Histamine Well Podcast: Exploring Histamine, Methylation & Holistic Health

Practical Tips for Lowering Histamine Levels Quickly

• Joanne Kennedy • Episode 11

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In this episode of the Histamine Well Podcast, Joanne does something a little different. She shares her step-by-step approach for rapidly lowering your histamine bucket while working toward identifying and treating the root cause. This episode is packed with clinical gems and practical strategies—perfect for both patients and practitioners.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why a low histamine diet is your first line of defense—and where to find a reliable food list
  • How DAO enzymes like Seeking Health Histamine Digest help reduce food-based histamine
  • The role of mast cell stabilizers like vitamin C and quercetin (e.g. RN Labs QuerceSorb, Thorne Quercetin)
  • How Saccharomyces boulardii can support histamine breakdown and gut resilience
  • Why SIBO + histamine requires a different approach—including what foods to avoid (spoiler: rice!)
  • What to do if you’re constipated and why moving your bowels is essential to reduce histamine
  • Thoughts on prokinetics like ginger, Iberogast, and low-dose naltrexone for sluggish gut motility
  • What to do when bloating persists despite a perfect diet and supplements
  • The hidden impact of oxalates—and how to avoid triggering a painful oxalate dump
  • The difference between short-term relief and long-term healing

Connect with Joanne:

Joanne Kennedy:

Hi, it's Joanne. If you're suffering from histamine related issues including headaches, migraines, hives, heartburn, bloating, nausea, diarrhea, sneezing, insomnia, anxiety. And would like to get my take on how to reduce your histamine bucket quickly whilst looking for the root cause. This episode is for you. Welcome to the Histamine Well Podcast. Designed for practitioners and patients alike. This is your trusted source for insights on histamine intolerance, methylation, gut health, women's hormones, and much more. I'm Joanne Kennedy, your host, naturopath, author, and educator. Passionate about breaking down complex science into clear, accessible knowledge. Whether you are a health professional or navigating your personal wellness journey, the Histamine Well Podcast bridges the gap between cutting edge research and practical understanding to empower you with the tools to thrive. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today I'm going to do something a little bit different, which is just to go through how I would approach someone who came to me and said, I'm a bucket of histamine. How do I get it down really fast? This is not a consult. This is not how I'd run a consult. Obviously that's an hour's time. There's forms, there's testing, there's uh, you know, everyone is different. But this is just my tips on how to get your histamines down quickly. It's obviously depends on the causes. So I'm gonna run through as many of those as I can. And the supplements that I use, the dietary interventions that I use, so that hopefully a lot of you can get some benefit. Hopefully I'll also be able to shed some light onto why you're having adverse reactions to things or why you're not responding well, or you're kind of stuck. First of all, I will say doing a low histamine diet whilst you find the root causes and treat the root causes is the best way to get your histamines down. You can find a list of low histamine foods on the food intolerances app. Well, it's not a list, but just you can filter for histamine. It's a food intolerance app. It's a one with a little strawberry, so that one's good. Or any sort of list that you've relied on in the past I'm sure is good. I mean, I know that they change depending on who's testing the amount of histamine in the food. But if you are new to this, the food intolerance is app is great. Doing a low histamine diet is gonna get your histamine bucket down pretty quickly, which is important because histamine is inflammatory. High histamine is inflammatory. It's gonna cause oxidative stress. More oxidative stress, more inflammation. And it's a really vicious cycle. If things are particularly problematic, taking the DAO enzyme, which breaks down histamine in food. It also breaks down the histamine that's being sort of made in the gut from other things like sibo. You take it 15 minutes before food. The one that I usually prescribe is the Seeking Health Histamine Digest. But if you are taking one that you find beneficial, please, that's absolutely fine. Doing that can help a lot. If you feel that that's not enough, then you can take saccharomyces boulardii that actually can help upregulate the DAO enzyme in the gut. And some people do respond quite well to Procetin. Procetin stabilizes mast cells. So the one that I use in Australia is the RN labs quercesorb. And I do 2 after each meal. saccharomyces boulardii-- look, I use the biomedical one in Australia, but whatever one you wanna get Overseas. Overseas people. The thorn one, the thorn procetin is good. I've used that before. So you can add that into your regimen. Taking it after each meal can help quite a lot. Vitamin C also stabilizes mast cell, so that can also help. Be careful if you have an oxalate issue because taking vitamin C increases oxalate, so you don't wanna do that. Anyone that feels really bad on vitamin C, then that is a red flag that there is a potential oxalate issue. If you know you have sibo. You need to do a sibo low histamine diet. You can't just do a low histamine diet because when you're eating high FODMAPs and high resistant starch, it's really feeding that SIBO bacteria. It's gonna release a lot of histamine. I do have sibo low Histamine Diet as part of my e bundle. or the food list. It's got lots of recipes as well. If you're interested, you can find that on my website. Another thing I need to talk about is rice. Now cooked and cold rice is high in resistant starch, and it's a resistant starch that's a problem for sibo. So in theory, cooked rice should be fine, but time and time again, myself and my colleagues see rice being a really problematic sibo. I can say is we know that it's got mold mycotoxins in it. It's crazy. These mycotoxins actually survive the boiling process and they cause disrupted bile flow, and they're a big problem with sibo. So you really do need to be avoiding rice as well. Dietary interventions for sibo, low histamine. You have to make sure your bowels are moving, so there's no point in doing all this. If your bowels aren't moving.'cause you're just not pooping out undigested food and bad bacteria. You can't get rid of sibo and it's just gonna all sit in rotten ferment and cause histamine reaction in the gut. For constipation, I do rely a lot on Metagenics Laxatone. In Australia, I prescribe that a lot for my overseas patients, there's a product you can just buy on Amazon and I herb. It's called Cleanse More. It's very efficacious. You just take two before bed. I'll put all of these supplements in the show notes. If you are one of those people that have very stubborn bowels from stress, the Nerva hypnotherapy app has amazing reviews. I use that a lot in my patients. They normally get really, really good results. For those really stubborn, as long as you don't have an oxalate issue taking high dose magnesium with vitamin C together, it can really, really move bowels. And if you do have a oxalate problem, can't take vitamin C, then you can also layer in magnesium. I'm happy for whichever one you wanna take. That's sort of the SIBO histamine picture. Now, if you're doing all of that and you still have incomplete emptying, indigestion, then taking digestive enzymes is really important. If you've been very stressed, which is a major cause of why you have SIBO in the first place. And if you've got low B12 levels, this is a classic sign of hydrochloric acid deficiency. Or if you've taken proton pump inhibitors or you, you definitely need to get hydrochloric acid up. Taking Hydrozyme, which is from Orthoplex. It's hydrochloric acid. Australian product. I just do one with each meal. My overseas patients, I will often use the pure encapsulations digestive enzymes Ultra because it's also got pancreatic enzymes and brush border enzymes in there. It's two with each meal. In Australia, for pancreatic enzymes, I'll use Orthoplex DEF, and it's one with each meal. So usually if it's low hydrochloric acid, you can also have problems with pancreatic enzymes. If you're interested in digestive enzymes, I've done a whole episode on digestive enzymes. You can check that out. I'll just layer that. Sibo low histamine Diet for most people it's gonna be efficacious. Taking the DAO enzyme before meals. Stabilizing mast cells with vitamin C Procetin. Taking saccharomyces boulardii to also help increase the DAO enzyme can be a good idea. Now with sibo, when you do a low FODMAP diet, you are removing a lot of fiber from your diet. So you potentially need to take more fiber. Partially hydrolyzed guargam is low fodmap. It's completely fine to take, if you have sibo, you just need to make sure your consuming adequate amounts of water when you do that,. You can follow the instructions on the packet of the partially hydrolyzed guargam. In Australia, I use the Aria one. Overseas, I usually get people to get, it's called sun fiber. Healthy fiber that you can buy online. iherb and Amazon usually. If you've done all that and you're still really bloated, even though you're digesting your food well and stools are okay, you are not constipating, you're still really bloated. Potentially, you can still have some histamine symptoms. Then that is a classic sign of migrating motor complex issues. So the migrating motor complex is an electrical impulse that pulses through the gut. It kicks in 90 minutes after you eat, and it sweeps out undigested food and bad bacteria. That can happen with sibo. There can be a disruption in the migrating motor complex. That's the case for you, the natural prokinetics are ginger and Iberogast. I usually don't find them strong enough. You probably need a prokinetic that you get from a doctor being low dose, naltrexone being the most common one prescribed. You've done all that and still having a lot of histamine reactions, right? From a dietary perspective, we need to actually consider oxalates. So often people will go sibo low histamine diet. And when you're doing a SIBO diet, you're removing, lactose from your diet. So often you'll go and have almond milk, very high oxalate. You can't have wheat and most grain, so you are often having a lot more almond meal and almond flour. Potentially you're eating a lot more nuts because for satiety. If you are having reactions from that, there is a potential oxalate problem. If you're concerned about that, you need to go to a website, lowoxalate.info where they list all of the foods that are high in oxalate. You'll see most plant foods contain oxalate. You just need to be concerned about the very high one. So just check the very high oxalate foods that you're potentially consuming, and just make sure that you're not consuming too many and that they're actually making you worse. Now, if you do have an ongoing oxalate problem, or you've recognized that this is a problem just removing all the very high oxalate from your diet can initiate dumping, so I don't suggest you do that. If you do work out, you've got an oxalate problem, I really recommend you see a practitioner. So you are welcome to see us. We see patients all over the world If you need help with your oxalates, but please just don't pull them all out of your diet because it'll initiate dumping, which can cause a lot of misery. Before we go any further, I want to speak directly to the practitioners and students listening. If you're intrigued by histamine and methylation and eager to expand your knowledge in this fascinating area, we offer the Histamine and Methylation online group coaching course. The only program of its kind. It covers everything you need to know about histamine and methylation, providing both the theory and guidance you need to treat these issues effectively in clinical practice. We cover sibo, hormonal imbalances, oxalates, M-T-H-F-R, the four pathways of methylation, including the folate pathway, methionine pathway, tetrahydro biopterin pathway, and the all important transsulfulration pathway and much more. The program is delivered by detailed online webinars and handouts for you to keep. And for eight weeks you'll meet with me for live coaching calls in a private community space with other practitioners from all over the world dealing with histamine and methylation issues in their patients every day. Together we learn so much. To learn more and apply, visit joanne kennedy naturopathy.com. One thing that can help bind up oxalate is taking calcium citrate and magnesium citrate. In Australia, I use a supplement called RN Labs, Cal Mag 1-1. It's calcium magnesium citrate one. And overseas I use the pure encapsulations calcium magnesium citrate. And you just take one before each meal. So how this works is that oxalate in food is bound to calcium and potassium. Chewing the oxalate foods can release the calcium and the potassium from the oxalate causing free oxalates. And the free oxalates are the problem. The free oxalates need to bind up to something. They bind to minerals, right? So we need to provide them with calcium. They also bind to magnesium. Now you can't just give potassium willy-nilly because you know it's very tightly regulated. But you can take electrolytes which often contain potassium. And oxalates will deplete a lot of your electrolytes. In Australia, I use Bassica. Bassica is very easy to get in Europe, it's very hard to get in the US. I often use bodybio e lyte as the electrolyte for my US patients. What else can we do? If you are taking B vitamins, particularly methyl, and you have seen a correlation with the worsening of your histamine symptoms that's not in your head. It will absolutely can cause more problems with histamine and breaking it down and disrupting methylation and it can come out as a histamine symptom. So you might wanna come off those B's. Particularly if their methyl is gonna be worse. But even just other B vitamins can do that. So that's just something that can also calm your histamines down. If you are a woman and you have hormone dysregulation or just oestrogen dominance. And you're really noticing that your histamine symptoms are worse at ovulation, taking calcium de glucarate can really help detoxify your estrogen. I don't know why it's always using the thorn one, but they just no longer make calcium D glucarate. I'm not fast on what brand you get, but usually you take 1.5 grams a day. This is important ladies. This is hard for me to talk about this'cause I just don't wanna put you on the wrong path. So I'm gonna say if you are under 40. If you're definitely not in that sort of the whole 40 perimenopause years. If you're under 40, then taking calcium d glucarate from day seven until bleed just to detoxify the estrogen is very efficacious. As you're getting older, it's like a bit of a wild ride, so you can kind of be low-ish estrogen and then it rise again. So you don't wanna drop your estrogen too low. I'd be going in potentially at around day 10 to get ovulation until menstruation. Supporting progesterone production. How I support progesterone. Progesterone's gonna buffer estrogen and help with this histamine. Important nutrients for progesterone, you need to make sure you get your vitamin D at a really good level. Often you need to take 5,000 international units of vitamin D. If your levels are like 30, you need to be taking 5,000 international units every day. I'm not sure. I don't care what brand you take, that's really important. And then get it retested. You want it up at around a hundred. Iron makes progesterone. You need to get your iron tested. Work out why you've got low iron. Is it gluten intolerance? Are you not eating enough animal protein? Do you have low hydrochloric acid? Do you have sibo? Do you have very heavy periods? These are major causes of low iron. Do we need to get iron up to make progesterone? Iodine is very important for progesterone production along with zinc and B6, so they're the nutrients that help make progesterone. I'm not fast on what supplements you take. Herbal medicine. The herbal medicine that can actually help stimulate ovulation and get progesterone up is Vitex or Chase Tree. Again, I don't mind what supplement you take. You can just check the dosage on the bottle. That's sort of balancing the eastern progesterone picture. If you're on perimenopause, you might find supplementing or taking bioidentical progesterone being of benefit for you. Now, we can't talk about histamine without discussing methylation. This is very important and something that I've really realized recently. I'll have to give you an example. I had a patient who was put on methyl Bs. She was put on methyl guard from Thorne, which is to lower homocysteine and additional methyl B vitamins. And she came to me and she was a bucket of histamine. She had really chronic sinus issues and she could not take her estrogen. Her HRT, she could take a little bit. But when she increased the dose, it made her really depressed. and she was homozygous MTHFR C677T. So it's just like interesting. And I said to her, I think we need to do a MarCoNs nasal swab test to look at MarCoNs in the nose, which is an overgrowth of bacteria, which can cause a lot of histamine in the nose. And I want you to do a methylation test to actually see what's going on with your methylation because you know it impacts estrogen and it impacts histamine and there's something out of whack. Anyway, she did that test. She was severely over methylating. From all these B's she was taking. She came off the B's and her nasal issue just cleared up. She also then took niacinamide and vitamin C to reduce the over methylation and that layered. That helped even more with her nasal issue. So much so that I'm like, wow, I don't even think you need to do that MarCoNs test. Balance methylation is really, really important for dealing with your histamine. When she balanced her methylation, she could also take her estrogen without having an adverse reaction. Okay, and I'm saying all this because you can get this methylation test. It's a saliva swab test. It's called Mood sense. You can get it via my website. Access to it via my website, you can get a 10% off discount using HISTAMINEWELL10. And it's a great test because you can't just supplement with methyl if you don't know what is actually going on with your methyl. So it's not just due to a gene mutation. It's a complex mix of many genes, many enzymes, many co-factors and environment. So I hope that was useful. This is how I kind of deal with histamine in my patients when they're coming to me with a bucket of histamine that's really, really high. I'm sort of doing these protocols whilst I get the testing done. The SIBO testing done. Mold mycotoxins done. I might be doing hormone testing, organic acid testing, and working out causes. But when people are very distressed and their symptoms are very debilitating, these are some of the things that I have up my sleeve that I will be prescribing to my patients at the initial consult. Thank you for joining me. I hope you found this episode beneficial. Be sure to subscribe to the histamine well so you don't miss an episode. Leave a review and you can also share this episode with someone who could benefit. If you have any questions you'd like answered. Or have a topic you'd like me to discuss, please go to my website, joanne kennedy naturopathy.com, where you can provide us with that information. Until next time, take care and be well.