Kindest regards, and good health to you,

Ella x.

‘Hello Ella

from Sarah B’

Xmas Lebkuchen Low Histamine Recipe

Wishing all our visitors a relaxing Xmas period and the very best of health for 2012!

Kindest regards,

Ella x.

As we convert The Red Wine Headache Cookbook into ebook format, we’re incorporating some new features. Below are two documents; a list of the ‘INGREDIENTS USED’ throughout the RWHC and ‘VARIATIONS TABLES’ that includes suggestions how to make simple changes to our existing recipes to make them lower carb, increased raw and/or potentially gluten free.

Please note, that these documents are not intended to be definitive lists as individuals’ tolerances vary. The ingredients I use are all based on scientific testing by Dirk Budka www.histrelief.com.

Hope these help!

Ella x.

The Red Wine Headache Cookbook ‘INGREDIENTS USED’

The Red Wine Headache Cookbook ‘VARIATIONS TABLES’

Everyone is different but most HIT-folk follow a low histamine diet at least some (if not most/all!) of the time. Sometimes, people find it also helps if they add a little something else to the mix. We’d be very grateful if you would take a few minutes to complete our treatment survey.

As the ‘Living With HIT’ ebook will be released soon, this survey is only open for a month from today.

Many thanks, as always, for your support!

x.

To fill in this survey visit http://www.theredwineheadachecookbook.com/?p=319

First off the bat, strictly speaking we have to be careful about using the word “diagnosis.” In the UK, only a medically qualified doctor who’s registered with the General Medical Council can “diagnose” a medical condition, and other countries have similar rules. An alternative practitioner may offer interpretations of your symptoms & test results, and suggest guidance on ways to improve your health, but it is ultimately up to the individual to work out their own tolerance level and what works best for them. And of course, the success of any treatment depends on a person’s willingness to stick to it.

We used the term “diagnosis” in our survey simply because we felt it reflects how most people feel once their ailment has been identified, either by a medically qualified doctor or alternative practitioner. So as long as respondents personally felt they had a received one, it was good enough for us when analysing the results.

Does that make it clear? Good, lets move on…

In the search to understand your symptoms, it’s very important to maintain a good relationship with your doctor. Your doctor can be one of your most helpful allies, so try to keep them informed, and interested in your progress. Often, doctors are experienced at dealing with ‘true’ allergies, but may have less understanding of Histamine Intolerance (HIT) because the condition is not yet well known.

So don’t rely too heavily on your doctor to have all the answers you need right away. This is a process in which you’ll both be learning. A technique I’ve used is to take a copy of this scientific study into both my doctor and dentist’s offices – http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/5/1185.full.pdf+html and I’ve found that quite often my health providers have been rather grateful to receive it.

Extract – “The diagnosis of allergy using using the skin-prick test for food allergens or determination of specific IgE should be carried out to exclude food allergy. The diagnosis of allergy usually proves to be negative because histamine intolerance is a pseudoallergy.
…
In a patient with clinical suspicion of histamine intolerance (ie, ≥2 typical symptoms), improvement of symptoms by histamine-free diet or antihistamines, DAO may be determined in serum (123) or tissue biopsy (32). Several radioextraction assays (REA) have been developed for the determination of the enzymatic activity of DAOFurthermore, the total histamine degradation capacity can be measured (69). Plasma activity of DAO, which generally is relatively low, may be increased by the liberation of tissue-bound DAO through an injection of heparin (127-132), which was the main method used before the development of more sensitive assays. Serum DAO concentrations showed no significant daily variations and no significant sex differences (97). In patients with a DAO activity Histamine intolerance is presumably highly likely in patients with DAO activity <3 U/mL, likely (but less likely) in patients with DAO activity <10 U/mL, and improbable in patients with DAO activity ≥10 U/mL (18, 131).
…
Conversely, in some patients with a clear clinical picture of histamine intolerance, normal DAO activities have been observed, so that an additional determination of histamine concentrations and interpretation of laboratory data in view of the clinic seem advisable. Histamine can be measured in plasma or in urine, as can its degradation product N-methylhistamine (53, 132).”

In the UK, your doctor may refer you to a specialist Allergies Consultant at an NHS hospital for skin-prick testing. If you have HIT, these tests will probably come back negative, indicating no ‘true’ allergy, and the hospital might discharge you. Don’t be frustrated by this: You can learn as much from a negative test result as you can from a positive. That negative result suggests that you may be right to suspect HIT. Sometimes a large response to the histamine control can also be a good indicator.

HIT is associated with having low levels of Diaminoxidase (DAO), Monoamineoxidase-b (MAO-b) and N-methyltransferase (HNMT,) special enzymes that make histamine safe in the gut. Sometimes an HIT sufferer may also have Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), which can result in an imbalance in the gut flora. SIBO can make matters worse because some of those bacteria produce more histamine than your body can break down by itself.

Your levels of DAO, MAO-b and HNMT can be determined with a blood test. In some countries, such as Germany and Austria, such tests may be available through the local public health service. Unfortunately at this time, they aren’t available on the NHS in the UK, although some British HIT sufferers are campaigning to address this.

Interestingly, 60 % of the respondents to our survey had experienced symptoms for over 5 years before seeking help and almost half of responders waited another 3 years to receive a ‘diagnosis’. And out of the 60 % who’d been ill more than 5 years, a quarter of them are still not ‘diagnosed’. And while we’re in number-crunching mode, over half of all respondents reported spending over £1000, while 35 % have spent over £5000.

Please do not be discouraged however, even over the last couple of years, Histamine Intolerance as a condition is becoming more and more recognised.

So for now, with your doctor’s agreement, the alternative is to ‘go private,’ and pay to have your blood sample analysed by a commercial laboratory. One option is to search the Internet (or see our links page) for “The Doctor’s Laboratory,” or “Purehealth Clinic.” They both offer mail-order DAO tests: You have the blood drawn and then post them the sample to them the same day (usually early on in the week to avoid delay at weekends.)

As always, it’s worth keeping your NHS doctor informed and on your side. You might even be able to get your blood drawn for free by their practice nurse if you ask them in advance (some private hospitals also offer phlebotomy services, which will usually cost between £10 and £30.) And again, once you’ve received your test results, don’t forget to give your doctor a copy to add to your medical records.

SIBO can be identified using a Hydrogen Breath Test, which is available through some private practitioners, and on the NHS. However, in the NHS it is a likely to be a gastroenterologists’ test, rather than allergists’. (Ask your doctor if this is the case for your local health authority, so that you can be referred to the correct department.)

Dirk Budka based at the “Integrated Medical Centre” also tests for SIBO, plus histamine and enzyme levels, amongst others. Unlike postal tests, he can give detailed interpretations of the test results, and suggest methods to begin dealing with your condition. In addition, respondents also told us that Dr Adrian Morris at the “Surrey Allergy Clinic” helped them identify HIT. (See our links page)

Hopefully over time, as the condition becomes better recognised, tests and treatment will become much easier to access. If you know of any other practitioners that you feel have helped you, please use the comments box below to let us know.

Of course, opting for private testing inevitably means having to spend some money, and these tests aren’t usually covered by private medical insurance policies. Expect to spend in the region of fifty to three hundred pounds in the first instance, depending on the route you choose. But once I had the first set of results, I personally found that doors began to open for me – such as a referral to an NHS dietician who checked my low histamine diet and confirmed that it was nutritionally balanced.

And as one respondent put it “Getting everyone on the same page and speaking to one another has got excellent results for me medically.”

Should any book orders still come through we’ll have alerts set up to make sure these are still despatched. However, if you have any queries that need a response, please wait to send these until after 1 Aug. Many thanks in advance!

On a side note, this past week I also received the news I’d been waiting for about my heart symptoms. You may recall I consider these “my last 10 % hurdle” to get well. I know a lot of people ask how I’m doing and I’m pleased to say that many of the symptoms appear to be largely unrelated to histamine after all! As it turns out, my heart function had fallen to only 40 % following several years of misdiagnosis and of course the stress that accompanies all that (many of you will empathise with the delay!)

However, now I am starting to take delivery of several new treatments that we are very optimistic will make all the difference – in conjunction with lots of rest and following my low-histamine diet of course! It’ll take a few months but I’ll keep you posted!

It just goes to show that for many of us there could be other factors at play that also need addressing and we should never give up!

Kindest regards,

Ella x.

Today however, we’ve uploaded a new questionnaire, which this time asks for insight into which symptoms you experience and how much relief you get from those symptoms by following a low-histamine diet. Again, we would be very grateful if our visitors would take the time to help us build a general picture of which symptoms are affecting your lives and ways that you have found to alleviate them.

For details about how we propose to use the information submitted, please see our ‘The Small Print’ page.

Kindest regards, and good luck!

Nb. To try to make this questionnaire reasonably quick and simple to complete we have grouped some symptoms together. If you find that any particular symptoms trouble you the most, please tell us what they are in the text box below. Many thanks! x.

To fill in this survey visit http://www.theredwineheadachecookbook.com/?p=283

As part of my next book ‘Living With HIT – A Patient’s Guide’ I asked a few people to send me their favourite inspirational quotes – those words of wisdom that reach them the most when times are hard.

A good friend very kindly collected together several of those quotes from various sources on-line. I was so touched by their gesture that I thought it would be great to share them with you (Nb. I don’t know of, or have, the copyright for these images but will gladly take them down if requested to do so by their owners.)

If you have any quotes that you personally find comfort and inspiration from, please do let me know about them. As always, it will be fabulous to hear from you!

x.

InspirationalQuotes sent to me by a friend