Do you ever feel tired, dizzy and unwell just a short while after eating your last meal?
Do you feel like even though you’ve had a fairly good serving of a satisfying meal, and you really shouldn’t be that hungry, you just need to eat or you’re likely to start feeling like you’re about to ‘crash’?
These issues are more common than you think when you suffer from histamine intolerance.
But why is that?
Well, histamine has a way of tripping up your body’s ability to control your blood sugar… and, your blood sugar levels can also impact the amount of histamine your body releases (1).
Let’s take a closer look at this histamine and blood sugar phenomenon and, as always, what you can do about it to ensure it doesn’t lead to further complications with your histamine intolerance symptoms down the road.
Histamine Intolerance and Blood Sugar
First things first: what is it about your blood sugar that you need to know about?
For starters, your blood sugar is the amount of energy your body extracts from the carbohydrates you eat. It can also be controlled by various complicated biochemical processes that take place in the body, but really, the main contribution to your blood sugar that we want to know about comes from the food you eat.
Now, the trouble with following a very restrictive diet, like the one you’re probably on due to your histamine intolerance, is that if you are on said restrictive diet for a prolonged period of time, you're likely not getting the right combination of nutrients your body needs to function. In fact, you can read more about common nutrient deficiencies in histamine intolerance.
It's important to remember that a low histamine diet, or any restrictive diet for that matter, is (in most cases) a tool to get better. And, just like medicine that a doctor would prescribe to get better, the goal is to use this tool temporarily in order to improve your condition and go back to normal life. Not to rely on this tool for the rest of your life!
If you want to know what to eat on a low histamine diet and the tools you can use to improve your histamine intolerance quickly, download my free low histamine diet guide below.
So, back to what happens if you are becoming to reliant on a restrictive diet to control symptoms.
Well, at first, it will help....but, eventually, if you don't get enough food variety for months or years at a time because you're sticking to a few 'safe foods', you may develop nutrient deficiencies.
It’s at this stage that your brain says right, I’m not getting what I need, so let’s get our hands on a quick and easily available source of energy. What does this look like? Cravings for foods that can give you energy, of course!
These cravings often come in the form of high carbohydrate foods and sugars.
Eating sugar or any other high carb food - and yes, this includes ‘histamine safe’ foods like coconut sugar, date syrup and maple syrup as well as high glycemic index fruit like grapes - causes your blood sugar to spike and crash multiple times a day. It’s likely the reason you feel so tired after eating, and it can leave you feeling less than well, and simply, wanting more sugar to feel better again.
But where does histamine come in?
Well, histamine is believed to play some major roles in the digestive process. Research has shown that it may impact the motility, or movement, of your digestive tract, enhance production of digestive juices, particularly stomach acid, and at the same time, actually reduce the ability of the protective mucosal cells in the digestive lining to regenerate (2).
It means that histamine is released every time you eat, and is important for the extraction of energy from your food.
You may be thinking that the histamine released during and after a meal should make you feel worse, and you’d be correct. While you might feel better for a few minutes because your blood sugar is brought back up, you’ll likely feel much worse again soon after you eat a higher glycemic meal not only because of the drop in your blood sugar, but also because of the spike in your histamine levels.
This cycle is one of the reasons why I recommend to limit sugar sources, simple carbohydrates and sweeteners in my low histamine diet guide. The guide is much more than just a list of histamine allowed or restricted foods, but a holistic tool that takes into account all of the ways that eating may be impacting your histamine symptoms and overall health.
Additionally, research shows that many of those who are diabetic or insulin resistant actually also have lower levels of diamine oxidase enzymes being produced. The reason this is incredibly relevant is because diamine oxidase enzymes are essential for breaking histamine down in the gut.
Additionally, histamine also tends to be found in higher levels in the blood of those with diabetes (3). With this in mind, you can imagine the impact that a high sugar diet has on your health both in terms of managing your blood sugar levels and your histamine intolerance symptoms.
Essentially, continuing to eat a high sugar diet and/or high carb diet, could worsen your histamine intolerance symptoms, and also put you at risk of diabetes.
How to Balance Blood Sugar with Histamine Intolerance
It’s essential to try to put together well balanced meals every time you eat food. This means that you should be including a protein and/or fat source and vegetables in your meals, especially when you’re including carbs. Keep in mind, we're talking generally here as some individuals do have variances in personal tolerance for a variety of foods.
For example, if you have trouble with certain types of fiber, such as those with IBS or SIBO often do, then of course tailor the meal to go easy on the fiber and contain the veggies you can tolerate. The point here is to keep these rules in mind while still listening to your body and paying attention to how it responds.
Of course, we also encourage you to eat low glycemic index carbs, wherever possible. Or, if you’re only tolerating white rice as a carb, for example, be sure to eat a smaller portion and pair it with a portion of protein and/or a small portion of fat to blunt the blood sugar spike that can come from eating a large amount of white rice on its own (although, that would be kind of an odd meal).
For example, if you are going to have a bit of rice, add a small portion of freshly cooked chicken breast with some olive oil, or a full-fat piece of meat to cover both the protein and fats.
Vegetables are also a great addition to your meals to support your blood sugar. The high fiber content they contain helps to slow down the digestive process, leaving you with a more stable source of energy flowing from your meals into your blood.
Again, not everyone with digestive issues, in specific, will have a super high tolerance to fiberous vegetables, however if you can tolerate them they really are great for your gut microbiota.
If you really do need something sweet, opt for just a small portion of fruit where possible or a whole-foods dessert sweetened with a natural sweetener such as maple syrup, as opposed to table sugar.
Here’s our stewed apple recipe; it’s a real winner amongst our clients, and it’s a delicious and healthy treat that also has gut-health promoting and inflammatory reducing properties.
If you’re in need of another source of sweetness in your diet, consider adding 100% pure, alcohol-free stevia. It has been shown to have little to no effect on your blood sugar, but provides the sweetness of sugar you may be looking for, once in a while.
For more ideas of what to eat and which foods to focus on, you can use the low histamine diet guide.
The bottom line is that restrictive diets, over prolonged periods of time, can lead to sugar cravings if you're not nourishing yourself properly. These diets should be done both temporarily and correctly - not simply relied upon forever and repeating the same foods for extended durations.
If you begin to get cravings, know that your body is missing something and it's important to address the cause, as giving in to these cravings regularly can actually worsen your histamine intolerance symptoms, without you even realizing it.
The best approach is to utilize these diets temporarily while focusing on a long term approach to heal your histamine intolerance for good, and be able to eat a varied diet with as little restriction as possible!
If you'd like to see the all-natural, evidence-based approach I personally used to solve my histamine intolerance, and have used to improve and eliminate histamine intolerance in thousands of clients to date, check out the How I Solved My Histamine Intolerance Course.
Put your health in nature's hands.
Anita Tee, Nutritional Scientist
References:
- Wang, K., et al. Histamine Regulation in Glucose and Lipid Metabolism via Histamine Receptors. Am J Pathol. 2010 Aug; 177(2): 713–723.
- Fabisiak, A., Włodarczyk, J., Fabisiak, N., Storr, M., & Fichna, J. (2017). Targeting Histamine Receptors in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Critical Appraisal. Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, 23(3), 341–348.
- Pini A, Obara I, Battell E, Chazot PL, Rosa AC. Histamine in diabetes: Is it time to reconsider? Pharmacol Res. 2016 Sep;111:316-324.
