If you’ve listened to the Are You Menstrual? Podcast episode, Histamine Intolerance 101, then you already know how important gut health is to histamine issues.
Not only does the bacteria in our gut impact histamine levels but they also impact our immune system, which is the key piece of the histamine puzzle. Scroll below to see which bacteria impact histamine levels.
One of the most common reasons for high histamine production in the gut is a low functioning immune system, which looks like a low Secretory IgA (SigA) on a stool test.
When you have low levels of SigA, you end up with higher levels of IgE being expressed. This commonly occurs when we don’t have enough beneficial bacteria and have an overgrowth of negative bacteria. As a defense, the body produces more IgE and not enough SigA (since good bacteria help support these levels).
Dysbiosis (an imbalance of beneficial and non-beneficial bacteria) also brings down our T-reg system. This is a population of T cells that suppress an immune response. The whole point of this system is to regulate immune responses that are not favorable to the host. For example, allergic responses to things that aren’t harming you like food particles. The regulation of this system is based on gut bacteria and immune tissue in the gut.
If we have a lot of inflammation and leakiness in the gut along with bacteria overgrowth and low beneficial bacteria, we will have low levels of SigA and elevated levels of IgE.
These high levels of IgE put our immune system in panic mode and creates an allergic response to the world around us.
If you feel like you react to everything, this is likely you.
Learn more about our gut and histamines and what to do about it in this Are You Menstrual? Podcast episode! You can also enroll in the Master Your Minerals course if you are ready to dig deeper into working on your histamine issues, I have an entire lesson dedicated to these issues inside the course.
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