Histamine Intolerance a cause of anxiety and panic attacks!

This is an excerpt from an interview with a doctor about histamine intolerance(something I came across in doing research on food allergies), a condition that is recently gaining headlines in the UK and is the culprit for a wide variety of symptoms, such as rash/hives and eczema or even itchy skin, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic diarrhea (if one has an insufficient amount of DOA or Diamine Oxidase they can't process histamine- there are a lot of foods with histamines in them- and also if you have allergies then the result is your body produces histamine as a result, which increases the severity of you reactions)
: " I was prescribed multiple medications over decade for “generalised anxiety disorder” that didn’t exist.."

As I was reading this I found this gem and had to share it with everyone here, as apparently reducing histamine rich foods in ones diet has the potential to reduce anxiety and panic attacks in those that have severe issues. I thought is was worth the read. Maybe those of you who have severe anxiety have a histamine rich diet and perhaps reducing it a bit will help things be more manageable. Here's another excerpt explaining this:"Histamine has many functions in the body. One of the functions it performs is that it is a vasodilator, which means it widens blood vessels. With the widening of the blood vessel, what happens then is that there is less resistance to the heart pumping blood through the body – it’s like widening a hose and you get less resistance to the water as it’s pumped through, so the heart speeds up in order to get the same volume of blood through these widened channels. So you get a tachycardia, but first of all you get a drop in blood pressure, so that’s first in the histamine response, a drop in blood pressure, increase in heart rate, and then as the blood courses through the body, you get flushing and a rise in body heat and so on and so forth, reddening, and, of course, this triggers that panic attack feeling in a person and I’ve had people go to the emergency room thinking they are having an anaphylactic reaction, thinking they’re having a heart attack – all sorts of things. And actually, it’s excess histamine because of the widening of the blood vessels and the increase in the heart rate – and on a low histamine diet, the panic attacks have gone away."

Very interesting, for those who want to try reducing your intake of histamine rich foods, here's a list of foods to try avoiding for a few weeks to see if things improve for you(of course you can still enjoy them in small quantities ever so often):
~Alcohol
~Pickled or canned foods (though in the transcript it says fishes canned in North America and UK are safer because they have higher standards)
~Matured Cheeses
~Smoked Meat Products (salami, ham, sausages)
~Shellfish
~Beans and pulses (soybeans, peanuts_ chickpeas/garbanzo beans are ok)
~Nuts (walnuts, cashews)
~Chocolate and other cocoa based products
~Most Citric fruits
~Wheat based products
~Vinegar
~Ready Made meals (all the preservatives and and such)
~Salty snacks, sweets and preservatives and artificial colorings
Debatable: yogurt (depends on the culture)

So foods to stick with when doing this are:
Fresh meat (cooled, frozen or fresh)
Freshly caught fish
Chicken (skinned and fresh)
Egg yolk
Fresh fruits – with the exception of strawberries, most fresh fruits are considered to have a low histamine level (also see histamine liberators below)
Fresh vegetables – with the exception of tomatoes
Grains – rice noodles, yeast free rye bread, rice crisp bread, oats, puffed rice crackers, millet flour, pasta (spelt and corn based)
Fresh pasteurised milk and milk products
Milk substitutes – coconut milk, rice milk
Cream cheese, butter (without the histamine generating rancidity)
Most cooking oils – check suitability before use
Most leafy herbs – check suitability before use
Most non-citric fruit juices
Herbal teas – with the exception of those listed below

Diamine Oxidase (DAO) blockers:

Alcohol
Black tea
Energy drinks
Green tea
Mate tea

Heres a link to both part one and two of the interview(including the transcripts below for more info):
Dr Janice Joneja Histamine Intolerance Interview Transcript | THE LOW HISTAMINE CHEF
http://thelowhistaminechef.com/dr-ja...interview-pt2/
And of course there are other sites with more info such as this one I found:
http://www.histamineintolerance.org..../the-food-list

Be well everyone!

very interesting thanks for sharing.....about the only one I am guilty of is chocolate...lol....

I had read to avoid CATS.....caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar

That is really interesting, thank you for sharing. Although I'm not sure it would apply to me. I eat hardly any of the high histamine foods except nuts and citric fruit. But I still get some of those symptoms like flushing and pounding heart. Anyway something to keep in mind for sure.