23. Could Your Histamine Intolerance Actually Be Sulfur Intolerance?

We break down how disrupted sulfur metabolism can mimic histamine symptoms—severe bloating, crushing fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, skin flushing—and why reactions to garlic, onions, eggs, brassicas, NAC, and glutathione are key clues.

You’ll learn the roles of sulfite/sulfide vs. sulfate, SUOX + molybdenum, B12, mitochondria, hydrogen sulfide overgrowth, and environmental drivers like mold and oxalates. We also cover testing pointers (homocysteine, stool, OAT), why low-sulfur diets are only a short-term tool, and practical next steps for practitioners and patients.

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Transcript

Joanne Kennedy: 0:05

Hi, it's Joanne. Could your histamine issues be tied up with sulfur intolerance? A hidden driver behind next level bloating, crushing fatigue, joint pains, brain fog, heart palpitations, and those classic reactions to high sulfur foods. Pink garlic, onions, eggs, red meat, and brassica vegetables. And supplements like MSM, alpha lipoic acid, n-acetylcysteine, and glutathione. If this sounds like you, this is an episode you won't want to miss. 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 histamine well. Today we're exploring a topic that doesn't get nearly enough attention, which is sulfur intolerance. It's one of those hidden layers in chronic health issues that often goes overlooked. But for some people it really is the missing piece for them. I'll be joined by my colleague Melanie Peers, who has a real depth of expertise when it comes to sulfur metabolism and how it can impact the gut, the skin, energy levels, and mood. If you've ever reacted to supplements like N-acetylcysteine or glutathione or felt worse on a high sulfur diet, pink garlic, onion, eggs, brassica vegetables. This episode is going to shed some light onto what might be going on. Melanie is incredibly insightful and I look forward to learning from her right alongside you. So whether you are a practitioner or someone navigating your own health journey, you're going to get so much out of this conversation. So Mel, thank you so much for your time again today. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. So let's just dive straight in. And I wanna start with the symptoms of sulfur intolerance so that people listening to this podcast straight up know if this is going to be worthwhile for them to stick around. Well, absolutely. Anyone who is seeking out info on histamine, well, this will be relevant because the symptoms can overlap. So people often think they have histamine intolerance. And actually sulfur is the main driver. Generally they do have both, but they realize, wow, sulfur is actually more of my problem and histamine's more of like a side issue. And as we talk today, we'll talk a little bit more about histamines involvement in all of this. It's actually a massive topic. As you realize, as we go through, a lot of the symptoms are very similar. The soft can be a vasodilator, so anything from low blood pressure, fluid retention, and swelling. So you might eat foods and feel like you feel really puffy afterwards. The bloating with sulfur intolerance is normally, it's next level. It is huge amounts of bloating. Like I feel, nine months pregnant type bloating. It's painful. I can't bend over type bloating. It's massive, massive bloating. Generally, you can get some gas, sometimes sulfur smelling, not always. Belching. Nausea is a pretty big indicator. Loose stools. You might be quite sensitive to alcohol, which you can see that's similar with histamine. Joint pain or joint achiness. That kind of comes and goes is another classic sign. Brain fog and absolutely crushing debilitating fatigue. Like almost, I can't get out of bed. So sometimes people might describe a little bit of like brain fatigue or body fatigue. And it's both. You might feel like you can barely walk to the other room and get a shower. You might get out of breath, putting your clothes on. Things like that. And the brain fatigue is really there as well. Just there's no clarity of thinking. You can't make sense of things in the day. It's really quite debilitating. That's one of the really standout symptoms I would say. It's just next level fatigue. A really red or hot presentation. So you might feel really hot to touch or just generally feel kind of quite hot and inflamed. And then any of the histamine intolerance symptoms, those things like hives, wheezing, it can really affect the respiratory symptoms. So you can get almost like an anaphylactic type reaction. Sometimes in more severe cases heart palpitations, itchiness, redness, things like that. So quite a big list, but I think the main things I would say is the bloating that's quite significant. The crushing, crippling fatigue and the joint pain and aches are probably the most steered out that might differentiate it from histamine intolerance and other intolerances for people. What about mood, Mel? Does it affect your mood? Yeah, some people can feel either depressed or anxious. Obviously with that crushing fatigue, there's no motivation, so you may feel quite depressed. But also with regards to the heart palpitations, you might feel quite anxious as well. Might have a combination of both, so it definitely can affect mood as well. Mel, how can someone develop this intolerance to sulfur? There are a lot of different factors that come into this. Sulfur is like the third most abundant nutrient in the body. It is literally on every surface and cell of the body. So it's everywhere. It's really, really important. When things start to go wrong, there's quite a few different reasons and that's why I was saying like, it's such an enormous topic. How can we have issues with sulfur? You may have an issue with the enzymes that produce or that process sulfur. The sulfur comes in many different forms. So you have sulfide sulfite, which are belong in the body in small amounts. But if you are overproducing those or you're not being able to convert them into sulfate. Which is what the body likes to use. If that conversion happens, you get that buildup of sulfate and sulfate. Sulfite and sulfide. Sorry. So that's ITE and IDE. You get a buildup of those'cause the enzyme is a bit blocked, whether that's from nutritional deficiencies or inflammation that can be a factor. You can have overgrowth of bacteria that produce those gases that sulfide and the sulfide in the small or the large intestines. So you might have hydrogen sulfide sibo, which in Australia we don't have any testing for. They are testing for it in America, but I think it's still quite early days. I don't know that it's super duper accurate yet. Or you can have an overgrowth in the large intestine. For multiple reasons, whether that's you are eating lots of high meat diet. For example, like a carnivore type diet.'cause what we eat influences the bacteria that live in our gut, right? You know, you feed whatever's in there. And what's gonna overgrow. If you're eating a lot of meats and high sulfur. Particularly as the meats, you might get an overgrowth of those in the large intestine. It is also, we believe a compensatory mechanism. So if the body doesn't have enough sulfur sulfate that it needs because it is such a critical nutrient that we can't make. We have to get it from the diet. The body will upregulate those bacteria to try any way it can to make this sulfur that we need so desperately. But unfortunately, it's not making the correct type. It's the sulfite and the sulfide that really affects the brain. Gives you that brain fog. Mold can be a really big impact. Gliotoxin in particular will utilize sulfur. The mold species that create gliotoxin. So aspergillus is one of them. Will utilize sulfur to make more gliotoxin. So therefore you're gonna feel worse if you're having more sulfur'cause you're feeding that gliotoxin. Oxalate issues. And so you can see this is like not an easy answer because a lot of these things that I'm talking about are actually consequences of other things. Mm-hmm. I have to watch like all of the interviews that we've done to kind of get a full picture. Yeah. So do you find clinically, sulfur patients might come in, they might have some oxalate issues, mold issues, driving up histamines. And then as you work with them, this sulfur issue unravels. Starts to appear. Yeah. So quite often sulfur reactions are a consequence of other things going on in the body. The other thing being sulfur depletion, we use sulfur to make glutathione. So if we're in a very toxic environment, particularly with mold, you will kind of use up all of your glutathione stores and your body desperately trying to get rid of those toxins and wants to make more glutathione, gets desperate and we'll start using whatever it can to try and utilize that. So it is a consequence of a lot of other things. So I know you're gonna talk to me later on about what can we do to treat it? And it's really a difficult question to answer because you need to find out what the driver is for that person. Mm, for sure. So the common drivers are going to be an increased need for sulfate. And so the body will upregulate the sulfur producing bacteria, but they're producing sulfite, and sulfide. Yes. And then the body needs to convert them into sulfate. Mm-hmm. But is it the suox enzyme? The particular one? Yeah. And sorry. And that can be impacted if you have too much glutathione that depletes your molybdenum, which then impacts that. Right. So it's interesting. You need molybdenum to regenerate glutathione? Yeah. And there's for the suox enzyme. Yeah. And it's a co-factor for Suox. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where you run into problems. And that's where you may be coming have, find it difficult to process alcohol, but also alcohol depletes your molybdenum as well. So, you know, someone could essentially run into this problem from over consuming alcohol. That's why it's not just one thing. One thing, yeah. That's why we spend that hour in the first consultation answering and asking all those questions is because no one person is the same and there's lots of factors that can contribute to it, and so one person might have two or three of those factors. Someone might have five different factors. It's really getting to know what's going on, and then you have to prioritize. Yeah. Interesting. But Mel, like essentially when someone is desperate for sulfate. This is I find this fascinating. The gut microbiome increases these sulfur producing bacteria. Yes. And so whenever someone comes to me with hydrogen sulfide sibo. I always think why. It's very different to hydrogen or methane sibo. It's a very different issue. Yeah. Because your body is trying to upregulate these sulfur producing bacteria.'Cause it's desperate for sulfur. Yes. And here's another kicker with metabolism. So it's rarely quite known in the in children with autism, they tend to be very deficient in sulfur and sulfate. But what they actually find is that they're wasting a lot of their sulfur into the urine, which sounds really bizarre. Why is your body getting rid of it if you're so deficient? Inflammation in the gut can break down the gags, which are the, gosh. Don't get me to glyco, amino glycans. Thank you. Which, you know, there's different ones all over the body breaks those down, the sulfur gets released and then the messaging that get the gut sends to the kidneys is actually, have too much sulfur going on here. Because those gags are being broken down due to inflammation. And so the kidneys receive the message. Too much sulfur. Let's waste it into the urine. Interesting. So that happens with oxalates as well, doesn't it? Yeah. So sulfur or sulfate does not belong in the bloodstream on its own. It's always attached to something. So the other thing that sulfur does, it's a transport carrier. So it'll pick up your thyroid hormone, your sex hormones. All sorts of things. And transport them to the cell and then release them. If the body senses sulfate in the bloodstream by itself, not attached to something that's not supposed to be happening. Too much sulfur waste it into the urine. And so you have this catch 22 where you are deficient, but you're wasting it at the same time. Yes, that's right. That's right. It becomes way more complicated than this. Just a gut microbiome issue. Very different to normal sibo. Yeah. And really I think to hone in on people, it's very different to a hydrogen SIBO or methane SIBO issue, which is mainly a bacterial overgrowth.'cause your biochemistry is really disrupted. Yeah. It really is at the cracks of it, your biochemistry has gone haywire. It's the body in desperate measures, really trying its best to do what it can. The example I kind of use is, you know when your house is on fire and the firemans come storming through your house, their priority is to put that fire out. Mm-hmm. So they're not really bothered if they knock over your couch or break a window, or they get by any means necessary, especially if it's life at risk. They would do it by any means necessary to save. And another thing that you'll see in people who are really significantly sulfur deficient is they will have muscle wasting because the body will break down muscle tissue to get sulfur. Interesting. The amino acids methionine and cysteine contain sulfur. So the body's getting really desperate from this critical molecule than it needs. Okay. The question is why? Why does it not have what it needs? And that's where you really need to start digging. Yeah. Yeah. So mold and oxalates being a really big one we see. What is a standard test that you can done at your doctor that can indicate low sulfur? Homocysteine. We always look for that. Everyone hears about high homocysteine and methylation. What people don't necessarily know about is low homocysteine. So again, cysteine being a sulfur base molecule, the body will break down the homocysteine to get that sulfur. So again, desperate measures we're doing whatever we can. The body will break that down. So if you are seeing anything, you know, five or under, even six is a bit low. Do you look for homocysteine at six to seven? Is that what you're normally looking? Yeah. That's good. That's normal. If it's six, oh, you know, without symptoms. If it's heading under five and a half, 5, 4, 3, that's really low. That's when you know. Yeah. And it's so cheap and accessible. Like with a lot of the things that we do, there's not a standard test. Like I always say to people with mold, like, there's not one test that I can do that's gonna give me all the information, but there are things that we can look for. Signs and symptoms. As you said, the homocysteine is going to be low, anything kinda like five and a half and lower. I'd start to question, whether there's an issue there. That's really simple. A lot of your GP's will run it. If you have to pay for it privately, it's pretty cheap. Stool testing, so any of the sulfur producing bacteria that are elevated in your stool. So your sulf Rio, your strep enterobacter, h pylori, Klebsiella, there's quite a few of those. Organic acid test. You can see the glutathione markers in there. I will say to anyone who's looking at their own organic acid test. If you see the marker for NAC and I see your N-acetylcysteine it's low. People often freak out about that, but it has a very short half-life, so it's very commonly zero or very low in pretty much everyone because you have to fast. So I don't look at that so much but on the next page. I think it's the last page, there is a particular phone marker that I look for to see whether that's deficient. So that can tell you that as well. If you do a breath test and you have h pylori, that can be an indicator that sulfur could be a problem because they are one of those. As I said, no SIBO test here in Australia, but overseas it may be available where you are. And the other thing is if this is not a very common test, but if you ever happen to have a blood test that's testing and looking at glutathione, this is where sometimes things aren't always as they seem. So you can have high glutathione in the blood and you can be very, very deficient. And the reason that happens is because the liver is the last organ that will become deficient in glutathione. So little bit by little bit, the other ones might become deficient, but the liver is the priority. So when you get to that point, the critical level, the liver will actually try and send some glutathione out and it'll be in the blood. And what people have to keep remembering is your bloodstream is a transport mechanism. And when you're doing a blood test, it's that moment in time and it doesn't necessarily tell you what's happening in the cells. The example I always use is if you go into your supermarket and you wanna buy toilet paper during the COVID crisis and there's no toilet paper there, and they look on the computer and they say, well, we've got 50-year-old, but they're in a truck on the highway, that's no use to you. Yeah. It doesn't matter if you've got a hundred pallets in a truck on the highway, I'm in the supermarket, I need. No. What about the organic acid test being a urine metabolites test for glutathione? Is that more accurate? Yeah, I think that's a pretty good. As I said, I haven't actually seen any glutathione blood testing, but just theoretically we know that if you ever did have one mm-hmm. And I dunno, a situation where a doctor would necessarily test that, but if you did have one, this is where it can just be dangerous to think that Oh, actually everything's fine. Yeah. That's, like I say, anyone out there who's doing a urinary mycotoxin test, if you don't provoke. It can come back as a false negative and you think you're fine. And actually it could be that your detoxification is so blocked up that you can't actually, can you explain to our listeners what you mean by provoke and what you do with what you take to provoke? Yeah, so provoking just means you're provoking your body to start detoxifying. So glutathione generally is the main one that we use a week beforehand, but not everything goes through the glutathione mm-hmm. Pathway. So the other thing you can do is things like infrared sauna. Anything you can do to try and stimulate your body to detoxify. But yeah, generally I take glutathione and infrared sauna is a great thing to do before we test. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is if you do have a mycotoxin test and you have gliotoxin that comes up, that could be another indicator that maybe you are not gonna be coping with sulfur so well, because we know that sulfur is used to make more gliotoxin and that's gonna make you feel worse. Okay, and what about the simple things people can think about with regards to foods and supplements that what might be like, oh, this is a big red flag. Maybe I am intolerant to sulfur. I should say, when we say intolerant to sulfur, it's like saying you're intolerant to calcium. It's like, what is my bones made from? Yeah. Right. If your sulfur metabolism is very disrupted. Yes. Okay. This is why you are not tolerating these sulfur foods. Yeah. So sulfur foods and supplements. Now we wanna talk about what can happen when people are overloaded with sulfur in their gut from an upregulated microbiome producing these sulfur producing bacteria. Yeah, this is the thing, the reactions can be very different depending on the root cause. So if you do have a lot of sulfur producing bacteria in your gut, small or large intestine anything you take orally will give you a reaction. So, you know, you're trying to eat really healthy, so you're gonna have more brass occurring ous vegetables. So your broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, leek, garlic, onion, kale, Brussels sprouts, radish, all those foods, they're gonna set you off. As you said earlier, red meat and dairy are actually the highest'cause, the methionine and cysteine content, and eggs. So there'll be a flag. Belching it is another symptom that can happen with the sulfur sensitivity. But as far as supplements. You knack in your glutathione straight away. They're the big ones. But anything like taurine, glucosamine, conjoin sulfate, alpha lipoic acid, MSM, like, that's not even the full list, but there's lots of them. And if you just type in your supplement into saying, does this contain sulfur. Chat GPT can tell you so, yeah. Yeah. It's good. You can use it. And some people are even sensitive to Epsom salt, so Epsom salts, we. A magnesium sulfate, and when you soak in them, it does go directly into the bloodstream. So if you have a disrupted metabolism of sulfur, you can even be reactive to that. So I always say to people, you know, how do you go with Epsom salts? And they might say, oh yeah, I feel really relaxed. I'm like, there's a difference between feeling relaxed and sleepy and maybe it helps you calm down and feeling fatigued and toxic. And that's actually a symptom that I forgot to mention with the sulfur tolerance. You can feel like you've got a hangover. Like you feel so toxic. That's what people say to me. I feel so toxic, and they're taking all of these things to help detox. Mm-hmm. But what they're actually doing is creating this sulfite and sulfide, which in the higher levels is toxic to them. So you'll just feel toxic. You might feel really, really fatigued. The joint pain might kick in. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's part of the. General sulfur metabolism'cause it's getting into the blood. But it can also be because of the gut. Because when we absorb it into the bloodstream, that blood inevitably will end up in the gut because there is a lot of blood that does go to our gut. Our small and large intestines. So eventually the sulfur will get there and you can be reactive. Okay. Okay. That reactive to the foods and supplements. 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, tetra hydro, biopterin pathway, and the all important transsulfuration 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 joannekennedy.com. So Mel, what is the connection between histamine and sulfur? Okay, so first of all, some of the symptoms are very similar. Mm-hmm. So we discussed that earlier on. But what's actually happening is, so when we overproduce sulfate, histamine is a byproduct of that production. So you're gonna be producing a little bit more histamine. So that's going to elevate your histamine levels and sulfur intolerance and histamine intolerance a bit the same. You're not intolerant to them. It's the threshold and your ability to cope with it. That's the problem. As I said, the symptoms can mimic it, but also methylation and transsulufration are very intimately linked. Mm-hmm. And I'm a very visual person, so I often just think about, you think about the methylation is a circle at the top, and then underneath there's a direct line that comes down and that's your transsulfuration Pathway. So even if, if homocysteine starts to build up, your body can really try and just pull it down. That transsulfuration pathway. And that pathway does produce sulfide as a byproduct. Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. The transsulfuration pathway starts with methionine, which is a sulfur based amino acid. Then that creates Sam E, which is your body's major methyl donor. Which is another sulfur supplement. Yeah. Yeah. Sam e. Yeah. So it goes around the body and it donates these methyl groups around the body. And then it gets deactivated and converted into SAR and then to homocysteine. And then homocysteine moves down that transsulfuration pathway. So the amino acid that you need to make your major methyl donor is a sulfur. So it's, it's extremely connected. So Mel, this is an interesting concept. When someone's really sulfur deplete, then potentially they're not making enough sam e. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, I'm gonna intervene here and say, if you've been listening to this show, you know, I'm such an advocate of testing your methylation in real time via the mood sense methylation test, which is just a home test kit. And the thing with methylation is, yes, we are talking about how it's impacted by sulfation, but it's also impacted by the environment enzymes, genetics genes that make methyl groups, genes that use methyl groups, genes that recycle methyl groups. So if you're interested in your methylation, you need to do the mood sense at home methylation test kit. and for listeners, if you are interested in doing that test, I've secured 10% off with discount code HISTAMINEWELL10. And you can access that test via my website. So Mel, back to sulfur. If someone is comes to you and is a bucket of histamine and sulfur. Where would you start? What would be the first thing that you would start with in your mind? Well, in my mind it's, it's always be why, why, why? What's going on with you? And like how, I always ask you react to these foods, how do you feel on these? But the thing I wanna stress to anyone who goes, oh, okay, I'm reacting to sulfur. I'm just gonna go on a low sulfur diet. You can't, because we short term you can, but uh, long term you're going to worsen the problem because most of the time the sulfur problem is a sulfur deficiency. And you're further depleting your sulfur by going on a low sulfur diet. So you are feeling better in the short term, but not in the long term. So yeah, you've always just gotta get into the the why, and you can often tell, you know, if someone isn't getting a lot of the digestive symptoms. We go, okay, then maybe there's something else. But a lot of the time it's mold and oxalate. I really do see that so much of the time, and I don't think, we didn't really touch too much on the mechanism with oxalate. So what happens with oxalates is oxalate and sulfate share the same transporter on the cell. So to get in, they use the same door to get into the cell, for example, and it's gonna uptake whatever's there in the largest quantities. So oxalate, as we know, really toxic, dangerous in the bloodstream, your body's gonna uptake it, preferentially, which means that the sulfur won't get in. Mm-hmm. The sulfur's gonna be left in the bloodstream doesn't belong there. The kidneys are gonna take care of that and get rid of it. Also, it can push sulfur out of the cell. Uh,'cause you know, the highest and lowest concentration, how does, how diffusion works? So it kicks it out of the cell. So that just continues to deplete sulfur more and more and more. and so bringing in Epsom salts if you do have an oxalate issue can be helpful, but they can worsen dumping. Mm-hmm. Because anything that's gonna reduce your oxalate levels is going to initiate the body to start purging what it's got in storage. So either do one or the other, do diet, or do the Epsom salts. Don't do both at the same time. Okay. That's good advice. Make it slow. Yeah. So if someone came to you with a definite oxalate problem and also lots of sulfur issues mm-hmm. You would do reducing oxalates in the diet. Right. And what about the, and the sulfur foods? Do you get them to minimize them for a little while and give them some mole to help process it? Yeah, generally speaking I will. It really depends.'cause you know, some people can't even tolerate a teaspoon of Epsom salts. Yeah. And some people can have four cups of Epsom salts and they're fine. Mm. But someone can tolerate the Epsom salts. We are definitely gonna start there and it really is on a case by case basis. So if someone comes to me. And they're on an extremely limited diet and they're mainly eating oxalates, and I don't wanna take any more foods out of their diet. You can stimulate dumping by starting with Epsom salts. For example, if someone's eating a really high oxalate diet, we, and they, maybe we can start with reducing the oxalate in the diet, but generally, yeah, with sulfur, we do kind of like a one to two week restriction. We try not to do it for too long. That's long enough for them to go, wow, I feel a lot better. And then you definitely know that, that it's a sulfur issue and it's then about figuring out. What's your, your root cause, what's your driver? And so certainly with gliotoxin we do low sulfur for about four weeks. We take care of the, the gliotoxin and the mold. Any candida that's going on clear that. And then we go heavy on the sulfur to then help the other detox pathways. Okay. And other to be, but the just really unique in the sense that you treat it very differently from standard mold. So what do you use binders? Yes. What binders do you use? I'll use a broad spectrum. So we often use the Micropul. Do you, I can't remember the name. Research nutritionals? Yeah. Micropul. Yeah. Yeah. We use Micropul, broad spectrum because, different microtoxins bind up to different, are bound up by different binders. So we just hit with all of them so that we are kind of touching all bases, especially if we don't know at that time what, what molds they've been exposed to it. It can really help bind up to a lot of those. The other thing that I will comment on is B12 is really important for breaking down sulfite or sulfide in the blood. So if you are B12 deficient, again, that's another way it probably ties in with methylation is that that's a really important nutrient. That's interesting metabolism. Which particular type of B12, do you know? Well, we always use the methyl cobalamin anyway, so. Oh, do you? You use methyl, oh, sorry, hydroxocobalamin. Sorry guys. Hydroxy. it's way more gentle. So hydroxy. Yeah. Interesting. That's interesting Mel. And everyone's deficient in B12, aren't they? Yeah, well, especially, you know, with methylation issues. Yeah, it's the stress and the low HCL, definitely. Mm-hmm. And cause big issues with that. Okay. So what about, if you've got high sulfur producing bacteria in the gut, what do you, what are your favorite sort of supplements to reduce that? Do you use Hertz? If we are do with that, I generally, we will reduce kind of the fats and the red meats and the dairy mm-hmm. That. And just start eating with low sulfur vegetables. Mm-hmm. And I do have a list of, like, rocket is a really gentle one. A lot of people tolerate build up on that. As far as supplements go, I generally try and start'em on sulforaphane at that point. Mm-hmm. Which despite what people think, doesn't have a lot of sulfur in it. Okay. And why sulphurofane, Mel. So that's helpful. I use that a lot for gut dysbiosis. Mm-hmm. And building up food tolerance in people. So I just find it's a much gentler way than going a lot of, especially a lot of people come to me and they've been on antimicrobials for a very long time. Mm-hmm. And so it's like we can't keep killing off, you know, the bad guys, so to speak, or the opportunistic you can't keep just trying to kill them off. Mm. And expect the problem to resolve. So generally it's like, let's look at a more balancing approach where we can help support the beneficial bacteria because it's a turf war in there, right? If you don't have enough of the good guys to get the bad guys in check, they'll just keep overgrowing. Mm. So supporting the healthy bacteria, and that's why I do that. And it also, it's really great for supporting detoxification and inflammation in the immune system. Sulforaphane actually activates the NRF two pathway, which turns on lots of different protective genes that helps support the body in a multitudes of ways. And when you have people that are really sensitive mm, it's nice to have a single ingredient product. That does lots of different things at once. Yeah. I find these people really need to save their microbiome and herbal medicine. It does reduce your good microbiome as well. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can use, if someone comes to us and they haven't had a lot of antimicrobials or antibiotics in the past, sometimes we can just go in there for six weeks or so. But these aren't usually this. The sensitive patients, are they? Yeah. I don't see a lot of them. Because you normally deal with those people and if they need to come to me, that's right. After that, that's very true. I send the complex cases to Mel. Mel, what about prebiotics? Do you go in with prebiotics? Yeah, I do actually. Yeah. So again, supporting to build up that beneficial bacteria, especially again, if someone's on a very limited diet, they can't necessarily tolerate a lot of foods. Generally. PHGG is well tolerated'cause it's low fodmap. Could help people empty their bowels if they're having issues with that.'cause no matter what you come to see me for, if you're not emptying your bowels, that's number one priority really, because it's such an important mm way that we are eliminating toxins. You've got a heavy toxic load. Your body is dumping the toxic bile into your large intestine to be excreted, and it's staying there for too long. It gets reabsorbed. Yeah, yeah. No, it's it. Bowels are the first thing we need to look at. One of the first things. Especially with ox, you call liver. Yeah. Ox like, and everything you're doing twice the work, it's already so overwhelmed and you're making it do it the same thing, like, yeah. No matter who you are, you gotta be pooping at least once a day. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Interesting. So what else, Mel, what else can, what else are you seeing clinically with these patients presenting with? They just can't tolerate foods. Everything makes them feel worse. They've, it's multiple, multiple food intolerances, isn't it? Yeah. It's just rarely do I see someone who is only reacting to sulfur. One of the things I could probably mention is some of the implications of the sulfur deficiency.'cause that kind of talks about a little bit of the domino effect of why things get so bad that you can't see the forest for the trees. So, first of all, there's an enzyme called PST Ferno sulfate transferase, which uses sulfate to function. That is how you process your sulfur, sorry, your cate and phenol foods. Mm. So people will often have a salicylate sensitivity. Mm-hmm. Which is really challenging because you wanna eat all the beautiful, colorful vegetables to help support your detoxification. It's the same thing with histamine, right? You wanna heal your gut, all the high histamine foods or all the gut healing foods, and you feel like you are hitting this brick wall. So there's that. When you don't have enough sulfur, you know, any mercury that you have becomes more toxic. Your body's not coping with it. You can't detoxify aluminum very well either. So your heavy metal burden goes up. You become deficient in glutathione, which we discussed. So many pathways in the phase two liver detox. Need the sulfur sulfation, obviously, but you've also got glutathione conjugation, and even glucoronidation uses a lot of the sulfur. You know, sulfur vegetables is the best thing that you can have for glucoronidation. But you know, you just feel like you can't have it. So this is where the problem just gets worse and worse and worse'cause you can't seem to have the things that you need. The other thing muscle wasted. So I did mention that. Also, even the mitochondria, it becomes overburdened and can't produce enough ATP without enough sulfur. And it also as part of the process creates sulfur as an end product too. So it's just this big mess. Oh, what the breakdown of mitochondria? Yeah. So the mitochondria is a great factory for utilizing sulfur. Mm-hmm. But if you don't, if you've got mitochondrial dysfunction, they're not able to use the sulfur. Yeah, that's interesting. So you can't make your energy. So that's another reason why people are really, so again, chicken egg is the, is the mitochondrial dis dysfunction first and that's creating an issue with sulfur, or is sulfur part of the overall problem? And detoxification? It's impairing the mitochondria. That's the question. That's another reason why like, timeline is so important. Okay. I say to people, when did it start? And they might say, oh look, I've always kinda had gut issues as a child, or, but there's always a never, well, since that's the question they always ask. It's very powerful where that moment in time where things really started to fall away. It's usually when they moved into a Maori house, isn't it? Yeah. Mel do you remember I sent you a patient, you saw him on Monday. He's a guy. He's a tradie. Country boy. Yep. Yeah. I saw a patient last week who was so sick. He can't eat anything. He's a strong, he's a trade, he's a country boy and he is a strong guy. But he told me he's at his wit's end. Seriously, you know, considering his life. And I questioned him and he lived in mold for years. So I send him off to Mel. Mel, can you talk about this patient? You uncovered that there was a previous history of mold exposure. Then I had a chat with him and we did, we got really nitty gritty and we started to do a timeline. And I said to him, when we look at this, it all surrounded that year, which was about six months after he moved into that house. Mm-hmm. It's like, oh. He didn't realize it'cause he hadn't put it in order yet. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, you know, he tried to go vegan, felt worse. Hello Oxalates. Yeah. And then moved into another house. And he said, I can smell the mold on the, there's mold on my clothes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, he's having a really, really hard time. And the body's just being. Bombarded with these toxins constantly. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, it was the timeline is so important. Okay. So Mel, I know he had multiple, multiple food intolerances, but it's, he's got a big sulfur issue. As part of that. Yeah. Yeah, he does. So, again, you know, very, very toxic, he's living in a very toxic environment. His body has utilized all of his sulfur. We're looking at getting some testing done so we can see, you know, what exactly is going on. He's actually getting a building biologist in, which I'm so happy about. And they're gonna test the air and we can at least see what yeah. Molds he's got there. But like he needs to remove himself from the situation. But, you know, he, the people that he lives with are fine. Yeah. Okay. This is interesting. Can you talk about that, Mel? Yeah. So anyone who comes to me and they're like, is this all in my head? My partner's fine, everyone's fine. First of all, I say, you know, you are the canary in the coal mine. You're just a little bit more sensitive to it. So there's multiple reasons for that past history of toxin exposure. You know what, what people think. When we are born, we are like, like pure and there's no toxicity, but we know that cord blood is, you know, contaminated. So we pass heavy metals onto our children. We pass all sorts of toxins onto our children, so we've got this huge toxic burden. So what your parents did for a job where they lived, huge impact. Your exposure in your childhood, huge impact. Whether you had heaps of antibiotics, like lots of these things can just mean that you get to the mold and then that, that's just it. Yeah. This history beforehand has just led you to the point that you just body just lost the capacity to deal with it. Mm-hmm. You might have. I see a lot of people who have Gilbert Syndrome or elevated bilirubin levels. That's really significant because your glucoronidation pathway is impaired. Mm-hmm.'cause of this genetic that you have. Again, if we lived a thousand years ago without all these toxins, no one had a problem. Mm-hmm. But that's impaired. A lot of mold, toxins go through glucoronidation. Mm-hmm. So you are coming into an environment already impaired. Yeah. You are the one that's going to get knocked out. And the thing is, most people that say everyone else is fine. When I start asking them very direct questions, do they get this? Do they get that? The people living in the home aren't fine. They're not fine, they're just not as debil. They, these patients we see are debilitated. Yes. They're not as sick. And I just had recently, so thankful. This one patient I've been seeing who is so unwell and was reluctant to accept that mold was, was an issue. And they've just had testing done. There's huge leaks. The building biologist said this is actually uninhabitable. Wow. And they've moved out and there's already some improvement there. Okay. And they couldn't, you know, they thought there was a little bit and they just, and I had to, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit of convincing because the whole world is telling us that mold isn't really that much of a problem. No, it is. I can tell you, and they're, and they're like, oh, now that we think about it, as soon as we moved in. Mm-hmm. Fatigue kicked in and Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, it doesn't always hit you in one go. Occasionally you'll have someone who goes, I tanked as soon as I moved in. Yeah. Most people, it starts with headaches and then they'll get a gluten intolerance and then they get sick a lot, and then five years later they're in this world of pain. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So it's the mold people need to understand that you can end up with the massive issues with sulfur and sulfur intolerance as well, and depletion of glutathione disruption to your sulfation pathway. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So these people end up being intolerant to sulfur foods, intolerant to histamine foods. They've got an oxalate problem as well. So they, they're having issues with oxalate foods and then they also can't break down salicylates. And then also the amount of sulfur in like eggs and red meat become, they, they sort of can't eat enough animal protein, which is a problem in itself. And so it becomes really quite tricky. And getting to the root cause is what Melanie does, and it's trying to fix this complex biochemical disruption. Guys, it's not just a microbiome issue.'cause I have so many people come to me fixated on the microbiome. They do all this stool testing and they are put on so many herbs to try and kill off this and that bacteria or antibiotics, fecal transplants a lot and it ends up causing them to get worse and worse and worse, mainly'cause the real issue's not identified. Their gut microbiome is completely destroyed, and they've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Mm-hmm. We've had patients like that recently. Yeah. Remember the one, the, the two brothers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yes, SIBO is always there, and I, they reckon, oh, 80% it's gotta be a hundred percent. Well, SIBO is always there, actually. This is a really, this is really good. So yes, you are gonna have sibo, whether you've got hydrogen sulfide, sibo, or just methane dominant, or you've got hydrogen dominant, or you've got some sifo. It's going to be there. You'll always have it. And then taking the antibiotics to try and kill off some large bowel dysbiosis is gonna make you way worse. It's not fixing the problem. So guys, when it's mold and oxalates and sulfur, it's your liver detoxification pathways. Your glutathione production, this is where we need to look at. We need to save the microbiome. Yeah. So Mel, with patients like this, yeah, they've got sibo, but we don't, we just don't focus on SIBO straight up. And it, this is the thing I always, it probably at least 50% of people go, but what about my SIBO and what should I eat and tell me to eat? And I'm like, your problem is beyond the food at the moment. The food isn't the problem, the environment in your body is, and until you can correct that. There's no magic. I don't have a magic diet for you. Yeah. There is not really anything that's low histamine low, low sulfur, low oxalate. No, it's nothing. It's nothing left. So, ironically as a nutritionist, I'm saying at this moment in time, we're actually not focusing too much on the diet. You just need to eat what you can to, so we might do a little bit of, you know. Lowering sulfur here or there, but generally speaking, you gotta fix the underlying, either the chemistry or the mold. Yes. The mold, it's, it's so toxic. It just, you know, like I lived it and moving out of the mold was the most significant thing that I could do to help myself feel better. Everything else I did was trending water and gut was the last thing to fix. Mm mm Within two weeks of being out of mold, my husband said to me, you're using your words a lot better. You know? Yeah. I used to skirt all the way around the world trying to figure out this one word that I wanna say. You know, I could remember the word table, for example. So I. Create this whole, so this whole sentence, trying to explain what I'm looking for. One thing that I find so exciting is I can do like the two point verification now. You know when you get text message with the very verification code, oh, okay, six digits. I can do that without having to go back and look and write it down. Oh, that's interesting. I have to write it down because if I was on my phone and it came on a text message, I couldn't remember those six digits. Wow. Okay. So brain fogs are huge. Oh, huge, huge, huge. And yeah, so interesting. I wanna talk about this. So, you know, we identified you had a mold issue, a big oxalate issue, but this sulfur issue didn't, A arise arising you for a while after that, is that correct? Or It was always there, but not as severe. I think it was just. Underlying right. And I didn't really, again, you can't really see the forest for the trees. Yes. And you hadn't studied all this stuff yet and seen so many? No, no, no, no. So I look back now and I go, oh, when that practitioner put me on the gaps diet to heal my gut, we thought it was the histamine that I was reacting to. I think was histamine as well. But I think a lot of that was. sulfur. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Um, a lot of my clients, I, I, you know, I'm happy to share my story and, um, a lot of this arose when my second child was born and he had food intolerances. And while I was breastfeeding, I had to eliminate a lot of these foods out of my diet because he was reactive. And lo and behold, I started changing my diet up and realized I was the one that was reacting. And I actually had to go as far as not eating meat. I used to, Monday to Friday I would eat a very low meat diet. Mm-hmm. And I would eat meat on the weekends and I would give him express breast milk that I'd pumped during the week. So I didn't feed him breast milk after eating meat.'Cause of the sulfur. Of the sulfur. And I go look back now and I go, oh. When I started eating the meat,'cause I was starving, obviously I wasn't eating very much and this is before I knew anything that I know now. I felt terrible. Mm. So it was always there, but there's just so many layers. Yeah. Okay. And so, yeah, when I started to feel a little bit better when I moved out, I started to, I started to be able to tolerate foods a little bit better. I was really excited to bring back in coleslaw. I loved making Coleslaw. Okay. All this raw cabbage. The next thing you know, I was like, I can't even think. Can you explain to everyone like the gaps, why the gaps diet is so problematic for sulfur and histamine? So, well, obviously with histamine, you know, it's slow cooked. Mm-hmm. You're doing all the bone broth, so it's slow cooked. You know, you're not necessarily worrying about the freshness of the meat. And again, high meat diet, it's high in sulfur. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just. Too much sulfur. So if anyone's reacting to gaps, there's a, it's the sulfur and the histamine. Yeah. Yeah. No. Interesting. So Mel, so how to treat sulfur intolerance, that's not even really a question. It's all about identifying the root causes and then understanding that. Yeah. We do have people come to us and they, it, it's multiple, multiple, multiple food intolerances, but you have to zoom out. Mm-hmm. Because you can go crazy thinking, is it sulfur? Is it oxide? Is it histamine? Is it FODMAPs? You have to zoom out. I understand that the, the gut microbiome and the biochemistry is so disrupted, and we need to start fixing that rather than just eliminating more foods or taking a really reductionist approach into these food intolerances because it drives you crazy and it doesn't give you great clinical outcomes. Yeah. So yeah, always supporting the sulfur. I make sure I'm always supporting any of those, sulfur enzymes. Yeah, that's the standard. Yeah. So the, so of the big sulfur enzymes is suox because it takes the sulfates into the sulfate. Yes. Is that correct? And that's molybdenum dependent. Yes. Any other nutrients for suox? Yeah, so iron is important. B12, coq 10 for the mitochondria.'cause that's the com conversion happening in there. they're the, the main ones. And obviously you don't wanna be taking anything with, with sulfur in it. Yeah, that, I'd say that they're, they're really the main ones, but yeah, looking after your enzymes and then just really zooming out and focusing on, you know, what's gotten me here. and the other thing I will say about, you know. Going a little bit crazy trying to find, because people do, they go, what did I eat? What did I eat? What am I reacting to in this moment? And it does actually create quite a lot of stress. And one thing that we both do with a lot of our patients is working on nervous system support because it creates a real, I don't wanna loosely use the word trauma, but it does create some sort of trauma in the It does. No, it absolutely, a hundred percent Mel, it does. I just, I just, I know it's thrown away around so, so loosely these days, but it creates this, this trauma in your body and your nervous system becomes. Hypervigilant to the point that, you know, obsessing over what you're eating, the researching, that's all creating a stress response that is, therefore feedback to the brain is, I'm not safe. Yeah. And a lot of these food reactions can also be where the nervous system is actually become very involved and he is directing the immune system to become reactive. Yeah. And so if every single person that has all of these reactions, you must work on your nervous system. Okay. Where are you sending them to Mel for?. So lots of different things. limbic retraining through the Gupta program or primal trust, somatic exercises I'm finding really helpful for those that can't meditate. Mm-hmm. So, worked out which Irene Lyon. Irene Lyon has some good information about, the impacts of toxins. So she grew up, was it her parents were vets? Yeah. She had a massive toxic load in her body. Yeah. It was her toxic load. So she didn't have the trauma. You know, a lot of people who, develop. These nervous system issues and MCAS, it can be trauma based, so there's no abuse or trauma or anything like that. It was, for her, it was chemical trauma. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so the, the nervous system in its. In its ability to try and keep us alive is just becoming so overreactive. So that is another critical component that people overlook. Yeah. And they don't realize how stressed they are. You know, some, I have people, you know, the door slams and half an hour later their heart is still racing. You need to be able to get your body. Into parasympathetic rest, digest, and repair mode. And you don't even realize how, I've had people come back going, I've had a massive histamine flare. What I didn't eat anything different? And we break it down and it's like that difficult conversation that they had on the phone with their friend. They had a fight with their friend all, they had a deadline at work and it was that. And that flared their symptoms. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Nervous system correlate. Really precisely. Yeah. Yeah, it does. it's crazy how when people who are, whose nervous systems are dysregulated, small things can really increase their histamines. I see that all the time as well. I have, I had one patient who couldn't go outside if there was more than a 10 degree difference between inside and outside. You have to wear a beanie because if she went outside, she'd get a migraine. Just'cause of the, the difference in temperature. Oh, okay. And that comes back to that autonomic nervous system, you know, regulating your body temperature, regulating your heart rate, your pots, your MCAS, that all comes involved. That's a lot of that is nervous system. Mm-hmm. That's fascinating. Even by the toxins and the Yeah, it's interesting'cause I know that mold inflames the vagus nerve and then mold's gonna deplete your sulfur and then you are going to be more reactive to general household chemicals. Yeah, you just gotta think about that emergency situation. Those firefighters coming in and trampling everything, trying to do whatever they can. There's alarm bells going off con, it's a high stress environment, and these alarm bells are going off inside your body. You just can't hear them. They're just presenting as symptoms, but the nervous system is responding. Yep. And most people have been sick. They haven't been sick for six months. They've been sick for 10 years or more. Yeah. Yeah. And guys, I know that we are in our methylation, histamine, sulfur lane, but I'm telling you, if you've had chronic health issues that, uh, haven't resolved you, you'd need to really think about mold exposure. Because it will go miss. The doctors are not gonna pick it up. A lot of naturopath, integrative doctors, nutritionists aren't trained in this area. But I can tell you, Mel, Mel and I are here to tell you that the patients that come to see us who are our sickest patients, 99.9% of the time, it's mold, isn't it? Yeah. And yeah, I, I send all my pat, I, I mean, I don't treat the mold, Mel does, but I can pick it up on my patients really easily. Now, Mel, am I, um, am I, have I ever not been right with mold? It's normally mold. No, I don't think so. Sometimes even I'm like, is this mold? Because I'm trying to think about so many things and yeah, there is like, uh, another patient I can remember, you know, she was adamant, there is no mold in this house. I can't see anything. It's really clean, it's new, it's bright and light and airy. And I was like, it walks and talks like mold, like this looks like mold. And we did organic acid. It showed up on the organic acid. It showed up on the urinary mycotoxin test and then it showed up on testing in the home. Yeah. We dunno where it came from. We didn't, there was no building biologist that came in and told her where the leak was. But we tested mold and there was mold. It was mold there, mold in home and it looked pristine. Yeah, that's the trick, isn't it. It doesn't have, it doesn't have any bearing on whether you keep a tidy home and a clean home. It's got nothing to do with that. It's to do with water intrusion in an environment that can't get out. Yeah. And that, and you can, it can be behind walls and you can't see it. Mean brand new homes. And so even if you can't see that there's a water leak, there can be a water leak. Absolutely. Yeah. Waterproofing. somebody that only personally, this is years before I even know anything about mold. They, had a brand new home built and they didn't do the waterproofing in the shower upstairs properly, and they had mushrooms growing out of the carpet upstairs and the ceiling of the room below was completely covered in black mold. They just didn't waterproof the shower properly. Okay. It's pretty common. they're throwing buildings up so quickly. Oh, they are? They, they, the, the way they're building buildings today is terrible. All the rain we've had recently, like looking at all those frames sitting in the rain, they don't wait for it to dry out properly. Yeah. Okay. So a brand new house isn't immune, nothing is immune. Okay. That's a good, so yeah, I will say, you know, all of these people that come to me, they've seen multiple practitioners. Everything those practitioners did was right for SIBO and gut issues. But the problem was it wasn't just gut issues. It was the mold. Yeah. And the mold is causing the sibo. Yeah, yeah. You're not fixing the problem that's driving it. If you are living in mold, it's like, as I said, the amount of times people move out and half of the problems that they're dealing with start to get better on their own. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Alright, Mel. So that's great. So any last thing you need to tell us about sulfur? I don't think so. It just, yeah. It's just a little bit of a minefield. Don't go on a long-term low sulfur diet. Yep. Main message I would send to people because you'll inevitably make the problem worse. Yeah. Yeah. Our body needs sulfur. Yeah. So you need to, we need to be fixing why you can't tolerate it. Yeah. Wonderful. Alright, Mel, thank you so much for your time today. Great. Thanks for having me. Thanks. So 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.