Over the last few months, we have been posting on the many mast cell triggers.
One of those triggers is toxins.
Toxins impact both histamine clearance as well as act as a trigger. They are a double whammy! So, we thought we’d spend time over the next couple of months, talking about ways you can support detoxification.
Let’s Talk Liver
Your liver is your main organ of detoxification. It is a marvellous organ with a variety of functions, one of which is the filtering of blood. Every minute, your liver filters 1.5 litres of your blood. That’s about 6 cups per minute. Wow! As it does this, it removes metabolic waste and toxins from your blood.
Toxins that we breathe in, ingest, or absorb through our skin all must be metabolized and cleared by your liver. If you breathe, eat, or use body care products, you will have toxins entering your body.
Toxins have sadly become pervasive in our world. If these toxins are coming into your body faster than you can metabolize and clear them, you will have a toxic load.
Your liver uses the same pathways to clear histamine as it does to clear toxins. Think of it like this: the more you can reduce your toxic load, the more you free up your liver’s ability to clear histamine.
The HIHO Principle
The HIHO Principle is a term we have coined to help explain why you have histamine mediated symptoms.
You have histamine in your body from the food you eat, from microbes in your gut, and from mast cells (and other immune cells too). It gets broken down by two main enzymes: Diamine Oxidase (DAO) and Histamine N-methyl Transferase (HNMT).
If histamine going out is the same or greater than the histamine in your body, then you won’t have any symptoms.
If histamine going out is less than the histamine in your body, you will experience symptoms from the excess histamine.
Whether histamine is coming from the food you eat, from your gut microbes or from your mast cells, it all needs to eventually get cleared from your body by your liver. DAO should have done its job in the gut for histamine coming from food and microbes, but HNMT is primarily responsible when histamine is being released by mast cells, or when DAO is low.
Whether or not your mast cells are involved, histamine eventually needs to be metabolized by the liver so it can be cleared from your body.
Inside your liver, HNMT is the main enzyme responsible for the breakdown of histamine. But it is only one of the methylation enzymes. Methylation is a key process in clearing histamine from your body.
Next week we’ll take a closer look at the importance of healthy methylation, and what it means for your liver.
Struggling with histamine issues, and not sure where to start? We invite you to join us (for free!) over in our HH Online Community. It's the perfect starting point to gather information, and figure next steps. Bonus, there's a group chat there as well, where you can connect with others who are struggling with histamine and/or mast cell issues. You don't have to go it alone!
댓글