Eczema (esp. in kids) can be tough to get rid of and there is nothing more frustrating than when you feel you are doing everything right, yet it just keeps showing up!
Recently, we have been dealing with a big flare-up around my daughter’s mouth.
Her diet has been great. We take care of her gut. What is going on??
Then it occurred me. The majority of foods we have been eating lately were high in histamine levels. Was this the missing piece of the puzzle? Was she having a response to histamine intolerance?
Yes, your body does require histamine for certain functions (ex: digestion & wound healing) but it also requires balance. When too much histamine builds up, more than the body can break down effectively, it can lead to signs of histamine intolerance (which are similar to an allergic response).
When it comes to eczema, there’s more than histamine at play, but histamine overload adds fuel to the fire and ongoing elevated levels can sometimes be that missing puzzle piece causing eczema to stay active or re-flare up.
If histamine levels are a factor, you will notice improvement quickly, as symptoms usually subside when the immune system begins to function normally again.
In one week, with no creams or supplementation, just adjusting my daughter’s diet, the results were incredible.
Food isn’t always everything, but it’s a lot of things and its power to create havoc or symmetry within the body is fascinating.
If you have a little one struggling with eczema, it’s worth making some changes in their diet to see if it makes a difference.
This is what we did:
- Start with an elimination diet of high histamine foods or foods that trigger the release of histamine for 7 days (see chart below). See how your child’s skin reacts. If things calm down/clear up, it’s possible that particular food or a histamine overload is the issue.
If after the elimination diet for 7 days, if you see a noticeable difference its worth continuing to investigate.
Start adding back 1 food at a time. Give it 3 days before adding anything else new back into their diet and watch how your child responds. It might be possible that there was a hidden food sensitivity or allergy that you were unaware of that is triggering eczema.
If all food is reintroduced back without any issues, you could be dealing with a histamine load sensitivity.
In either case, you now have educated yourself on either a new food sensitivity to avoid or to limit high histamine foods on the daily to avoid system overload.
For us, it was a histamine overload and my daughter was just extra sensitive to histamine. I now am very cautious of making sure she isn’t getting too much each day and we also focus on antihistamine foods and ones that enhance histamine degradation and boost DAO (see chart).
Since this discovery, we have had eczema completely under control. Like I mentioned before, eczema is complex and there could be a lot of other issues going on ( usually triggered from the gut). I will write another post on the first step we took with her eczema ( healing her gut) but today I just wanted to share our experience with histamine.
In summary, If you have a child who suffers from allergies or skin conditions like eczema, usually limiting histamine is always going to be beneficial. It doesn’t mean it will clear it up, but reducing the load will help keep symptoms more at bay ( you arent putting gas on the fire). Including lots of natural antihistamine foods are also recommended and foods that contain vitamin C, quercetin and omega 3 also are known to help reduce allergy symptoms.
XO
B