Unresolved gut problems: Why you might have histamine intolerance

Especially if you’ve got other symptoms ranging from itchy skin to headache

Anyone experiencing unresolved, chronic gut and other health issues will be familiar with the long, complex search for a solution. It’s a journey that often involves many twists, turns, and wild goose chases down rabbit holes that lead to… nowhere.

To get to the solution, you must first get to the cause. From a nutrition perspective, there are many avenues to explore: food intolerances and allergies, gut microbiome disturbances, yeast overgrowth, to name just a few. Until fairly recently, histamine intolerance was not on the list.

Histamine intolerance (HIT) was first described just over twenty years ago. It’s only in the last ten years that it has gained scientific recognition. How long people have been suffering from this condition is anyone’s guess, but we do know that unexplained gut disorders affect more than 20% of the population. That’s a lot of people wondering what’s wrong with them.

What is HIT?

The short answer is an enzyme deficiency. Ordinarily, histamine is metabolised by the enzyme diamine oxidase (DAO). DAO plays a major role in protecting the body from the effects of excessive dietary histamine crossing the gut lining and entering the general circulation.

Histamine is one of a group of amines derived from the amino acid histadine through the action of bacterial fermentation.

‘Histamine intolerance… can be defined as a disorder arising from reduced histamine degradation capacity in the intestine due to impaired DAO activity, leading to its accumulation in plasma and the appearance of adverse effects.’

When too much histamine enters the general circulation, all sorts of trouble can ensue. Gut problems are the main complications, but there’s a litany of others.