For the medical information about this topic, please see Family Wellness Tips. Our pediatrician, Dr. Ana Maria Temple, and her husband, Dr. John Temple, are explaining the science behind histamine intolerance on their blog today. While they explain the technical side, I’m hopefully going to help navigate how and what to eat to help remedy histamine overload ails. In addition to food tips, I want to chat about some household changes you can make to help!

Histamines are not inherently a bad thing. They are a natural part of our body’s immune response. Typically, in a properly function system, an enzyme plays a role in breaking down the histamine so that overload doesn’t happen. But if this breaking-down process does not happen, your body can experience histamine overload. Unfortunately, a lot of times when someone’s gut is leaky, it is difficult for them to properly digest high level histamine foods.

First: Clean Your Air

Because pollen and dust mites can bring in unwanted, extra histamine, we first recommend checking your air quality! Here are ways you can help with this:

• Buy an Air Doctor. Dr. Temple and other functional medicine doctors and practitioners swear by these. Adding one to our home is on my to-do list.

• Change your heat/AC filters!
• Vacuum often.
• Leave your shoes by the door to track in less pollen.
• Brush our pets outside. Bathe them more often. Our furry friends (like our golden retriever seen above) track in lots of extra pollen.
• Change your pillows: avoid any feather or down-filled pillows and use pillow dust covers to reduce the occurrence of dust mites.
• Wash anything fluffy every week, such as fuzzy blankets and stuffed animals.

More tips like these in this post by Dr. Temple.

Second: Do Not Remove Too Many Food Groups From Your Child’s Diet

I’m going to be a bit of a broken record with this topic, but it is not safe to remove too many food groups from your child’s diet, especially all at once! With kids, we have to be careful that they do not become malnourished. There are some swaps we can make to reduce histamine overload, but we do not want to put our kids on too restrictive of a diet.

When we are trying to heal our kids from something like eczema, we as moms tend to grasp onto the things that we can control. Food is one of those things, and we tend to think that’s the only thing that will help them. But we have to remember that food is just a part of an overall approach to healing. Try to gently replace food items, and also incorporate the methods of cleaning your air and bedding/fabrics in your home, as mentioned above.

Please keep in mind the fact that each person is an individual, and not every high-histamine food will bother everyone. It is good to change up what you are eating, and not eat the exact same things each day.

Histamine-Rich Foods: Eat This Instead!

In working to heal leaky gut, food elimination can be daunting. Instead of focusing on all the things we can’t have in regards to histamines, we are going to approach it from an “eat this instead” point of view.

While healing the gut, we are already avoiding sugar, processed foods, gluten, and dairy. Some of the items below are still very healthy foods, but they can either be high in histamine, or histamine-releasing foods.

Avoid:

• artificial colors and flavors
• preservatives
• alcohol
• chocolate, cocoa powder
• strawberries
• kombucha
• dairy, especially aged cheese
• soy sauce
• tofu/tempeh
• processed vegan meat
• bacon
• pepperoni, cured meats
• sausage
• hot dogs
• raw egg whites
• canned fish
• smoked salmon
• inflammatory oils, like vegetable and canola

Limit (maybe eat once per day):

• avocados
• bananas
• peaches
• pineapple
• spinach
• tomato
• fermented foods like sauerkraut
• leftovers
• citrus
• mushrooms
• dried fruit

Instead of This, Try That

Simple Family Meal Ideas

Breakfast:

• Fruit: blueberry, cherry, blackberry, melon, apples, dates, figs
• Smoothies: blueberries, mango, kale, vanilla plant-based, soy-free protein powder, coconut milk, hemp seeds*
• Chia Seed Pudding with coconut milk; topped with seeds and blueberries
• Make chia seed jam and serve on GF toast with nut butter (if tolerated)
• GF organic oats to make oatmeal – cook in water and/or coconut milk
• Apple cinnamon oat pancakes*
• Roasted sweet potatoes in coconut oil, cinnamon, sea salt
• Pasture-raised, whole eggs (if tolerated)
• Homemade granola (nut free) with coconut or hemp milk and blueberries

*can sweeten the smoothies or pancakes with local, raw honey to help fight the allergy symptoms from pollen

Dinner:

• Sautéed shrimp and zucchini in plenty of garlic and olive oil, add basil, serve over lentil pasta with Violife parmesan
• Roasted veggie bowl with quinoa
• Bell pepper nachos with grass-fed ground beef, Violife cheddar, black beans, a little avocado
• Roasted chicken thighs, seasoned with olive oil, garlic, herbs; roasted sweet potato, turnip, and carrot “fries” with carrot ketchup
• Fresh, roasted salmon with herbs and garlic, sautéed kale, rice or quinoa
• Crockpot shredded chicken rolled up in Siete cassava tortillas or B.Free pitas with Greek dressing, cucumber, red onion, Violife feta, dill
• Lentil pasta with butternut squash sauce
• Simple stir fry with rice and/or cauliflower rice, sautéed veggies and chicken/shrimp in ginger, garlic, coconut oil; season with Braggs coconut amino
• Whole roasted chicken, seasoned with olive oil, fresh thyme, salt and pepper; cavity of the chicken has lemon and onion while roasting; serve with roasted potatoes and carrots; simple kale salad with basic vinaigrette

For more information about eczema, please check out these posts:

What Causes Eczema?

The Sugar and Eczema Connection

Understanding Histamines and Eczema

13 Tips for Helping Picky Eaters