Certain herbs and teas like green tea and stinging nettle tea contain antihistamines and may also help you reduce symptoms.
Natural antihistamines may help you control your seasonal allergies. Common ones are stinging nettle, vitamin C, quercetin, butterbur, bromelain, and probiotics. Some alternative practices—such as acupuncture, nasal irrigation, and exercise—may also help you manage symptoms.
If you feel stuffy or have postnasal drip from your allergies, sip more water, juice, or other nonalcoholic drinks. The extra liquid can thin the mucus in your nasal passages and give you some relief. Warm fluids like teas, broth, or soup have an added benefit: steam.
Drinking plenty of water every day is essential for all bodily functions, including the regulation of histamine levels. Water does aid in the removal of histamines from the body as more that 95% of excess histamines are removed from the body through the urine.
Is coffee an antihistamine? No, coffee is not an antihistamine, but it's generally considered to not be good for those with histamine intolerance.
Honey has been used for medicinal purposes around the world for thousands of years. It may help some people manage their allergy symptoms, but there isn't enough evidence to show that it can replace antihistamines and other standard allergy treatments.
Helps Fight Allergies: Red Apples
An apple a day keeps the allergist away. Red produce like apples contains a compound called quercetin. This compound is responsible for the red color and works as a natural antihistamine in your body.
Citrus fruit, such as oranges and lemons, may also be beneficial to allergy sufferers due to their high Vitamin C content. Some studies have shown that Vitamin C may also have a natural antihistamine effect, helping to break down histamines faster once they've been released in the body.
Pineapple, for one, boasts some impressive natural anti-histamine properties as a result of its bromelain content. The enzyme bromelain from pineapple has been found in some preliminary research to display anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties, which could literally help desensitise your airways to allergens.
High Histamine Foods
Fruit: Citrus fruits, strawberries, bananas, pineapple, pears. Vegetables: Eggplant, avocado, tomatoes, olives, beans. Dairy: Cheese, yogurt, processed cheese.
There is evidence that vitamin C acts as a natural antihistamine and antioxidant and that it can help decrease inflammation and swelling at the site of an allergic reaction.
Honey & Histamine Intolerance FAQ
Like most other sweeteners, honey isn't directly high in histamine, but the spikes in blood sugar that honey can cause can raise overall histamine levels in response to the inflammation.
1) Ginger - Although sticking to a low histamine diet can help to prevent histamine reactions in the first place (8,9), consuming antihistamine foods can actually help to calm a histamine reaction while it's happening. One of the strongest known antihistamine foods is ginger.
Chocolate itself is relatively low histamine; however, it may act as a histamine liberator. In other words, it triggers the release of the body's existing histamine. Chocolate also contains other biogenic amines, tyramine and phenylethylamine, which slow degradation of histamine.
– Ginger: As a powerful anti-inflammatory, ginger has the ability to reduce the release of endogenous histamine, a mechanism that occurs in allergies.
Degradation of histamine in gut. (A) Healthy individual. Normal concentration of histamine in food. Most histamine is inactivated by DAO and HNMT enzymes in gut, only a small amount of histamine passes to blood stream and does not cause histamine-mediated symptoms.
Allergists recommend long-acting, non-sedating antihistamines — ones that won't make you sleepy — for everyday use. Though you may know them by their brand names, the generic versions tackle the same problems: Cetirizine (Zyrtec®, Aller-Tec®, Wall-Zyr®). Fexofenadine (Allegra®, Aller-ease®, Aller-Fex®, Wal-Fex®).
Your body releases higher levels of histamine naturally at night as well as after meals so taking activated charcoal at night (about two hours after an early dinner) sweeps up excess histamine and can alleviate some, if not all of the symptoms associated with high histamine at night.