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Understanding Histamine Intolerance

If you struggle with chronic symptoms like skin rashes, mood swings, anxiety, or digestive issues there may be something else going on beneath the surface: Histamine intolerance.

Histamine intolerance happens when your body can’t break down histamine properly, kind of like having too much traffic and not enough stoplights. Histamine is a natural chemical involved in things like digestion, immune response, and alertness, but when it builds up (from food, stress, gut issues, or poor enzyme function), it can cause annoying symptoms like headaches, hives, runny nose, anxiety, or digestive problems.
It’s not an allergy, it’s more like your “histamine bucket” overflowing because your body’s clean-up crew can’t keep up. The good news? With the right diet, supplements, and lifestyle tweaks, you can get that bucket under control.

What Is Histamine?

Histamine is a natural chemical made by the immune system. Histamine is a natural chemical your body produces that acts like a messenger, helping to regulate several important functions. It plays a key role in your immune response triggering inflammation to help fight off infections or allergens. Histamine also supports digestion by stimulating stomach acid and helps communicate messages in your brain, affecting things like alertness and sleep-wake cycles.
While histamine is essential for health, too much of it, or trouble breaking it down, can lead to symptoms like itching, hives, headaches, runny nose, and digestive issues. Balance is the key when it comes to histamine. In a balanced state, histamine is a helpful ally, but when levels build up faster than the body can break them down, it can cause a wide range of symptoms, especially in those who are sensitive.

What Causes Histamine Intolerance?

Histamine can accumulate in the body due to internal imbalances, environmental triggers like pollen or mold, internal and external stress, and even certain foods. When the body becomes overwhelmed and can’t keep up, we see what’s called histamine intolerance, and the symptoms can look very different from person to person.

Symptoms usually happen when the enzymes responsible for clearing histamine, primarily DAO (diamine oxidase) and HNMT (histamine N-methyltransferase), aren’t working properly. The reasons can vary: gut inflammation, infections, certain medications, nutrient deficiencies,or genetic variations can all impair enzyme function. Eating too many high-histamine foods or foods that trigger histamine release can also overwhelm your system. Essentially, histamine intolerance is like your “histamine bucket” filling up faster than your body can empty it, leading to reactions even when you’re not technically allergic.

Common Symptoms of Histamine Intolerance

While each individual is unique, common histamine intolerance symptoms may include:

Headaches or migraines
Sinus congestion
Itchy skin or hives
Watery eyes
Digestive upset
Breathing challenges
Heart palpitations
Anxiety, irritability, or even rage
Sleep disturbances
Brain fog or cognitive issues

In some cases reactions can be severe, resembling allergies or even anaphylaxis.

What You Can Do: Start with a Low Histamine Diet

If you suspect histamine intolerance, starting a low histamine diet can offer noticeable relief. The key to a low histamine diet is whole foods, freshness, and simplicity. Histamine builds up in foods over time so even a healthy meal can become problematic if it’s aged, fermented, or stored too long.

Simple Guidelines for a Low Histamine Diet

Choose organic, fresh foods whenever possible
Cook meats fresh and freeze leftovers in individual portions
Avoid slow cookers (they tend to increase histamine)
Use a pressure cooker or Instant Pot for quick, low-histamine meals
Skip fermented, canned, and processed foods
Frozen fruits and vegetables are great alternatives
Consider DAO enzyme support when trying new foods
Keep a food and symptom journal to track reactions

Most importantly focus on what you can enjoy rather than what you can’t. Many fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meats are naturally low in histamine and tasty too!

Support Histamine Balance

In addition to food choices, certain nutrients play a big role in helping the body manage histamine. There are two main enzymes involved in supporting histamine balance. DAO (Diamine Oxidase): Breaks down histamine from food in the gut and HNMT (Histamine-N-Methyltransferase) regulates histamine in the brain and central nervous system.

Supporting these enzymes through nutrition can help stabilize histamine levels and reduce symptoms over time.

Enzymes

Nutrients help manage histamine symptoms because they support the enzymes and systems in your body responsible for breaking down and regulating histamine. When your body can’t effectively break down histamine—either due to genetic factors, gut health issues, or nutrient deficiencies—you can experience symptoms like headaches, skin issues, digestive problems, anxiety, or fatigue.

Nutrients

As stated earlier, DAO (Diamine Oxidase) and HNMT (Histamine-N-Methyltransferase) are the two main enzymes that break down histamine. Specific nutrients help these enzymes function properly and include the following:

Vitamin B6 – Essential for DAO enzyme activity. A B6 deficiency can impair the way your body breaks histamine down.
Vitamin C – Acts as a natural antihistamine and supports the production of DAO.
Copper – A cofactor for DAO. Low copper = low DAO activity.
Magnesium – Stabilizes mast cells and supports detox pathways that process histamine.
Zinc – Important for gut health and enzyme function, including HNMT.

Gut Integrity

A healthy gut lining helps regulate how much histamine is absorbed. Nutrients that support gut healing and reduce histamine load include the following:

L-glutamine – Repairs gut lining, reducing histamine absorption from food.
Probiotics – Some strains help degrade histamine, while others may increase histamine load.
Vitamin A & D – Help maintain a healthy gut barrier and immune regulation.

Antioxidant Protection & Mast Cell Stabilization

Mast cells release histamine in response to triggers. Certain nutrients help calm this response.

Quercetin – A flavonoid that stabilizes mast cells and reduces histamine release.
Vitamin E – Antioxidant that helps protect cells from oxidative stress, which can activate mast cells.
Omega-3 fatty acids – Reduce inflammation and help regulate immune responses.

Methylation Support

The HNMT enzyme uses methylation to break down histamine. Methylation depends on the B vitamins B12, Folate, and B2 to ensure your body can detox excess histamine effectively. When methylation is sluggish, due to nutrient deficiencies or genetic variants, histamine can build up and trigger symptoms like anxiety, fatigue, or skin issues to name a few. Supporting methylation helps keep histamine in balance and your body feeling its best.

Nutrition Summary

Overall, nutrients help manage histamine symptoms by supporting enzymes that break down histamine, stabilizing mast cells, strengthening the gut barrier, and enhancing detox and antioxidant defenses.

Everybody’s needs are different but working with a knowledgeable practitioner like Kelly Engelmann who offers personalized health programs for your wellness journey can help you personalize your nutrition plan, identify nutritional gaps, and support long-term healing through diet and lifestyle. In essence, functional medicine doesn’t just suppress histamine intolerance symptoms—it aims to resolve the root causes and rebalance the body’s systems, leading to long-term healing and resilience.

Lastly, a phased, low-histamine diet is often used short-term to reduce the symptom burden while deeper healing takes place. Unlike conventional elimination diets, functional medicine reintroduces foods as the root causes are addressed, aiming to restore tolerance over time.

A Natural Approach

Healing from histamine intolerance requires more than just avoiding high-histamine foods—it calls for a comprehensive understanding of the body’s interconnected systems and a strategy that gets to the root of imbalance. This is where functional medicine shines. Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, functional medicine takes a personalized, systems-based approach to uncover what’s driving histamine overload in each unique individual. Whether it’s poor gut health, nutrient deficiencies, liver detox challenges, chronic infections, hormonal imbalances, or environmental exposures, functional medicine seeks to identify and correct the core imbalances contributing to the body’s inability to regulate histamine properly.

Through advanced testing, targeted nutrition, lifestyle strategies, and evidence-based supplementation, functional medicine practitioners help rebuild the body’s capacity to tolerate histamine. The goal isn’t lifelong restriction—it’s restoring resilience. Over time, many individuals are able to reintroduce previously problematic foods and experience significant symptom relief, improved digestion, better energy, and reduced reactivity. Importantly, this process also fosters a deeper connection with one’s body and empowers individuals to take ownership of their health.

Histamine intolerance can feel overwhelming and unpredictable, but through a functional medicine lens, it becomes a solvable puzzle. By listening to the body’s signals, addressing the true drivers of dysfunction, and supporting healing from the inside out, functional medicine provides a hopeful path forward. If you’re struggling with symptoms that seem unrelated or unresolved by conventional care, consider exploring a root-cause approach. With the right guidance, histamine intolerance doesn’t have to be a life sentence—it can be an invitation to restore balance, vitality, and long-term wellness.

How We Can Help You

At Enhanced Wellness Living located in Ridgeland, Mississippi, our expert Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioners Kelly Engelmann and Amanda Carter, offer an individualized approach and personalized health programs to naturally restore histamine imbalances. With targeted diet plans and supplements, IV Therapy, health coaching, and other methods, Enhanced Wellness Living can help you understand histamine tolerance to support your body and wellness journey sustainably for the long haul.
Histamine intolerance is often misunderstood, but with the right tools and guidance, it’s absolutely manageable. A fresh, low histamine diet paired with targeted nutritional support can make a world of difference, not only in symptoms, but in your overall well-being.

If you’re looking for expert support, you can fill out our Get Started Today form on our site to see if Enhanced Wellness Living is a right fit for you!