Coping With Histamine, Mood, Skin Issues And Beyond

[biomes]

Have you taken many anti-biotics in your lifetime? Sounds like the root of your cause may be gut related.

 

[Hgreen56]

I'm going to start logging things in one place for my own sanity, records, and in the hopes that perhaps it could contribute to the body of knowledge and experiences on this forum.

Quick background/timeline:

• Dealt with depression, anxiety, skin and personality problems for life, worsened exponentially at the (relatively late) onset of menstruation at 15
• Stressful and isolated childhood
• Brother developed IBS severe enough he had to drop out of high school
• I developed BDD during teens, escalated to anorexia/orthorexia at 18, became a vegan
• Started to recover from that via various means including therapy at 22 but still struggled with some bulimic behavior
• Tried paleo and found that I was less swollen, brain fogged, just seemed "better", but it wasn't sustainable, bulimic compulsions for CARBS increased
• Came across Ray Peat in 2014 while living in sunny LA, began experimenting extensively with his diet recommendations
• Realized conclusively I can't tolerate unfermented milk of any type (you name it, I tried it) but the main revelations were that

1. It's important to eat enough, food should not have to be an enemy
2. Hormones can be manipulated to my benefit
3. Starch causes me problems that sugar does not
4. Food powerfully alters my mood and overall wellbeing
5. I have histamine intolerance

• Tried progesterone (progest-e) one of the most important things I ever did in my life, had major reduction in anxiety, depression, tender/swollen/fibrous breasts, lower body water retention, retained those improvements even after stopping supplementation
• Tried thyroid, results were mixed, still unsure I've ever been able to get the dosing on this right or if it's really the right drug for me. There was a time I was convinced this was a necessity, now I'm not as sure, but I have gone back on it recently (about 50mcg t4, 25 mcg t3 a day) since I moved back to the dark northwest and started struggling a lot with fatigue again
• These revelations led me to experiment further for several years, to the point that I was able to live a more normal life and make a lot of progress becoming a well-adjusted adult. But I still haven't found a solution that truly stabilizes me and as a result I think I need to pursue pharmacological solutions more intently.

Thus I've decided to really give cyproheptadine a go. My issues track heavily with histamine intake and I feel that the most accurate "diagnosis" one could give me is histamine intolerance. However, it isn't clear why I have this syndrome or what the root cause is. Either way, if longterm cypro is an option for me it'd enable me to live a more productive and even-keeled life. As of now I'm caught between several very restrictive diets and it's a problem for me as it makes it hard to eat enough and I develop deficiencies pretty quickly by my own observation. Obviously I also don't want to relapse into an eating disorder. Without being able to drink milk or orange juice, and struggling to tolerate starch without developing high serotonin symptoms, there isn't much I can eat without inadvertently sliding into a low carb diet. You might disagree, but consider that I don't have a lot of money and most fruit/juice sources make me feel extremely funky after only a week or two of relying on them, worse than the serotonin feel of starch. Orange juice feels satiating in a way that apple doesn't, but as a potent histamine liberator it is unsustainable for me to consume (it also did a number on my teeth along the gumline). I find that a starch-free diet makes it hard to hold onto enough sodium (not because I don't eat enough, but because it seems to somehow get washed out of my system), and salt is one of my main allies in controlling allergy symptoms. It just seems like no diet ever feels right, and I have had an increase in some symptoms over the past few years:

1. My inner ears constantly itch to the point that it drives me insane (new symptom as of 2018)
2. My eczema on my hands has gotten much worse
3. I get pain in the duodenum area of my gut from time to time, sometimes chronically, usually triggered by high histamine foods or a long period of high starch intake
4. I have chronic gastritis since getting food poisoning in 2016
5. I had more cavities this year than I ever have in my life, lost significant enamel during my high orange juice intake phase. I have 3-4 cavities now and I had had 2 in my life, ever, prior to this

I have more info to write but that's all for now, I wanted to at least get a place to started documenting how cyproheptadine is working for me.

i see you still active here.
can you gives some update how you doing?
How is your diet looks like?

 

[Motif]

i see you still active here.
can you gives some update how you doing?
How is your diet looks like?

@artist

super interested too. You found anything that really helped you meanwhile ?

 

[Motif]

@artist

 

[artist]

Hey! I do still check back here... I’ve come a long way from where I seem to have been in the original post.

1. I am able to tolerate a lot more starch before it becomes a problem than in the past, and may have even misattributed some issues to starch, but I’m not sure. If I really chronically overdo it I do still get weird air hunger, more anxiousness and worsened sleep. I have cycled through oregano oil, certain probiotics (s boulardii and b coagulans, pretty basic), and I consume kefir and sauerkraut regularly so I’m not sure but microbial improvement might be the reason for better tolerance. I still like to go off all starch intermittently, but it’s part of my normal diet now.

2. I still take baking soda and vinegar here and there but not as much lately. Like many things I tend to cycle it as it seems my body can kind of stock up on bicarbonate. I believe that it acts as a mast cell stabilizer and is useful for that but the benefits kind of plateau if I overdo it and then it messes up my pH.

3. These days I mostly rely on guaifenesin as a supplement which seems to be mentally and physically calming and keeps my lymph system moving so my angioedema issues are much milder. It’s also a biofilm disrupter. Diet wise a lower salicylate diet seems to be critical for me. It turns out the biggest problem of the Ray Peat diet for me is the massive amounts of salicylates in most fruits, it took me a long time to be open to the idea that I’m sensitive to them but I’m also extremely reactive to aspirin and that helped me realize. Coconut is another huge trigger in that category. Salicylates are as big of an issue, or in fact probably an even bigger issue for me, as histamine levels. It’s interesting that there is a popular fibromyalgia protocol that hinges on both high guaifenesin intake and salicylate avoidance. That’s not what I specifically set out to do but I find both of those things extremely helpful. (I take guaifenesin 2-3x a day)

4. I also find taking an active b complex really helpful and the more I stay stocked up on nutrients the less triggers seem to affect me. I also take potassium and magnesium which seems to be really important for me especially when supplementing with b vitamins. My vein/capillary issue seems to have been due to avoiding sulfur too scrupulously when I mistakenly thought the thiol/CBS mutation was The Answer which it ultimately wasn’t for me. MSM seems to be clearing up those problems as well as other symptoms that appeared around that time for me (fragile skin and even some apparent nerve damage and hormone dysfunction). I took copper for ages but within a few days of taking MSM I saw improvement that no amount of copper could touch, so I guess I wasn’t copper deficient or at least that wasn’t the main problem. Hopefully I didn’t poison myself with all that copper lol. I don’t really have any huge epiphanies to share unfortunately although I do think the methylation/b vitamin strategies you see discussed among people with chronic fatigue, that really might apply to my situation at the core. I’m hoping over time my immune system might normalize more if I stick with the methyl Bs for a while. Jarrow B Right works fine for me so I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have to troubleshoot that much with it. It can clear up a lot of malaise and fatigue very quickly for me and it also makes me semi immune to hangovers (I basically only drink titos and soda when I drink so that helps ?). This is an area I plan to explore further going forward.

5. I consume copious amounts of caffeine lol, and meat, eggs, yogurt, butter and otherwise kind of cycle my carb sources from non enriched low salicylate starches and low salicylate fruits. I don’t take thyroid, progesterone or really any supplements besides the ones I mentioned above. For a while I was taking a lot of glycine but I kind of hit a wall where the taste of it makes me gag and I think maybe I just don’t need it anymore.

6. I do still have days where abnormally strong fatigue knocks me out fully (maybe every couple weeks) but nothing like the chronic tired&wired feeling I was living with for years. I can kinda crash myself if I overdo it on one thing or another in terms of diet, supplements or stress. Electrolytes and food are usually the answer when that happens, as well as patience...

7. My teeth have also stabilized although I think the previous damage to the enamel means I’ll always have to watch them carefully. Avoiding mint toothpaste (salicylates) has been a big help for my immune system and my mouth.

8. Other good news in terms of more superficial topics, my skin is pretty clear these days which had previously been a big problem. I use The Ordinary niacinamide+zinc serum which controls breakouts well enough, and I clean it with only miscellar water. Topical salicylates are big breakout triggers for me. I continue to easily maintain a BMI of 19ish and a healthy amount of muscle mass despite not working out or counting cals/macros. I really do think that has to do with sticking to saturated fat as a fuel source.


9. No antihistamines (be it cyproheotadine or Zyrtec) ever panned out for me. The side effects are always worse than the improvement and ultimately it doesn’t seem to meaningfully address whatever is wrong with me.

Thank you for asking and I hope some of that info can be a useful clue for someone.

@Hgreen56 @Motif

 

[artist]

It’s not letting me edit but I wanted to add that I think it may be that going off sulfur foods for a little while could have been beneficial and I’m still not 100% sure what happened when things fell apart but ultimately MSM seems to be the final missing piece for resolving it at this time for me. I think I also inadvertently lowered my salicylate intake a lot when I lowered sulfur and this may have been a lot of the perceived benefit. The so-called low vitamin A diet may have a similar source of power for some people who benefit from it.

 

[Hgreen56]

It’s not letting me edit but I wanted to add that I think it may be that going off sulfur foods for a little while could have been beneficial and I’m still not 100% sure what happened when things fell apart but ultimately MSM seems to be the final missing piece for resolving it at this time for me. I think I also inadvertently lowered my salicylate intake a lot when I lowered sulfur and this may have been a lot of the perceived benefit. The so-called low vitamin A diet may have a similar source of power for some people who benefit from it.

you know msm is high sulfur right? ;-)

You saying in the past that starch causes problems that sugar does not
Now you saying that you able to tolerate a lot more starch.
I am curious, what exactly were these problems and what have you done that solved this?

 

[artist]

you know msm is high sulfur right? ;-)

You saying in the past that starch causes problems that sugar does not
Now you saying that you able to tolerate a lot more starch.
I am curious, what exactly were these problems and what have you done that solved this?

Yes that’s the reason I’m taking it :p. When I cut out all sulfur and thiols two years ago I was barely even eating protein foods on top of avoiding cruciferous veg, eggs, onions etc and even taking molybdenum. I felt good for a while but had a huge crash that was probably due to not approaching that experiment in an intelligent way. I don’t even know if sulfur intolerance was ever a primary issue for me (although considering the low-thiol diet lowers ammonia I’m guessing that at least helped) and now I’m finding some of the issues that cropped up at the time are being resolved by MSM, presumably because I depleted too much sulfur from my body which is already clearly struggling to detoxify many kinds of substances. Sulfur is important to a lot of those processes as I understand it, as well as connective tissue health which was one of my worst areas of deterioration at the time.

Starch still gives me the same issues but it requires a bigger dosage and more consistent exposure to be a major problem than before. Because starch is low histamine and low salicylate (generally) including some in my diet prevents me from ODing on those other problematic substances, it’s all a bit of a balancing act but it’s become more intuitive over time. With too much starch I’ll get depression, anxiety, brain fog, swelling throughout body, worsened appetite, air hunger, inability to fall asleep, restless leg syndrome, dark circles etc. I am guessing these issues are all bacteria related but I do think I have made my probable dysbiosis less extreme over time through the oregano oil and perhaps even probiotics I’ve pulsed over time. Oregano oil will pretty much act as a benzo when I’m getting anxiety from too much starch, I’m assuming from the antimicrobial effect although I think it speeds up phase 2 liver detox as well.

 

[artist]

Also I’m sorry if I’m not explaining things well, I had to go back and read this thread to remember what was documented in here vs other threads and I also have a slightly different interpretation of events than I had at the time etc. Tracking health stuff is hard!