What’s In Your Bucket?
Hello friends –
Last week, we learned that your respiratory, your circulation, and your digestive systems are all a part of your immune system. And, that mast cells are an important player in this. Histamine is one type of mast cell. Today, we’ll focus on histamine.
You release histamine when your body feels like it is under attack. This could be an airborne irritant (hay fever), which would be one type of an environmental trigger, or something you just ate. The histamine in your body will build up until you reach the level that you can no longer tolerate. Then you experience symptoms that make you feel pretty miserable.
As I was researching for this email, I found a wonderful analogy for histamine. They referred to histamine as a bucket, and when the bucket gets too full, it overflows and we have symptoms. Here are the different levels they used to describe what fills our histamine bucket:
Level 1– This can be as simple as our sex hormones; progesterone and/or estrogen, being out of balance.
Level 2- Too much physical and/or emotional stress. (I know that none of us have experienced any of this in the past several months.)
Level 3- Nutrient deficiencies; a poor diet which leads to poor gut health.
Level 4- Certain medications that block our ability to breakdown histamine which allows it to build up over time. Some of these medications include antidepressants, antibiotics, pain medications, and even antihistamines.
Level 5- Foods themselves are a huge contributor to histamine overload. Foods that have been in the fridge for a long time, fermented, or aged foods have high histamine levels, and so does alcohol.
Level 6- Airborne allergens; dust, pollens, smoke.
All of these contribute to an overflowing level of histamine.
So, what can be done to decrease the amount of histamine? Well, let’s go through that list.
1. Get your hormones balanced. You know if they are out of balance. There are many different ways to do this. I can help with minor imbalances by testing you for nutritional supplements or creams. If you need a prescription, I can make a referral.
2. If you need help reducing your emotional stress, I have a few options for you to choose from. Physical stress reduction can be done simply by some deep belly breaths, a nice walk outside, or putting your feet in the grass, dirt, or water.
3. Eat real live foods in the way that nature gives them to us. And sometimes additional nutritional support is necessary. At Beeing Well, we offer several different supplements, plus you can be tested to see which supplements are best for you and exactly how much you need to add to your day.
Hopefully, as you take better care of yourself physically and emotionally, the need for medications will decrease. Healthier, alternative options are available to help you and support you at Beeing Well. One such option is NAET which specifically targets relief of your allergy symptoms.
I hope you can see that a healthy immune system is a very complex system and it does require us to do some very specific things to keep it healthy. With that said, all of the years that I have worked in a healthcare related field, I do know this; the human body is so resilient and it wants to survive. With a few conscious choices, we can actually help it thrive.
May you have a blessed week!
Love to you!
Janalee