38. Helicobacter pylori, Low Stomach Acid & Histamine: The Gut Cascade Explained

In this episode of The Histamine Well Podcast, Joanne explains how Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) can quietly drive histamine intolerance, SIBO, and hormone imbalance — even without classic ulcer or reflux symptoms.

H. pylori produces urease, converting urea into ammonia and lowering stomach acid. This reduction in hydrochloric acid can impair protein digestion, weaken pathogen control, and disrupt digestive signaling — creating the perfect environment for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and rising histamine levels. The result can be a “histamine storm” of inflammation and systemic symptoms.

Common signs may include:

• Food reactions
• Bloating and gas
• Hives or eczema
• Anxiety and insomnia
• Headaches
• PMS, estrogen dominance, and perimenopause flares

Joanne also discusses the pros and cons of triple therapy (antibiotics plus proton pump inhibitors), post-treatment gut repair, and natural strategies such as sulforaphane and gut-healing support.

If your histamine symptoms persist despite dietary changes, this episode explores a deeper gut–histamine–hormone connection that may be driving the root cause.

What You’ll Learn:

• How H. pylori disrupts stomach acid and digestion
• The link between low stomach acid, SIBO, and histamine intolerance
• Why mast cell activation increases systemic symptoms
• How histamine impacts estrogen and perimenopause
• Treatment considerations and natural support options

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Transcript

0:00

Hi, it's Joanne. Helicobacter pylori isn't just a stomach bug. When most people hear the word helicobacter pylori, they think ulcers, reflux, burning pain. But what's often missed is how much this bacteria can shift the digestive environment. It can alter stomach acid production, irritate the stomach lining, and change what happens further down in the gut. And once that environment changes, other issues can follow. Things such as sibo, a disruption to your digestive enzymes, food intolerance, and histamine intolerance. So in this episode, we are going to unpack what Helicobacter Pylori actually does physiologically and how it changes digestion from the top down. And why treatment isn't just about eliminating a bacteria, it's about restoring the overall terrain. 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, I'm discussing how helicobacter pylori can drive up histamine in your body. When people think about helicobacter pylori, they often think about stomach ulcers. They think about reflux or maybe burning pain in the upper abdomen. But what they don't think about is skin flares, anxiety, food reactions, insomnia or perimenopause-histamine chaos. But clinically, the connection is very real. So today I'm going to unpack what Helicobacter Pylori actually does to the stomach. How it changes the environment of your gut. How it increases histamine signaling. Why proton pump inhibitors can complicate the picture. And how this can spiral into SIBO and other systemic symptoms. So first of all, what exactly is helicobacter pylori? Well, it's a bacteria that colonizes the stomach lining, and it's incredibly common. Some people never have symptoms. Others develop gastritis, ulcers, reflux, nausea, bloating or upper abdominal discomfort or pain can be quite bad Pain. Helicobacter pylori. And what actually makes this bacteria unique is that it survives in the stomach, which is one of the most acidic environments in the stomach. And it does this by producing an enzyme called urease. And urease converts urea into ammonia. An ammonia neutralizes stomach acid locally. Essentially, this bacteria is creating a protective alkaline container around itself. They're very clever but very disruptive. When you start having a more alkaline stomach, it's not in sort of the acidity drops, it's a problem. You need acidity to break down protein, activate digestive enzymes, absorb minerals, kill pathogens, and signal proper downstream digestion in the rest of the gut. So when acid levels change, digestion will start to change. And you can end up with other gut issues. So how does helicobacter Pylori drive up histamine? Well, it irritates the stomach lining. And at worse it's gonna cause ulcer. And when you have an irritated stomach lining or ulcer, you've got a lot of inflammation. And that activates immune cells including mast cells and mast cells are going to release histamine. It's very, very simple. It's like anything else in the gut that causes inflammation, drives up histamine. It's the absolute, it's the same thing with helicobacter pylori. What can also happen is that when you have a more alkaline environment in the stomach and you're not breaking down protein properly, it ferments. And what's fermentation gonna do? It increases histamine release in the body. Like especially like red meat. If you're not breaking it down, it will sit and rot and ferment. I've seen this clinically a lot. And then you just get a lot of histamine being produced. And this often happens just when people are stressed, they don't have enough hydrochloric acid, or if they don't eat enough animal protein and then they start eating it again. This can happen. Or if could be a helicobacter pylori problem where the stomach acid has altered. And again, we see all this histamine being produced. And what then also happens is that if you have low hydrochloric acid, the knock on effect is that you have a reduction in your pancreatic enzymes, pancreatic juice, bile acids as hydrochloric acid is like the conductor of the orchestra of all of these other digestive enzymes. And then what happens is you end up with sibo. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which is a major cause of high histamine. Essentially, because the bacteria are converting FODMAP foods into gas. The gas causes inflammation. We have more histamine being released. So that combination of helicobacter pylori, low stomach acid, and sibo is a histamine storm. So these people present with a hell of a lot of histamine symptoms, not just in their gut but systemically. Things like skin rashes, headaches, migraines, anxiety, a worsening of your PMS symptoms. So that histamine can absolutely drive imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. So when women in particular have the triple whammy of helicobacter pylori, low stomach acid, also not breaking down the meat properly, and SIBO. And then they've got their estrogen out of control because the histamine absolutely causes massive surgeon estrogen. If they're perimenopausal, and that perimenopausal phase where the progesterone's dropping and you've got unopposed, estrogen, wow. We really see women suffer a lot at that stage. So if that sounds like you, if you're a woman in that stage, getting the histamine down with treating the gut first is really, really important. 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, tetrahydrobiopterin 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 and apply, visit joanne kennedy naturopathy com. So what else happens with helicobacter pylori? Well, it can actually compromise your intestinal barrier. It can increase intestinal permeability. This is commonly called leaky gut. And when you have a leaky gut, unwanted food particles and pathogens can move into the blood and cause muscle reaction. Again, we have a lot of these systemic histamine symptoms. The hives, the itchy skin, the eczema. It can get into the brain, right? The headaches, the vertigo, the insomnia, the anxiety. This is a really, really common picture we see all the time. So when it comes to the treatment of helicobacter pylori. It's just one of these clinical dilemmas, and this is why. Helicobacter pylori, although very common and often just causes some discomfort, some histamine release, in some people it can lead to ulcer and cancer. So we have to take it very seriously. And I'm saying this because the treatment of it requires the use of a proton pump inhibitor. And proton pump inhibitors actually reduce gastric acid even more .And can make SIBO worse. So this can really cause a big flare in your histamine symptoms. However, it is hard to treat naturally. I'm not saying it's impossible. To practitioners listening out there. Please, I understand it's possible. But clinically, what I see, the dilemma is this person has helicobacter pylori. They've now got sibo. We need to treat sibo. But do you know what they need for sibo, they need hydrochloric acid. And this is the clincher. They've got low hydrochloric acid. So because the environment in the stomach is more alkaline, the hydrochloric acid levels reduce. But what can happen is histamine actually stimulates the histamine two receptor, which increases hydrochloric acid. So it gets a bit tricky. And so a lot of people find that when they take hydrochloric acid as a supplement, it can actually burn them. I've seen this clinically, so I really, really tried to avoid it. In most cases, I will get my patients to do the triple therapy, which is the double antibiotics and the proton pump inhibitor. Usually for one to two weeks. And then they come back to me and then we just clean the gut up and we start to treat sibo, which can take about three to four months. But this is what I do clinically in most cases because these people are an absolute bucket of histamine. They very rarely turn up to my clinic with helicobacter pylori on its own. It's always progressed into causing sibo. And so that's how I actually deal with it clinically. And it gives them some quick relief. So we get rid of the helicobacter pylori. I put them on a low histamine diet, which really, really manages symptoms. If they need to anti take an antihistamine at that stage, fine. If we also can support with a DAO enzyme, we can supplement with DAO enzyme. So this is how I deal with people that come to me with this histamine storm with both SIBO and helicobacter pylori. Now I do wanna mention though, one of a key thing for natural treatment is actually sulforaphane. Because Sulforaphane reduces that urease. So remember helicobacter pylori releases urease, which increases ammonia. Which alkalizes the stomach, which is a real problem. So sulforaphane can actually reduce that Urease production. Now, I have had some patients come to me that cannot take antibiotics. They're allergic to antibiotics. They've completely destroyed their gut from being on antibiotics. And so we do look at treating helicobacter pylori naturally. I make sure that they've had an endoscopy to make sure that there's not an ulcer. And then we can go in with some nice stomach healing herbs like licorice. We can repair the stomach lining with glutamine. We go in with sulforaphane, as I said. And specific herbs that can help reduce the helicobacter pylori itself amongst other things. I'm not saying it can't be treated naturally. It can. But sometimes we just need to go in one or two weeks and just eradicate it so we can just work on everything else we need to work on. So if you have chronic helicobacter pylori and need natural treatment, we're here to help. If you have acute helicobacter pylori and you know that you've also potentially got SIBO or there's other gut issues going on for you, or a lot of histamine issues going on for you. We are here to help. We see patients online globally. You can easily make an appointment via my website. Joanne Kennedy naturopathy.com. 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.