EDIT
something occured to me that might make it more immediately obvious what happened and why i just experienced two nights of high anxiety insomnia:
Just like when i had the incident with the ham (cured meats) where i suffered similar anxiety and symptoms, after some thinking it occured to me that I actually ate something out of the ordinary the day before the symptoms started up.
I had two regular potatoes (skins on) I baked in the oven. I never eat potatoes, because i had been keeping out nightshades as it was my initial suspicion maybe a year or more ago.
I stayed so focused on the histamine as of late, that i called into question if i really had the nightshade sensitivity, as the nightshades i was reacting to (paprika, tomatoes) were also to be avoided because of high histamine.
Google AI Mode summary suggested that the chemicals in the foods that can cause these reactions can stay in the body for several days. This could explain why I only started to become symptomatic the day after.
I was pinning the blame on the water broth i made with vegetables and the lemon (because the lemon is citrus), which ultimately confused me and maybe didn't even add up that much because the night even before the meal with the potatoes I made a meal with salmon with the same broth to zero symptoms.
So right now thats what i believe - that this was a strong and delayed reaction to the two whole potatoes I ate which are nightshades, which I've avoided for months if not over a year.
Sorry, it's kind of a lot but I'm at the point in my life where it's time to ask for help.
I have a constant, burning sensation at the top of my head (it can spread but it's most intense at the top of my head)
Been going on most instensely for the past 10 years, and I've simply just "accepted" it. Then I started connecting the dots with food and symptoms and now I'm not so sure this is just happening for no reason.
Any opinions, direction... anything.
Here's a question though. Does this histamine stuff add up over time? Over the past week or so I was drinking Spindrift (has citrus) and I made two meals where fish and chicken was cooked in the same water. I used Celery, carrots, onion, and lemon (more citrus) to make the broth. I didn't have any sort of reaction a few days ago with the salmon, but last night I had a huge reaction with the same water broth. Cook time couldn't have been more that 20 minutes so hopefully not releasing lots of histamine.
Is it actually possible then that it was just building up in my system or something?
I was up until 6AM with a high-anxiety feeling that wouldn't let me sleep (it's still slightly present now at 9:30PM the following day) but I think I'll manage.
(below is the post I made just a little while ago in r/HistamineIntolerance)
Really looking for some direction here, assumed histamine intolerance.
Guys, I’m really sorry how discombobulated this all is. I’m just so tired and this has been getting bad - after a decade of this I’m just getting tired.
Hey everybody (I’m 35, male), I’m not really sure what to do here or what to make of all this (or the past 10-15 years of my life right now) and I really want a human opinion.
I’ve been relying on google Gemini to aggregate a lot of information together for me but at this point I think I’ve reached the end of its usefulness for this kind of thing and I’m just going around in circles now.
I don’t know what to do.
For the past 10 years or so, I’ve had a chronic burning sensation on the top of my head that is severe enough to basically keep me from getting a job. It’s very uncomfortable to the point where I’d have to get ice and put it on the top of my head.
I actually don’t have a huge myriad of symptoms like I’m reading here how some people can - it’s just awful body wide inflammation (it likes to start at the top of my head and work its way down my neck, spine and it radiates out if it gets worse).
I have other neurological problems like OCD and anxiety that manifest and increase alongside the pain.
In hindsight, I believe I’ve probably had these symptoms throughout the majority of my life and only now they are becoming unbearable.
As I type this right now I feel like I am covered in rug burns. In an attempt to possibly relieve myself of this pain finally I started looking for low histamine cooking recipes. Last night I cooked chicken breasts in a sauce pan filled with water, celery, carrots, lemon slices, and onion. I also drank a mandarin yuzu Spindrift (more citrus).
I let it cook for maybe 15 minutes, not long (that’s where the histamine comes from, right? When it’s too long?).
Unfortunately last night I had awful anxiety and couldn’t sleep until 5 or 6 in the morning. I actually didn’t have tons of pain - at least not until the anxiety portion of the episode let up. Then my head started burning again and as I’m typing this at 4 in the afternoon it’s still burning and I can feel patches of my skin being inflamed too.
I’m really, really, upset here because I don’t understand what is happening. I did read that citrus fruit can give you histamine problems but I cooked a salmon piece in literally the same way a couple of days ago and was fine. Are you telling me some days you just react and some days you don’t?
It was an awful experience and I feel awful right now - anxious still and now even afraid to try cooking like this again.
I was getting really hopeful. I’d cooked really plain for a few nights - literally just chicken in water (no pain or anxiety). I’m honestly trying to remember what I ate over the past couple of days and I can’t that’s how stressed I am (I need to keep a food journal).
Again, the pain is so bad - always just burning at the top of my head, right in the middle.
I’m on medication too. When I was 20 years old I had to go to the hospital for an anxiety attack that I didn’t come out of. I remember pacing back and forth in a room telling the nurses that I couldn’t stop thinking. They put me on tons of sedatives but I wouldn’t fall asleep.
Eventually a doctor who was making the rounds put me on Depakote, which I am on to this day. The medication is primarily an anticonvulsant (not applicable to me) and mood stabilizer, however, if you google this medication and auto-immune suppression, it has been recently observed that this medication actually calms systemic inflammation.
I think this is an important piece of the puzzle. About ten years ago (after being on the drug for about 5 years, I’m around 25 at this point), I attempted to titrate off of it to see if I still needed it. The results were disastrous. Over a period of months my entire body inflamed from head to toe like fire - it was constant, no lapses, no rest. I quite literally nearly lost my ability to actually sleep and was on opioid pain killers every 4 hours to numb the burning (so I could kind of sleep).
The lowest I ever got was to 500 milligrams of the 1500 milligrams ER dosage.
There were very strange occurrences that happened when I lowered my dosage:
- I had regular tightness and pain in my left side chest and left arm, and we went to the emergency room on several occasions where I was assured I was not actually having a heart attack. This appeared to be the case - as these particular symptoms persisted for months (if not one or two years) during and after this experience.
- I went to the hospital once for the pain - but it was bad this time. I was basically put into a small room while I just screamed and cried (like, snot dripping out of my nose) because of the burning I felt all over my head, neck and back. They ran me through a catscan because they just didn’t know what else to do with me - which of course returned nothing.
- When I would eat meals (this was strange), my left upper side (maybe where the stomach is?) would start to burn and hurt.
- Additionally about hunger - I've always had a low appetite my whole life, and after being put on the depakote I started having a normal appetite and was able to gain some more weight by eating (I hover around 125 pouns). When I lowered the does, my appetite dropped and so did my weight to around 110 pounds).
When I was in this state sleep was very difficult and mostly only achievable through heavy sedation (the opiod pain killers). I had this super-high constantly present level of anxiety. It was very scary, I basically just lost consciousness and then woke up four hours later and sat in the burning inflammation, anxiety, and other irrational thoughts that occurred as my mind succumbed to high-levels of OCD. Eventually, after (I can’t remember how long exactly) maybe several months of this I finally just had to admit that I needed the medication.
I still remember the night I re-administered the regular dosage of Depakote. I was sitting on the couch rocking back and forth, everything burning, so much pain, couldn’t sleep. As soon as I popped those extra pills, within approximately 15 minutes the pain started to alleviate.
Things improved but basically I still was mentally messed up after this and I still had enough pain where I was not able to function properly.
Eventually I was stabilized on a treatment (at that same doctor mentioned befores clinic) called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), where they use electricity pulses on my brain. I’m not really sure how this factors in here but it basically helped with the pain and anxiety. I am receiving this treatment to this day. It works but I’m tied to it, and I would like to solve my health problems and find out what exactly is wrong with my body.
When I started feeling better, this is when I started looking at what are some things I can do to actually help myself.
I removed sugar from my diet, we’d never tried an elimination diet before and I figured what did I have to lose. The results were a complete surprise. After one month of no sugar, my regular energy levels increased (it was normal for me to be regularly sluggish), and also my mood improved. Today, if I have too much sugar, I become very ornery and irritable.
Another crazy thing that happened after 6 months of no sugar, is that my heart arrhythmia (that I’ve basically had my whole life), actually just went away. I was checking my pulse one day and I was like “what the hell?!” - It was just gone. And it continues to beat normally to this day.
Then came the gluten (I’m negative for celiac). I kinda got depressed and just started eating noodles and white bread again (I had half-assedly removed gluten from my diet previously) and during that two week period, my anxiety increased significantly. I simply just took a look at the foods I was eating over that period and it seemed like the most obvious thing so I made the adjustment. This seemed to be just a good thing to keep out, as consuming leads to more anxiety symptoms.
However, this is where things get confusing. I was still having very severe, otherwise unexplained anxiety symptoms - like the bad feelings, the ones reminiscent of when I had to go to the hospital for “not being able to sleep, or stop thinking.”
At first, the target was nightshades. I noticed things like paprika and salsa (basically no more tacos) definitely gave me problems. And I did my best to cut them out and I think it was fine for the most part. But then, other weird things would happen.
This happened actually just recently maybe a month ago and has given me major ammunition for my suspicion towards histamine intolerance.
I ran out of turkey cold-cuts for my sandwiches (gluten free sourdough bread) and so I just made a sandwich out of ham cold cut slices. I did this for two nights in a row and each night I had awful anxiety and did not get much sleep, then on the third night I had a coney hotdog (plain on the gf bun) and that night I had such an intense anxiety attack it was like a flash back to years ago. I was up to like 5AM, tight chest and arm - I knew from the experiences before I wasn’t having heart problems, but it’s still scary when it happens and of course sleep is impossible because my mind is in a hyper-aware state.
This three day experience (after googling/Gemini) is what led me to this whole histamine thing especially. It seemed very consistent.
(Oh, and I also have that thing where I get a runny nose when I eat sometimes)
And at the end of the day - I’m just trying to make the burning stop. It’s all the time, I just don’t understand.
I started trying to avoid the skillet and stovetop because when I started cooking with oil and meat I noticed I had pain almost every night (although, the anxiety itself wasn't actually that bad, it's mostly the pain here). I have more pain with olive oil, and I have less pain now that I’ve switched to avocado oil; but it’s still there.
Something I’lll cook regularly is that I’ll defrost some shrimp, salt and pepper them, cover them in cornstarch, then egg, then sugar free gluten free bread crumbs and the fry them all up in avocado oil on the stove in a pan along with some steamed and then also oil pan fried brussel sprouts. I almost always have some sort of pain when I cook in such a way.
I also had pain when I cooked just a lamb chop with no oil in a skillet (although this is inconclusive because I had a regular potato that night which I have not ruled out nightshades).
I was hoping cooking with water and the oven would lessen the pain, and it actually kinda did for a few nights (or at least I thought), but then out of nowhere like last night after I cooked chicken in the sauce pan now I have anxiety and pain.
I’m afraid I’m hurting myself and I don’t know what to do here.
I bought a book “The 4-Phase Histamine Reset Plan” by Dr Becky Campbell off of amazon and there are a lot of things that look like I need to look into.
I’ve been assuming I have leaky gut for years now - but there’s things like SIBO, Helicobacter Pylori, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome…
I don’t look forward to having to twist my doctor's arm to get work done, but I guess that's the next step.
I mean… I guess I just schedule an appointment and bring up SIBO, MCAS, and histamine intolerance or that one infection I mentioned earlier?
Oh, this is something I remembered (and why I suspect SIBO) from reading about the signs): I've had a low appetite my entire life and always struggled to gain weight, especially by eating. Also, a couple of years back I completely lost my appetite come the fall to winter months (this has historically been a bad time for me when the sun goes away). I had to remember to eat because I wasn't feeling hunger. Also come the winter months I would have severe and months long episodes of vertigo. Basically during the winter months if I had to keep my head almost perfectly straight, and tilting it 15 degrees or more would cause the room to start spinning and naseau (can't spell this damn word).
Another thing is that both my and my sister have severe natural B12 levels in our body (malabsorption?) She needs to inject hers, I can use under the tongue (sublingual). After I was supplemented on the B12, the vertigo episodes haven't returned and also I have a pinch more energy.
I’m just trying to find out where this burning is coming from.
Is histamine intolerance that inconsistent when it comes to recovery? I got really freaked out last night when all I made was my own broth in water and had horrible anxiety.
It was so bad I wouldn’t really want to try to make that again. Is it really just the lemon and citrus drink that could have done that?
What are your opinions based on my experience - am I even barking up the right tree here?
I can keep trying with this low histamine diet thing but I'm afraid after last night. I could just try pulling out all the citrus but it just seems odd to me that that whole episode could have been made that bad by just simmering the chicken in the broth like that. It wasn't as bad as the cured-meat situation (ham and conie dog), but it was still bad and I couldn't get to sleep.
I'm honestly wondering how much of this even just happens during my sleep if I get to bed before 12AM because a lot of these symptoms happen between 1AM-5AM.
---
So there's kinda maybe another detail - I went to a clinic when I was 25ish and they scanned the bloodflow levels in my brain. It was a functional medicine clinic (Dr Amen, if I remember?). The scan results showed that the front of my brain (prefrontal cortex) was not metabolizing above the baseline. The practitioner's own words were (to me and my mother): "Has your son ever been in a car accident before?" after seeing the results. Additionally the central regions of my brain were hyper-active (so all the anxiety zones).
But another thing they did there was do some other blood tests. I actually had marker for a tick bite or some kinda tick infection. However, we have no idea when, how or where this occured. I live in a state in America where we have deer and ticks and it wouldn't be unheard of if somebody got bit. I was was put on some antibiotics for good measure and then also was sent to a limes (lymes?) disease clinic and I was told point blank by the doctor there that I didn't have it. I can more or less agree here. I'm pretty much fine in that respect and I'm not sickly or weak in that sense.