a lot of times we talk about incorporating fermented foods, because fermented foods can have a lot of benefits to gut health, that fermented foods can also be high in histamines. So some foods that we might want to avoid are foods that block the activity of these enzymes that break down histamines. Those things include alcohol, energy drinks, aged cheeses, fermented foods, processed meats and foods containing vinegar. So let's talk about that for a sec. Do you want to eliminate fermented foods from your diet, in totality,
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probably not. You have to decide, because we're all so bio individual, what is your reaction to histamines? Did you listen to some of those symptoms and think I might be having a histamine intolerance? If so, then it might be a good idea to get some fermented foods out of your diet for a while to check and see if reducing histamines is helpful to you and you start to feel better, and then maybe introducing little bits of them, not on a daily basis, but incorporating them back into your diet and see how your body responds to them. So fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, are very rich in probiotics and definitely support good gut health. They help balance that microbiome. So fermented foods can have a benefit. But if you're experiencing discomfort and you're trying to just experiment with reducing histamines in your body, maybe check out, just removing them for a little bit, right? I love just always being my own clinical study a population of one and testing things a little bit at a time to see how they affect my body and what I can actually handle. Okay. Other ways that we can reduce histamine production are by reducing stress. I know I talk about this a lot, the power of stress, but I'm telling you, stress can impact so many things in our system, and it can also increase histamine release in our body. So practicing Stress management techniques like mindfulness meditation, yoga and absolutely regular physical activity, I say this all the time, exercise is medicine, but exercise in this case, is especially helpful because it helps to regulate the immune system, and it helps to reduce histamine production, getting good sleep, sleep hygiene. This is something I think a lot of us can focus on. I have a lot of clients that tell me they struggle with social media scrolling and stay up until midnight, one, two o'clock in the morning on social media or watching TV or something like that. So adequate sleep is going to help reduce this histamine production and managing allergies. So if you know you have allergies, absolutely, talk to your doctor or naturopath about how you can manage those allergies. My mind when I hear about managing allergies, goes right to allergy medications, antihistamines, shots, things like that, and it may involve that. So just understanding what would managing your allergies involve? How Might those treatments, if necessary, for you, impact your body and your health, and what can you do from a lifestyle and nutrition perspective to kind of counterbalance whatever those effects are. So if you're not managing allergies and you're having a lot of histamine production, and it's creating a lot of discomfort and inflammation, then that's a problem too. So sometimes this is why I love the integrated approach to things, because sometimes we turn to medicine to help relieve suffering, and then we turn to better, even better lifestyle practices to help support the health of our body as it's managing medications that we may need to take to live a healthy, comfortable life. All right, friends. So just a quick tutorial on histamines. I have found this fascinating. I'm really digging into it for myself, because I can absolutely tell. Something is off kilter when it comes to suddenly experiencing all of this itching in the tissues inside of my head, right something I've never had before. So when I think about that, it makes me think of inflammation, and I'm always on guard about lowering inflammation in my body. So hopefully some of this information about histamines has been helpful for you, and you can look at what foods you're incorporating, if you're experiencing any of these conditions, and see if it helps you. If you would like to dig deeper into that and understand maybe some of the snips that you have that are impacting your histamine pathways. You can always find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com and go to coaching and programs where you'll find my metabolic health coaching, and we can look at your 3x four genetics or your nutrition genome, and get a better understanding of what's driving anything that's being driven in your body, and how different food and lifestyle practices might support you. All right, friends, I will talk to you soon, until then, be good to yourself
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