Histamine Intolerance and Zebras

Hello, again friends! As someone that has struggled with my own health challenges, I understand firsthand the importance of both education and support when it comes to wellness. It is my passion to help others learn more about their health and empower them with the tools and resources they need to live healthy, joy-filled lives. And part of that is understanding how to nourish your body with the right foods. Today, I want to talk about histamine intolerances and how they can affect your health.

If you suspect you have a histamine intolerance, it's essential to talk to a doctor to get a proper diagnosis. I suggest a functional medicine doctor, most primary care doctors don’t seem to have much experience with challenging diagnoses, or will just send you to specialist after specialist. I have MCAS or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (which is a subset of histamine intolerance) along with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. EDS is a hereditary connective tissue disorder and something I’ve been dealing with all my life but wasn’t diagnosed until 6 months ago. All of the weird symptoms, random pain, rashes, food sensitivities, chronic sinus issues, migraines from the time I was 9, being super heat sensitive, being like Gumby (for those that remember him) are all part of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. (Even mental health issues like anxiety and depression are symptoms, so now I’m thinking that may have been the underlying issue the entire time!) They call it the “zebra disease” because no two cases are alike, just like no two zebras have the same stripes. This is actually the first time I’ve opened up publicly about this, feel free to ask questions, I just ask that you please be kind.

What is Histamine Intolerance?

Histamine intolerance is a condition where your body can't break down histamine properly. Histamine is a chemical that's naturally found in some foods. It's also produced by the body when you have an allergic reaction or when you're fighting an infection. If you have a histamine intolerance, your body may not be able to break down the histamine properly. This can cause a range of symptoms, including:

• Headaches

• Hives

• Runny nose

• Digestive issues

• Fatigue

• Irritability

• Anxiety

Foods to Avoid

If you have a histamine intolerance, it's essential to avoid foods that are high in histamine or that can trigger the release of histamine. Here are some foods to avoid:

• Fermented foods: Fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kefir are high in histamine.

• Aged cheese: Aged cheese like cheddar, blue cheese, and parmesan are also high in histamine.

• Processed meats: Processed meats like salami, pepperoni, and hot dogs are high in histamine.

• Citrus fruits: Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons, and grapefruits can trigger the release of histamine.

• Tomatoes: Tomatoes can also trigger the release of histamine.

• Alcohol: Alcohol can trigger the release of histamine in the body.

Foods to Enjoy

While it's essential to avoid foods that are high in histamine or that can trigger the release of histamine, there are also many foods that are safe to eat. Here are some foods to enjoy:

• Fresh fruits and vegetables: Fresh fruits and vegetables are generally safe to eat, but be careful with avocado, spinach, and eggplant, as they can be high in histamine.

• Fresh meat and fish: Fresh meat and fish are generally safe to eat, but be careful with smoked or cured meats and fish, as they are high in histamine. *I personally don’t eat meat or fish but I wanted to include them in these lists*

• Gluten-free grains: Gluten-free grains like rice, quinoa, and buckwheat are generally safe to eat.

• Nuts and seeds: Nuts and seeds are generally safe to eat, but be careful with peanuts, cashews, and walnuts, as they can be high in histamine.

• Herbal teas: Herbal teas like chamomile and peppermint are generally safe to drink.

Histamine intolerance can be a challenging condition to manage, but with the right diet, it's possible to reduce symptoms and improve your quality of life. Remember to talk to your doctor if you suspect you have a histamine intolerance and to work with a qualified healthcare professional to develop a personalized nutrition plan. And always remember to be kind to yourself and to nourish your body with foods that make you feel your best.

Food Culture, an interview

I found this gem in my draft folder. I can’t remember why I never posted it. As we approach the one year mark of Covid 19, reading this, even though it was only a year and a half ago brought me a wave of nostalgia. So much has changed, there’s been so much loss. Way too much. I thought 2020 was going to be the year I started on a community compost project and planned to partner with schools to get Tower Gardens. Well, the pandemic had other plans, and like a lot of people my mental health has suffered. Loss is real, depression is real, anxiety is real. All of which can be debilitating at times. I’m grateful that I’ve made it though the last year.

Anyway, please enjoy this “little piece of nostalgia”,

October 2019:

Last month my daughter interviewed me for a school assignment. (Which was super fun) It really made me think about my “food culture” and what’s important to me. Here’s the interview, I later added a couple of stories….

What’s the most important part of your food culture?

Healthy eating has always been important to me. I really wanted to raise my kids vegetarian but my husband was a meat eater when we met. I quit eating meat when I was 15. Over the years he changed his view on thinking you couldn’t get enough protein without meat, thankfully now we have a mostly vegan household. 

How has your relationship with food changed, having grown up in the most highly processed food decades (70s and 80s)?

Both sets of my grandparents had gardens in the 70’s and my dad started juicing and shopping at health food stores, so I don’t think I was affected until I went to live with my mom. I remember the natural foods store in Mammoth, I got to have carob chips & banana chips for treats. My dad let me have mandarin lime soda and Have’a corn chips, while the other kids were eating twinkies and cokes. I remember wanting ‘Corn Pops’ cereal so badly, that I threw a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store. His compromise was puffed rice central with pure maple syrup and fresh raw goats milk. To a six year old that was “cruel and unusual punishment”. Haha!

Once I went to live with my mom things were quite different, especially after she got our first microwave. She still made a lot of things from scratch (for a while), we canned fruit & jam and she baked bread. But my mom started buying Lean Cuisines and other frozen stuff and a lot of processed foods. I remember Otter Pops being one of my favorite treats in the summer, I also loved canned frosting. Now I’d never let that stuff in my house. All the Artificial colors, flavors and preservatives.....  When my kids were little, it was a lot easier to make sure they were eating healthy but snack & lunch at school changed that some. They wanted “the good snacks” like everyone else had....they didn’t want to be the weird kid. So I started buying chips, fruit snacks and packaged drinks. Again, something I’d never do now. (I was right to begin with and now research supports it!)

Why did you want to start growing your own food?

I remember picking veggies from my grandparents gardens, and having fruit right off the tree and I wanted my kids to experience that too. I planted my first garden when I pregnant with my son back in 1996, it was fun but also a lot of work with a newborn so it’s not something that I kept up on. I did manage to plant a garden at most of the houses we’ve lived in even if they were very small, sometimes only tomatoes and zucchini. I liked the idea of having the kids help, I thought it would be fun and they’d be more likely to eat what they grew. We’ve also had fruit trees at a couple of our houses, we made jam from plums, lots of lemonade from our lemons. One year we had so many peaches that we froze them and used them for peach cobbler, peach salsa, peach smoothies. We also had tons of figs, I tried making fig bars and fig jam. After my kids all left the house, I needed another project, and love spending hours in my garden everyday now.

Beauty will Save the World

I wrote this on Good Friday and I’m not sure why it didn’t get posted here, so here it is now. Not a whole lot has changed here in So Cal, the last 10 days except that it feels like we’ve skipped over spring and gone straight to summer.

Beauty

Spring

Community

Hope

Celebration 

Those are the words I’d typically use to describe this time of year. Here in Southern California it’s been mostly cold and rainy the last 3 weeks. Between the rain and self quarantining it feels like spring has been cancelled. I told my mom the other day I was beginning to feel like I was in Narnia when it was always winter but never Christmas.

Dostoevsky said “beauty will save the world”.  

This week IQAir said that Los Angeles has the cleanest air in the world. What?! How is that possible??  Mother Nature, God, Beauty, the universe, a power greater than yourself...whatever you want to call it is repairing itself from the damage humanity has done to Earth. We have not been good stewards. I’ve seen memes saying “doesn’t it feel like Mother Nature has sent us all to our rooms?” And I as used to say to my kids “you know better, now go think about what you’ve done and don’t come out until you’re ready to behave”.

This pandemic has highlighted social inequality. It’s also shined a light on people who are often marginalized. The person that works at the gas station, the checker at the grocery store, the truck driver, the people that work in the fields to pick the food we buy, the person at the fast food restaurant, the driver and the delivery person. They are all now considered “essential workers”, just like first responders, doctors and nurses. Guess what?! They were always essential! They are all what’s keeping everything going right now. 

I keep seeing “we’re all in this together”, “you’re not alone” but sometimes it sure feels like it. This week is Passover, today is Good Friday and Ramadan starts in a couple of weeks, these are Holy, contemplative, reflective times. This morning I was reading along and read the word atonement. Then I saw this: “at-one-ment”. Which means to be at one with, my anxiety was replaced with a calm. This is where we are all supposed to be.

Going forward things need to be different. When we know different we can do different. We now know better. We’ve seen gratitude and respect shown to people we used to overlook. We’ve seeing people taking care of each other, we’ve been present with our loved ones. And we are all in this together because there is no difference, there is no space, we are at one we just didn’t realize it before. Even though it feels like winter, winter doesn’t last forever. Spring will come, we will emerge from our cocoons like this beautiful Monarch. There will be celebrations, hope is not lost, there will be beauty from ashes and like a Phoenix we will rise. 

Happy Passover ✡️ Happy Easter ✝️ Aslan is on the move 🦁 

Gratitude changes everything

I am grateful.

I am grateful for my health, for my husband, for my children. I’m grateful for my mom and that she’s still alive, I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for a business that I love. I’m grateful that I have a home, that I have a garden that produces organic food. I’m grateful for good friends. I’m grateful that I have found my voice and that I get to share my insights and experience.

Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness

We all know that gratitude is a good thing, but here’s something that might surprise you: gratitude is good for your health. The concept is simple; a healthy mind = a healthy body. Kindness lifts our spirits it can aid in fighting off, healing and sometimes even curing a plethora of illnesses that ail us. There are many ways to practice gratitude. Keep a gratitude journal (I use a section in the notes app on my phone) praying, meditating or simply telling someone what you’re grateful for.

What you focus on grows. Why not focus on what you’re grateful for?

“Your subconscious mind is subjective. It does not think or reason independently; it merely obeys the commands it receives from your conscious mind. Just as your conscious mind can be thought of as the gardener, planting seeds, your subconscious mind can be thought of as the garden, or fertile soil, in which the seeds germinate and grow. This is another reason why harnessing the power of positive thinking is important to the foundation of your entire thought process.

Your conscious mind commands and your subconscious mind obeys.

Your subconscious mind is an unquestioning servant that works day and night to make your behavior fit a pattern consistent with your emotionalized thoughts, hopes, and desires. Your subconscious mind grows either flowers or weeds in the garden of your life, whichever you plant by the mental equivalents you create.” Brian Tracy

My life isn’t perfect, whose is?! Sometimes you have to reduce things to the ridiculous, including finding things to be grateful for. When I’m in that place this is my mantra “I have what I need for today”. I can always come back to ‘I have a house to live in, food in the frig, clothes to wear, gas in the car and I am grateful’.

UC Berkeley wrote an article on how gratitude changes you and your brain, check it out, it’s excellent: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain (Go Bears! 💙 🐻 💛)

If you don’t have a gratitude practice, I challenge you to start one and see how you feel in 30 days, it takes 21 days to make a habit and this is an excellent habit to have.

My health journey

So, I’ve decided to get vulnerable and share some of my health journey. It starts when I was very young when my dad turned to juicing and raw food to deal with a health crisis. He had the first smoothie bar I’ve ever heard of inside of his photography shop. 📷 

At my mom’s house we had a completely different diet- “the standard American diet” SAD. So obviously that was very conflicting for me. At 14 I developed a very serious eating disorder. At 15 I went vegetarian to try to get some of my health back. 🌱

I started my own business in the health and skin care industry when I was 17. The most important thing I learned is “the body has the innate ability to heal and balance itself IF given the right raw materials. 🍒🥦🍊

My journey has taken many twists and turns but I’ve consistently looked for those “right raw materials”. I’ve been eating organic whenever possible even before organic was popular.

I have had a love/hate relationship with food for decades. I taught my kids what to eat but not necessarily how to eat.

I’ve been in recovery now for some time and have found some nutraceuticals that align with my values. I am so happy that I get to share these Whole Foods nutraceuticals with my clients and I truly believe they they are the “right raw materials”. I’m sleeping better and my anxiety has lessened. If my story resonates with you please message me. 💕🌱🍒

Start your day with lemon water

Starting your day with a cup of warm lemon water has tons of benefits.  The following information is taken from the website/book Hungry for Change.  I highly recommend the book and the documentary.

Lemon is an excellent and rich source of vitamin C, an essential nutrient that protects the body against immune system deficiencies
Lemons contain pectin fiber which is very beneficial for colon health and also serves as a powerful antibacterial.  It balances and maintains the pH levels in the body

• Having warm lemon juice early in the morning helps flush out toxins

• It aids digestion and encourages the production of bile

• It is also a great source citric acid, potassium, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium

• It helps prevent the growth and multiplication of pathogenic bacteria that cause infections and diseases

• It helps reducing pain and inflammation in joints and knees as it dissolves uric acid

• It helps cure the common cold

• The potassium content in lemon helps nourish brain and nerve cells

• It strengthens the liver by providing energy to the liver enzymes when they are too dilute

• It helps balance the calcium and oxygen levels in the liver In case of a heart burn, taking a glass of concentrated lemon juice can give relief

• It is of immense benefit to the skin and it prevents the formation of wrinkles and acne

•  It helps maintain the health of the eyes and helps fight against eye problems

• Aids in the production of digestive juices

• Lemon juice helps replenish body salts especially after a strenuous workout session

Packed with all the goodness, make it a point to begin your day with a glass of warm lemon juice. Its cleansing and healing effects will have positive effects on your health in the long run. However it is very important to note that lemon juice when comes directly in contact with the teeth, can ruin the enamel on the teeth. Hence, it is advised to consume it diluted and also rinse your mouth thoroughly after drinking lemon juice.

Finding exercise you love

When it comes to exercise, I am a big believer in doing something that you love, or at least develope a like for. I have always told my kids to find something they like otherwise you won’t do it. The same is true for us as adults. I was lucky enough to spend part of my childhood living in Mammoth Lakes, CA where I was exposed to a lot of physical activities.

Our school skied every Wednesday during the winter and spring. My dad worked at the mountain and I got to stay the whole day instead of just half because he was present. Mammoth also had an incredible gymnastics program, I got to do the balance beam, uneven bars etc. During the summer we hiked, swam did yoga and played tennis. I also lived part time at the beach with my mom, so bodysurfing, swimming, riding my bike were all big parts of being a kid. I had a pink bike at the beach and a red bike in Mammoth.

Once I moved to the Corona, Riverside area I was really into roller skating, I think every kid in junior high was and I rode my bike and swam as much as I could. During high school I was a cheerleader so I got to use a little of my gymnastics and during that time a football player introduced me to lifting weights. Yoga and lifting weights are the things that I favor in this season of life. I also walk and every once in a while run for a bit.

Erskien has always been into endurance sports along with gym workouts. When the kids were little he rode his bike….a lot! I think he has logged something like 750,000 miles in the span his 23 yr stint in high level cycling!!

Back in 2007 he took interest in ultra distance running that evolved into barefoot running. He also uses his bike to supplement and freshen up his legs as desired. He’s even taken a likening to an occasional yoga class with me.

Our kids didnt take to athletics nearly as early as I, but I have always encouraged them to find something they like to do. I think the only thing we probably all like to do is hike.

So, that was a lot of back story. If you are looking to start a journey of fitness, it doesn’t take much, you don’t have to join a gym. Get out and go for a short walk, maybe eventually it will become a run. There are tons of free yoga and other exercise videos online. Your city might offer classes, or maybe a YMCA. Sometimes I work out at home with weights and a resistance bands. As in my husbands case research or reach back on questions about natural running form, or anything cycling related. We both love sharing what we’ve learned along the way.

So, what ever you choose it all starts with 1 step. I encourage you to find something you love.