This blog is a way of sharing the information and resources that have helped me to recover my son Roo from an Autism Spectrum Disorder. What I have learned is to view our symptoms as the results of underlying biological cause, which can be identified and healed. I say "our symptoms" because I also have a neuro-immune disorder called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

And, of course, I am not a doctor (although I have been known to impersonate one while doing imaginative play with my son)- this is just our story and information that has been helpful or interesting to us. I hope it is helpful and interesting to you!


Thursday, August 16, 2012

Resources for Eating Low-Histamine

I am often asked for support in following a low-histamine diet.  My family no longer follows this diet, as we are no longer sensitive to high histamine foods due to healing from the GAPS diet, but I have found several resources that I will share here.

Histame is an enzyme supplement containing diamine oxidase (DAO) which helps to break excess histamine down in the gut.  One or more capsules are taken with meals that contain high histamine foods to reduce symptoms.  I felt that this product was too expensive to use at every meal, but it did seem to help when we wanted a treat or it was a special occasion.  As a side note, I find the list of high-histamine foods on the site dubious as I have never seen many of those foods on any other list, and many are well-tolerated by histamine-sensitive people.

The Red Wine Headache Cookbook is now an ebook online and may be a good resource for some people.  I believe it was also put out in print at one point, so you may be able to find used copies.  The reason that I say it may be a good resource for some is that the recipes are not free of anything else aside from the author's list of low histamine foods, so there is gluten, dairy, sugar, high oxalate ingredients, etc.  The author also has a site with some recipes here.  Her list of foods is also a bit different than other lists that I've seen.  She claims it comes from a microbiologist in the UK named Dirk Budka but while I found some of his work I was not able to find the list of foods that she said was on his website here.  Some of the ideas on his site were interesting, but all in all I was not very impressed.  There were some interesting leads though and I am following up with this those.

I have also come across a blog called Low Amine Recipes which looks more promising.  This blog has a lot of creative recipes such as an onion pizza sauce and tamarind apricot chicken, and I appreciate that many recipes such as this green curry chicken recipe accommodate a wide variety of dietary needs and limitations.  So far this really is the best source that I have found for low histamine recipes.  And, thank you to a reader for bringing a new low histamine blog to my attention called The Low Histamine Chef.