The Hidden Connection Between Estrogen and Histamine: Why Your Hormones Cause Inflammation

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Dr. Brighten: Did you know hormones can actually make histamine reactions worse, and histamine can cause hormone problems in return, which means some women aren't just dealing with hormones or histamine, they're stuck in a loop between the two, and that loop can show up as anxiety. Insomnia, migraines, allergies, and even endometriosis pain.

Now stay with me until Leanne, because I'm going to give you a three step approach to managing your histamine that you'll be able to start today. And it's not just avoid more foods like we see all over the internet, and frankly, that advice keeps women stuck. Welcome back to the Dr. Brighten Show. I'm your host, Dr.

Jolene Brighten, and if you could take a minute to subscribe, like leave a review, so this podcast reaches more women. I would appreciate it, but I don't wanna hold this episode up, so let's get into it.

First, let's talk about the hormone [00:01:00] that may be making your histamine worse in the first place. 

So if you didn't know, estrogen can actually make histamine reactions worse. And there's one simple strategy that can help with the estrogen histamine connection. But before we get into that, I wanna explain how estrogen and histamine are actually connected.

Estrogen does three things here that matter. One, it stimulates mast cells to release histamine. The second is it slows down an enzyme known as DAO. That's the enzyme that breaks down histamine, and third histamine can signal the ovaries to make more estrogen. So estrogen and histamine can start amplifying each other.

This is one reason why women often experience things like migraines, anxiety. You may even have trouble sleeping. Some women it's as bad as insomnia. You may notice you flush. [00:02:00] This is really common when drinking alcohol or having wine that you can flush in general if you have histamine issues. And then certainly the common allergy symptoms that we tend to see, like itchy eyes, runny nose, or you may even feel like flu-like symptoms like the menstrual flu.

This is most common when estrogen rises, and one of the easiest ways to help calm all of this is supporting estrogen metabolism so that estrogen doesn't keep pushing histamine higher. The simple starting point is increasing your fiber and cruciferous vegetables, cooked cruciferous vegetables, supporting regular bowel movements, and prioritizing liver supportive nutrients like B vitamins, amino acids.

So you want to make sure you're giving your body the input so that you can move estrogen through the liver. But then we also have to move it out through the urine and the bowels, which means drinking water, moving our body, and trying to hit that 25 to 35 grams of fiber [00:03:00] daily. If you need help with that, I have a meal plan and recipe guide for you.

It's at dr Brighten.com/plan. DBR igh HTE n.com/plan. You can grab a free meal plan. It's anti-inflammatory and it has delicious recipes to help you hit your fiber and protein goals.

There is more to this histamine story, and there is actually two times in your cycle when histamine can hit the hardest. Now, before I tell you exactly when those two are, let me quickly explain what your hormones are doing throughout the cycle.

So early in your cycle, the follicular phase, and when you're still on your period, estrogen begins to rise. It's going to peak at ovulation, and once you ovulate progesterone gets secreted. Then progesterone rises. But in the late luteal phase, okay, that's when our progesterone is up. Progesterone is going to drop.

The two times [00:04:00] histamine tends to flare. The most are ovulation and the days right before your period. Now, why is that estrogen peaking at ovulation means it can stimulate the mast cells to release more histamine, and then they'll stimulate you to make more estrogen. Before your period, progesterone drops.

Mast cells become less stable when progesterone is down and histamine can then surge again..

Progesterone helps stabilize mast cells, so when it falls, histamine signaling can increase. This is very important when we are talking about our menstrual cycle, right? But also perimenopause, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. But what we see are symptoms like migraines. Anxiety.

You can have the menstrual flu symptoms before your period, so you're feeling all achy. You feel like you're coming down with something. Maybe you get more itchy. You're having more inflammatory flares, you are having trouble sleeping, and this often [00:05:00] occurs around ovulation and then just before our period.

Now, as I said, we're gonna talk about perimenopause. Perimenopause is one of the most common times women suddenly develop histamine issues when they didn't have them before. I'm going to give you a tip to help manage the root cause of this, but first, let me explain what is happening with your hormones in theory, menopause so that.

This all makes sense. So when we're in perimenopause, we often see ups and downs. Higher spikes of estrogen can happen. There's less predictable ovulation, so there's lower or inconsistent progesterone Progesterone's, the first to go. Estrogen starts rocking and rolling wildly. And that combination can make histamine issues much harder to regulate.

And this is why in perimenopause, some women suddenly notice that they have food sensitivities or foods they can't eat. Maybe their allergies are getting worse. They had allergies, now they're getting worse. [00:06:00] This can be part of the progesterone. I can't sleep picture. So it can be progesterone antihistamine.

We can see more anxiety, more headaches, more migraines,

and with estrogen declining, we see a decline in microbial diversity, and the gut is so, so important when it comes to histamine and optimizing our histamine levels in our body.

So here are two things that can help address the root drivers of these histamine issues in perimenopause. So number one is we gotta support the microbiome if it's declining. And it's diversity. What do we gotta do? Well, because your gut bacteria help regulate histamine metabolism and estrogen clearance, we need to look at fiber diversity, not just getting more fiber, but diversity of fiber.

If you can tolerate fermented foods, not everyone can can with histamine issues, bring in fermented foods, and we want to make sure [00:07:00] that every meal that we're eating has some kind of new fiber for your microbiome. So great sources of fiber, fresh ground. Flax seeds, chia seeds. You can eat those soaked oats, brown rice.

Pretty much any plant out there. So eating, uh, your vegetables and fruits, but thinking about diversity of those things. So if you don't commonly eat dandelion greens, but those are available at the store. Try getting some of those. Experiment with new things, and if you've heard me say it before, microdose your microbiome.

If you don't like it, if you don't know if you're gonna like it, just commit to a spoonful. Just some small amount of giving yourself a little bit of something different to help encourage diversity in the.

And then I would encourage you to incorporate something like ghee into your diet, which is rich in butyrate that can support the microbiome and gut health integrity. Now the second thing I wanna say is consider bioidentical progesterone [00:08:00] therapy. I. For some women, restoring progesterone can help stabilize their mast cells.

Those are the cells that dump all the histamine and that reduces the histamine driven symptoms. So if you're a candidate for progesterone, I would definitely recommend talking to your doctor about that. I have other episodes about progesterone and using bioidentical progesterone. I'll link those in the show notes.

That'll [email protected].

Now if histamine gets dysregulated in the brain, it can cause symptoms like feeling agitated, irritable, angry. You are gonna have anxiety racing thoughts. Sometimes people feel like they're, they have sensory overwhelm.

And we can see heightened symptoms surrounding A DHD, autism and TMDD as well. PMDD is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Now there's one tip I share with my patients that can help calm this, but before I get to that, let me explain what is histamine doing in the brain and what you should know about it. [00:09:00] So histamine's actually a neurotransmitter in the brain and it regulates things like wakefulness.

Attention, stress signaling. It's not all bad. Okay? Even though when you have too much of it, it definitely feels bad, but it's not all bad. So when we have histamine dysregulation that can make our brain feel hyper alert or wired, we can have difficulty sleeping.

This may be especially relevant for those with A DHD, autism PMDD, and perhaps other neurodevelopmental conditions

And that's because the brain sensitivity to inflammation signaling may already be higher. Okay, so if you're struggling with histamine in the brain, we wanna calm that histamine signaling by supporting your nervous system regulation and your sleep signaling Sleep is super, super important here. So this is where we may leverage supplements, Mike Magnesium glycinate. Vitamin C. That's really [00:10:00] excellent at supporting histamine, making sure we have calming routines that reduce cortisol spikes, so getting yourself a good bedtime routine.

Maybe you're journaling, maybe you're writing things that help you regulate your nervous system. I'd also mention that Saffron has been shown to help with histamine, P-M-D-D-A-D-H-D, and I will link in the show notes the saffron that I recommend. I really wanna emphasize that when you calm your nervous system, histamine signaling can improve, but you can't just calm your nervous system without addressing why you have so much histamine and why you're not clearing your histamine.

That's why in this episode, I'm giving you lots of tips. I'm gonna give you that three step guide at the end, but before I do that, I want to talk about endometriosis and histamine.

So I'm curious, did you know that endometriosis lesions contain large numbers of mast cells, the same immune cells that [00:11:00] release histamine? Now I want to give you an endometriosis specific tip when it comes to histamine, but the first thing, there's something really important to understand and that is histamine can directly stimulate nerve growth factor or NGF nerve growth factor increases nerve sensitivity, pain signaling inflammation.

All of the things that can heighten endometriosis, pain, and feeling like it's debilitating. 'cause it really can be. So that means that histamine may contribute to the pain amplification seen in endometriosis. But if you remember in other episodes I've told you endometriosis can also produce its own estrogen.

So I call these lesions little menacing lesions. But um, you know, really we should all aspire to be more like an endometriosis lesion because they'll literally do anything to survive and there's. Super, super [00:12:00] adaptive and smart. Um, I still excised mine, um, and still hate them, but still I respect respect for the survival strategy.

So endometriosis lesions contain histamine, histamine propagates estrogen production. Estrogen leads to the release of more histamine, and that can make endometriosis pain so much worse.

 So women with endometriosis who also have histamine issues, they can have pelvic inflammation, uh, inflammation throughout their whole body. Increased pain sensitivity that is rooted in the histamine. And I hate to break it to you, but. Things like Lupron and Alisa do nothing to address the histamine.

So reducing histamine load may help with inflammatory signaling in these cases. So helpful strategies include things like stabilizing mast cells with nutrients like quercetin, uh, maybe using progesterone therapy to stabilize mast cells. [00:13:00] Definitely supporting gut health and managing the estrogen histamine interaction.

So for everyone I see with endometriosis, we are using not only nutrition and lifestyle, but supplemental inputs to help with the clearance of estrogen. And that is because this is not just your ovaries making estrogen. This can also be lesions making estrogen. And so we, we want your estrogen around.

It's a good thing, but if we get too much of it, that's when we can start pushing histamine issues. I'll also say when patients are experiencing. Extreme symptoms, not just pain with endometriosis, but filling that menstrual flu and just filling overall really rundown and awful leading up to their period.

And that's lasting like a week. We may do a protocol where we're using H one H two blockers, so medications to affect histamine. You gotta run that by your [00:14:00] doctor. These medications are not without side effects and you don't wanna use them long term because long term they are associated with adverse outcomes.

One of those things being, it may affect the brain in a negative way 'cause we are messing with a neurotransmitter when we take these medications. But if we need to do that in the short term while we work on moving out our estrogen, we no longer need. And making sure that our gut is optimized, then that might be what someone has to do.

But we always have a plan to come off of that. And it's not just something that I'm like, you're just gonna do this, and if it works for you, just stay on it forever. 

I never want someone to stay on a medication for the rest of their life when we can come up with a plan and a strategy to be able to come off of that. Some medications you do need for the rest of your life, but if I'm recommending a medication and that's not something you need to survive for the rest of your life, I wanna plan in place of what are we gonna do to get you off of this, to optimize how your body's working.

By the way, if you are someone with endometriosis and you [00:15:00] need a strategy for managing and preventing endometriosis, pain flares, dr Brighten.com/endo flare, it'll be in the show notes. It's a free guide to help you manage that. 'cause I've been there and I made this guide based on my experience.

Now I do wanna acknowledge the antihistamine diet does work for some people. But histamine problems are rarely just about histamine foods. Most women are told things like wine, cheese, leftovers need to be avoided, but that's only addressing a small piece of the problem.

That can be really effective for people who are struggling with migraines that triggers a migraine. People who are struggling with conditions, they know those foods trigger them. Then removing them for a period of time may be helpful. But just like medications, we always wanna have a plan of how do we get back to a wide variety in your diet That also so you can eat leftovers because we shouldn't spend all day, every day in the [00:16:00] kitchen.

Now with histamine dysregulation, hormones, gut health, immune signaling, these are the things that really are at the crux of it that we need to be looking at. Here are the three steps you can start today. We talked about supporting estrogen metabolism. That's absolutely step one. We wanna have diversity of fiber cooked cruciferous vegetables, maybe having broccoli sprouts, healthy liver support, which looks like having a variety amino acids. Maybe eating things like dandelion root tea and burdock root in stews or soups.

The aim is that we want to make sure we're keeping estrogen at a healthy level, but not allowing it. To push that histamine. So that might also look like using things like dim calcium, deg, glucarate, and sulforaphane with myrosinase like I have in my balanced women's hormone support, because we want to positively modulate your estrogen levels.

And the cool thing [00:17:00] about dim, especially if you have endometriosis, is that it not only helps with estrogen metabolism, but it also helps with the aromatase enzyme. That endometriosis lesions are using to try to make more estrogen.

Step two is you need to support your microbiome because those gut bacteria influence both histamine breakdown and estrogen recycling. So they're super important in getting your histamine in check. We wanna get a variety of fiber in our diet. We've talked about that, but we want to ensure we're also getting a lot polyphenol, some green tea, herbs, pomegranates, berries, and other foods, because this can help improve your microbiome.

Step three is stabilizing the MA cells that like to dump histamine, so reducing stress and improving sleep. We've talked about those, but quercetin, which I mentioned before, that you can get in supplement form or by drinking nettle tea. Vitamin C [00:18:00] is also helpful in addressing histamine issues, as is supplementing the DAO enzyme that breaks down histamine.

Now listen, if this episode was helpful to you, I'd recommend checking out my episode on the Menstrual Flu. And I wanna remind you that histamine isn't the enemy, but when your hormones, your immune system, your gut fall out of balance. Histamine can amplify the entire system, and it's not enough to just pool histamine foods.

We have to be looking at the entire system. Once you understand the pattern of how these things go together, you can effectively stop chasing the random symptoms and start addressing the root cause of things. So for most women, that's going to be looking at estrogen metabolism, healthy estrogen levels, and what your gut microbiome is like, and addressing that.

In some instances, we may also need to bring in progesterone therapy and not progestin. But [00:19:00] progesterone bioidentical helps stabilize those mast cells and can help people get relief. For some women, they're using that the second half of their cycle, and then those who are already in late stage perimenopause or menopause, maybe using it their entire cycle.

It's all about what is best for you. As always, I appreciate you being here. I enjoy spending this time with you, and I will see you next time.