Have you ever wondered why some people react to certain food or environmental triggers differently? This episode seeks to demystify the enigma of histamine intolerance.
We are joined by the knowledgeable naturopath Carolyn Ledowsky , who shares her in-depth understanding of the role of genetics in histamine intolerance.
In this episode, we:
Get ready to dive into the intricacies of histamine intolerance and broaden your understanding.
About Carolyn
Carolyn Ledowsky is the founder of MTHFR Support Australia. She is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, where she is investigating methyl folate vs folic acid in women with recurrent miscarriage.
She is a Health Scientist, Researcher, naturopath, herbalist and nutritionist who has a Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) Honours, Bachelor of Herbal Medicine, Bachelor of Naturopathy, Advanced Diploma of Naturopathy and Diploma of Nutrition and a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University. She has also studied courses in genetics at Duke University (Genetics and Evolution) and The University of Maryland (Genes and the Human Condition – from Behaviour to Biotechnology) .
The secret to successfully unravelling chronic health conditions is the ability to understand a person’s genetic susceptibility and overlying environmental contributors that shift the biochemistry significantly away from the person’s ability to cope with an infection, exposure, bacteria or assault of some type.
Her practice specialises in genetic susceptibility and how this contributes to biochemical dysfunction and chronic health conditions.
Connect with Carolyn
Website: MTHFR Support Australia
Shownotes and references are available on your local Designs for Health website
www.designsforhealth.com.au
Register as a Designs for Health Practitioner and discover quality practitioner-only supplements at www.designsforhealth.com.au
Follow us on Socials
Instagram: Designsforhealthaus
Facebook: Designsforhealthaus
DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health
Have you ever wondered why some people react to certain food or environmental triggers differently? This episode seeks to demystify the enigma of histamine intolerance.
We are joined by the knowledgeable naturopath Carolyn Ledowsky , who shares her in-depth understanding of the role of genetics in histamine intolerance.
In this episode, we:
Get ready to dive into the intricacies of histamine intolerance and broaden your understanding.
About Carolyn
Carolyn Ledowsky is the founder of MTHFR Support Australia. She is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, where she is investigating methyl folate vs folic acid in women with recurrent miscarriage.
She is a Health Scientist, Researcher, naturopath, herbalist and nutritionist who has a Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) Honours, Bachelor of Herbal Medicine, Bachelor of Naturopathy, Advanced Diploma of Naturopathy and Diploma of Nutrition and a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University. She has also studied courses in genetics at Duke University (Genetics and Evolution) and The University of Maryland (Genes and the Human Condition – from Behaviour to Biotechnology) .
The secret to successfully unravelling chronic health conditions is the ability to understand a person’s genetic susceptibility and overlying environmental contributors that shift the biochemistry significantly away from the person’s ability to cope with an infection, exposure, bacteria or assault of some type.
Her practice specialises in genetic susceptibility and how this contributes to biochemical dysfunction and chronic health conditions.
Connect with Carolyn
Website: MTHFR Support Australia
Shownotes and references are available on your local Designs for Health website
www.designsforhealth.com.au
Register as a Designs for Health Practitioner and discover quality practitioner-only supplements at www.designsforhealth.com.au
Follow us on Socials
Instagram: Designsforhealthaus
Facebook: Designsforhealthaus
DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health
This is Wellness by Designs, and I'm your host, andrew Whitfield Cook. Joining us today is Carolyn Ladowski, a naturopath who specialises in methylation and genetic issues, and today we'll be discussing histamine, genetics and drivers. Welcome to Wellness by Designs, carolyn. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm well, Andrew. Thanks very much for having me today.
Speaker 1:An absolute pleasure. I should say again how many times have you been on? Three or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe more than that now.
Speaker 1:Maybe more, and certainly on my channel as well. So, carolyn, first of all, histamine intolerance. It seems to be becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Why? Why is that? What is it that we're noticing now that we didn't notice before?
Speaker 2:Well, look, I have a few theories on it, and I think the number one is that we have just been inundated with wet and rain.
Speaker 2:For the last three or four years, people have been flooded. Typically, the Eastern Seaboard of Australia is very much damp, wet, and even if we don't have mold in our house, just having dust and that damp condition can easily cause mold, so I think we're exposed to a lot more of it. I also think that, from a folic acid point of view, we have one of the highest rates of allergies in the world, and I think if you look at how you break down histamine, you need methylation to work and SAME is the cofactor to one of the key enzymes that degrade histamine. And so if we've got too much folic acid in the system or we've got a block in our methylation, our uptake of methylfolate, you're going to have more histamine and less being degraded. So I think that's probably one of the key triggers is this whole folic acid thing that is affecting potentially those people with blocks and exposure to mold, because they're not actually getting methylfolate to make SAME to then degrade the histamine.
Speaker 1:Right. If we go right back, though, take it right back to why is our immune system priming to IgE reactions? Is it because you know we've lost the old friends? We don't you know helmets or everything, and kill worms and kill bugs and kill parasites? Even blastocystis hominis, by many, is viewed as an obligate pathogen rather than a facultative pathogen, and so, rather than correcting the terrain, we kill the bug. So these bugs are bad, you know. But is that, if we go back, is that the real reason that we've lost our breadth of triggers? That balances out immune triggers, and so our immune system is tending to fire at will, if you like.
Speaker 2:Look, I think we can even go back further, and you know all these. The health of a child is determined by preconception and I think there's a lot in terms of the way that our children and we now know it can be up to four generations are affected by what people do preconceptionally. So I think there's an element there. But I also think we've lost our biodiversity. We a lot of you know the processed foods that we're having mean that we don't have the leafy green veggies we do we need. We haven't got an array of foods and because it's highly processed, what we're eating is actually not helping our gut function. So I think there's, and I think there's also the slip, slop, slap. We're not getting exposure to sunlight. It hardly ever. That affects our immune system.
Speaker 2:I think there's so many aspects of this. It's not just one thing, but it's a whole range of things and I definitely think the gut. You know diversity and the array of foods we're eating, the sort of foods we're eating, the, you know very few people, you know going back and cooking their own meals anymore. They just don't have the time and in, so it's, they're eating processed food, lots of folic acid again, you know, when you look at the amount of foods, the amount of folic acid that some people are getting just by eating processed foods, it's well, well, well above. I mean thousands of milligrams sometimes are above what we were initially supposed to get. So I think I think you've got an element of what you're talking about is right, but I think there's so much more to it. Our immune systems, don't forget, rely on methylation as well.
Speaker 1:Right, ok, so genetic snips, any relevant ones that we're talking about here with regards to histamine intolerance oh yes, it's my favourite.
Speaker 2:Actually, you have Dowl in the gut, diaminoxidase, and that, unfortunately, is reduced in inflammation. So even if you don't have a genetic polymorphism, I think there's potential issues there because you can downregulate that enzyme just by having inflammatory anything inflammatory LPS, anything yeast will downregulate it. You've also got the systemic breakdown of histamine, which relies on HNMT, histamine N-methyltransphrase, and then you've got the monoamine oxidases or the mouse A and B that also degrade it further. So if someone has a male A-TT polymorphism where it's slow, then your ability to break down histamine. And it's really interesting when you dive into the genetics, those people that you think, well, this is really weird, they don't have exposure to mold, but why are they the ones that go out into the wind this time of the year and they're absolutely blown away with allergies?
Speaker 2:And if you look at their histamine genes, they almost always have a homozygous male A or HNMT and sometimes both. And then you have the further, the aldehyde dehydrogenase genes that get rid of the metabolite that male is meant to produce, which is that MN-methylimidazole acetylaldehyde. So it's basically mopping up the aldehydes and so if you've got a yeast process going on where there's excess aldehydes, then you can be creating ancillary problems because that aldehyde dehydrogenase gene can really get affected and gets oversaturated. And we see that a lot in the Asian population because they have a very high predominance of this aldehyde dehydrogenase gene. That's why they don't deal with alcohol. And we were doing a case study just this week actually, with a young kid who had all these histamine-based genes and he had a yeast problem and his practitioner asked his mother to do a breathalyzer test on him and he blew over and he of course doesn't have any alcohol, so it was really so he had auto fermentation syndrome.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And so what? We prescribed some dihydramyracetan, which is really good at mopping up those aldehydes and that yeast, that alcohol they actually give that to people who have alcohol intoxication, but that DHM is actually really good at mopping that up. And then you've obviously got to deal with the histamine issue and the mold issue concurrently. So it'll be interesting to see how amazing that a kid can blow over the limit for the alcohol with no alcohol just because of his histamine genes. And the yeast, obviously yeast exposure.
Speaker 1:So how big a problem is this now, like how many patients of yours would present with histamine intolerance, as opposed to, say, other conditions that you see?
Speaker 2:80 per cent. Wow, at the first initial appointment, 80 per cent of our patients will be put on a low histamine diet. Now it doesn't mean that all of them have chronically bad histamine genes. It can often be environmental, as we said, the mold, the yeast, lime, so many other can raise that histamine Because essentially even COVID. Because what we know is that if you've also got inflammatory cytokine genes that are upregulated, like your interleukin 6, tnfl for CRP, that will raise histamine levels.
Speaker 2:If you have excess estrogen levels in your body, that will raise histamine levels because histamine is triggered by estrogens. So you've got many environmental factors that may be raising the histamine level. But then the people that really suffer are the people that have the degradation issues because of their genetics. But that's why so many people? Because we've got estrogen dominance in men and women, we've got the exposure to mold and post COVID so many people have inflammation and elevated interleukin 6 levels and what we're now finding in actual fact is that the homozygous interleukin 6. People almost always have a histamine problem. So there's a very high correlation between those two different genetics needs.
Speaker 1:Right. So it certainly doesn't trivialize histamine intolerance in and of itself, but it can mean, certainly, that it's not the only thing that you should be directing therapy towards, that you should be looking for other causative agents, the anti-seeders, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And one of the major triggers is inflammation. Right, okay so we've really got to be working on that and finding out what's driving that inflammation, and it could be gut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So here we go back again to the old naturopathic axiom about you know that the gut I don't necessarily agree to it being the cause of all illness, but certainly a part of the therapy. So all right. So do we have any I mean, do I say the word questionnaires that we could give practitioners, patients, to learn from, the say look at these issues.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do. We have a histamine questionnaire that we give our PrAC members to use in their clinic to identify people that might be struggling with a histamine issue. Yeah, because it is varied and if we look at those old charts you know that showed where and how histamine spikes. The knock on effect is not only the direct histamine issues, which is the redness, swelling and inflammation really of any smooth muscle in the body, but it's yes, it's the sneezing, it's the asthma, it's the allergies, but it's also the period pain, it's the immune dysregulation, it's the mast cell activation, it's the neurological inflammation. And it's not uncommon for us to pick up the histamine problem purely because a woman has premenstrually such significant anxiety and as soon as you address the estrogen and the histamine it goes, goes, disappears, doesn't come back, even the premenstrual pain and inflammation. It shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1:One of the Interesting points I picked up from his name is Professor Theo Theo Herides Interesting name, but I love the way that he methodically goes through and backtracks and said no before jumping ahead to this conclusion. We've got a test, that sort of thing. It's kind of like you're on wine. But what I'm interested in is with these people with histamine intolerance. Do they always, or significantly? Are they always or significantly associated with allergic type disorders as well as the presenting symptoms Like, for instance, neuro atypical kids? No, so this is what I find interesting. If it's mass selectivation syndrome, why are we not getting that degranulation issue?
Speaker 2:I think part of the problem is that, because it's such an integral trigger for anxiety and glutamate issues, a lot of the kids and the behavioral issues is because the histamine is triggering something else, and so if you're looking at these kids, it's often so. What often goes hand in hand with the histamine issues is the oxalate issues, because if you've got a yeast or a mole problem, the very production of those yeasts, they're producing oxalic acid. An oxalic acid then can often with these kids with autism and ADD, adhd, they cause a lot of pain and a lot of the behavioral issues that you see, where it's banging your head against the wall and rubbing their tummies against tables and sore ears and everything is because these oxalic acid crystals are forming and they can form in the ear, they form in the gut, they can form in the bladder. You get a lot of urinary irritation and unfortunately that comes hand in hand with the histamine inflammation and the histamine response, because they're creating inflammation in itself.
Speaker 2:And because you've got the yeast and mold, you've got the immune response, the inflammatory response, the histamine response. But it can just be anxiety that we see with histamine, it doesn't have to be allergy at all. And then often you see these kids having really significant effects to Wi-Fi. Because we find that a lot of these kids with mold exposure, inflammation, histamine, mast cell react significantly to Wi-Fi. And I had a patient of mine who has had three little boys and she said to me there's nothing we can do for these kids. We've had to take them out of school. Their behavioral issues are just out of control.
Speaker 2:And I said I really think you've got a problem with mold and histamine. Have you tried turning Wi-Fi off at night? And she did. But she realized that they were within 500 meters of us. I said are there any towers that you can see? And there was a tower within 500 meters of the home. So what she found is, if she shut her kids in her dressing room and made them sleep there in the nighttime on mattresses on the floor, completely surrounded and protected from the Wi-Fi, their behavior was brilliant. As soon as she took them out and exposed them to that 500 meter radius of that cell tower. Their behavior went off the charts. So I think very much we've got to consider that the behavioral side we really do need. That's an alarm bell for me for histamine, mold and mast cell activation.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what?
Speaker 2:other, and they have no allergy symptoms at all.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, what other environmental drivers are important to be aware of? So like, for instance, forever Chemicals. I love that, the way that we call this now Forever Chemicals it's a lovely name.
Speaker 2:It is a lovely name, isn't it? Well, part of the problem is that they deposit in fat tissue and they're going to be there for years and if you have say something that is affecting your methylation, it's going to then affect your detoxification capacity. And the less you detox these, the more you're going to have liver issues. And the big thing about these molds and the mold exposures and some of these chemicals, and particularly that are eliminated through the glucuronidation pathway that's the pathway that the mold jams up. So mold will jam up the glucuronidation pathway because that's the pathway that clears mold. So what we often find is that you've got the double whammy, because they have all the endocrine disrupting hormones and chemicals that are they have to be cleared through glucuronidation, but they can't be because the mold is jamming up the glucuronidation pathway, so you actually find they get more toxic. So these so-called Forever chemicals and all these things that are sitting in the body, they're not being eliminated because, in actual fact, the glucuronidation pathway is probably more important than the glutathionation pathway.
Speaker 1:Oh really In terms of getting rid of everyday chemicals, yes, Ah, okay, I thought that, like, glucuronidation was the premium one and then everything else flowed Well, we think that to a lesser degree after that.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, no, in actual fact. I mean, I'm not saying glutathionation isn't important, but we've got. You know, when you look at phase two and how you get rid of it, most of the chemicals are glucuronidation, whereas you also have glycination, you've got taurine, you've got methylation, you've got sulfation, and sulfation is hugely affected by a variety of different things, particularly oxalates, because as oxalates come in, sulfur goes out, and so if you've got an oxalate problem and a mole problem, you've got a sulfation problem.
Speaker 1:Right, so okay. So forgive me, carol, I'm just trying to catch up here with my biochemistry. And so with glucuronidation, we can support that pathway. With calcium deglucorate, right, yes. With sulfation, do you support that pathway? With MSM, do you support it? With thiols from garlic and things like that? Nac, yes, how?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I did a presentation on NAC at the end of last year and it really opened my mind to the power of NAC for that whole sulfation. And what we found in clinic is that you're actually better to start with NAC, I think, than you are to ever go in with glucuronidation. And everybody says yeah, yeah, but you can't do that because it slows down sod.
Speaker 2:But it does slow down sod, but it does it for a reason because it takes the pressure off glutathioneation by slowing the sod down, because when you've got an upregulated superoxide dismutase, when you do an inflammation or LPS or anything like that, you're creating more hydrogen peroxide and that is where the glutathione peroxidases have to get rid of it and catalase. So if you can't do that, you're putting a lot more pressure on your elimination pathway. And this is where NAC is so helpful, because it's the cysteine that can then get diverted to support sulfation. It's. I think it's really good, particularly with the sulfation, for our hormones and our serotonin. It's also really nice and calming the brain. So NACEDL-Systein can be really good to reduce glutamate levels. It has so many ancillary things so we go in first with. We might use broccoli sprout powder or, you know, sulfurefane, as you said, if there's more of the estrogen type issue. We find that that's actually really good combo. But we tend to go in with the NAC because it just has so many ancillary support mechanisms than straight glutathione.
Speaker 1:What about the facility of just having? This is for very sick people chronic fatigue sufferers, people who have got extremely bad histamine intolerance. But just using glycine, have you ever used that? Just to take the heat off for a while?
Speaker 2:I tend not to because glycine if they've got oxalate issues, it can actually be converted to oxalates Right and it can also affect people who have glutamate issues. So as a general rule, I don't use glycine and that's one of the reasons why we tend to with people with histamine issues. We don't use a magnesium glycinate, we use a citrate.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because we've found that, particularly if you've got a histamine issues, most people do have an elevation in oxalates and therefore if we use glycine with the elevation in oxalates, we risk pushing it down that pathway.
Speaker 1:Right, gotcha Okay. So environmental issues we've got. Well, you mentioned hormone elaboration, so things like anything from menopause, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian disease, just so. They are looking at renaming it. So, finally, helen's outtaken. But where you've got these? I don't like the word estrogen dominance, but estrogen-driven conditions.
Speaker 2:Well, do you know what?
Speaker 2:I actually do think it's fair to say estrogen dominance, because when you're looking at why and how these people have the issues, in the first place, it is because normally they have an upregulated system of upregulated CYP1B1, and they have a compt homozygous and so their ability to detoxify estrogens is compromised.
Speaker 2:So they're pushing estrogens more to the fore hydroxy and because of methylation that becomes dangerous and they're not converting that to the methoxy. So I do think it is estrogen dominance, because what you typically see is excess estrogens not being cleared because of these deficient pathways and so as a result you will get that surge in histamine premenstrually and mid-cycle because and what you see in blood ratios. So if you did a four to 16 conversion and or looked at their Dutch test, you'll see that those ratios are out. But if you actually did blood levels of estrogen, you would see that the estrogen is above reference range. But as soon as you start clearing the estrogen and making it more methylated, less going down that four hydroxy, and you improve the getting rid of the quinones and everything else, you actually see that estrogen level in the blood come to better, within the reference range.
Speaker 2:And when you see that elevation, it is shifting your hormones so you're potentially getting less progesterone and less testosterone because of that estrogen not going down the right pathways and if your sulfation is affected then you're going to shunt more down your testosterone pathway than you are the estrogenic pathway as well. So that can really influence the PCOS side of it. Most of them do have sulfation issues, but you've got to ask where's the sulfation coming from? Where's the sulfation issue? Is it an oxalate issue which is pushing the sulfur out? Is it because they've got pathway issues with sulfation itself?
Speaker 2:Because, don't forget, paps, which is our universal sulfa donor, like Sammy, is our universal methyl donor. Paps is our universal sulfa donor and we make PAPS through our CBS or Cystothione beta synthase pathway and that's where we need our cysteine. So the cysteine comes out with the help of B6 and you convert it and make sure that you then take your sulfite to sulfate and that's how you make pap's and that's your real sulfation support. So I always think I look at that distinction between the DHEA and the DHEAS and if you've got a lower S, we know that we've really got to work on that sulfation pathway. If you've got a deficient CBS or you're deficient in B6 because you've got an oxalate problem, then you're going to have less sulfation. So you know it is all tied in and you're quite rightly asking the difficult questions, but it is. There's so many elements that need to be considered when you're looking at all of these. You know the hormones and the effects of these pathways Because they're all influenced, a by genetics or B by environmental influences or both.
Speaker 1:You can see everyone why you need to do Carolyn's course so that you understand all of this. Carolyn, can we get more into therapy? So, for instance, things like proteolytic enzymes, bromelains, quercetin, things like that, and there's a herb that just seems to have fallen out of favour, I don't know, and yet it's an actually it's tastes incredibly beautiful Perilla. Oh we use it a lot. Perilla the fruit sessions Right, we don't hear about it anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, we use it in our clinic every single day. And the distinction for us between perilla and quercetin I say quercetin now because I have so many American followers and they say quercetin, so I apologize, but we, if you are Compt++, we prefer to use perilla because perilla has no effect on the Compt enzyme, whereas quercetin slows it, and so if you've got someone who is slow Compt, you've got to be very careful with your dose of quercetin because it will cause anxiety. So we prefer we use a combo. But it really does depend on their genetics and we find that a low dose. You know quercetin is good for those with the Compt++. So when I say low dose, it might be one twice a day, but we would go to two, three times a day if someone has, say, a slow Compt or their Compt heterozygous with a significant histamine issue. Outside that, we use perilla For all those Compt++. We go hard on the perilla and we love it. We get capsules of it and we've also got it in a liquid, but then you have the problem with your liquids.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I wanted to discuss that in a tick, but the liquid is the alcohol. Yes. So before we go on to that, just other herbs. I know these are sort of termed as anti-allergic herbs in quotation marks, but things like Bicol Scolcap, our Bisula Bec, do we sorry, scutal area Bicolensis and our Bisula Bec, I should say so? Do we use those in histamine intolerance or is that more for Frank IGE reactions? You do Okay.
Speaker 2:We do. And scutal area Bicolensis is probably my favourite herb of all time, and I say that because it has the anti-histamine but it is also obviously calming for the nervous system. It can reduce the glutamate but it actually has an epigenetic effect on a lot of these enzymes and I pretty well never leave scutal area Bicolensis out. It is just such an amazing herb and every pathway can benefit from scutal area Bicolensis. It is honestly my favourite go-to herb. Our Bisula I would use if I had that. You know someone with that sort of allergic asmary type effect. But as a general rule our go-to is perilla, quercetin, bicol, scolcap.
Speaker 2:They're our three absolute favourites. And then we go with. We also use Dow enzyme, we use histamine-based, anti-histamine-based probiotics and we use. Iggs.
Speaker 1:Right, Okay. So I don't want to jump the gun because I definitely want to look in. Oh hell, let's go with alcohol, Okay, Alcoholic fluid extracts. Now I discussed this with another practitioner who's right into this, Rebecca Hughes, and she was saying that you know, these great herbs that we have at our disposals, it's sometimes not the herb that's the problem, but the actual extract that we're delivering them in. So take us through what the issues are and how we overcome those.
Speaker 2:Well, as we've been talking about it, alcohol raises histamine. It's one of the number one. Outside, say, tomatoes and chocolate. It's probably one area where most people will react if they've got a histamine problem. So the alcohol-based herbs are definitely a problem. We now use a lot of glycitrax for those patients and we'll do a glycitract formula that is low alcohol, which is the low histamine. We tend to use buckets and buckets of perilla and quercetin as a capsule and then we use homeopathic anti-histamines as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, you have to do everything when someone's in this really allergic response.
Speaker 2:you've got to throw everything at them and when you put them on a low histamine diet really within three weeks, if you go hard you've really seen huge improvement.
Speaker 1:Right, let's now talk about probiotics, because this is an area that a lot of Prachies get confused about. Take us through some of the good species and I don't know whether we wanted to go strain level but take us through some of the good species and some of the species of concern with histamine intolerance.
Speaker 2:Excuse me. Yes, now there's a product that we use overseas and the problem is that we can't get some of the strains that we really like. I'm just bringing up my list for you because I've done a fair bit of research on this. The gut in the gut, the one the histamine producing bacteria that we see have the biggest effect, are the Morganella, clebsiella, citrobacter, entrobacter and some of the Lactobacillus species. So whenever we see Morganella we know that we've got a histamine problem. Pretty well, 100%. If you see Morganella you know there's a histamine problem because it just produces so much histamine. But the ones that we really like are the Bifidoinfantas, the Lactobacillus gaserai, plantarum Rhamnosus and Salivaris. They're pretty well the best ones and we find that the spore probiotics we're using more and more now because it really helps reduce those endotoxins by about 42%.
Speaker 1:So we use this is the spore probiotic, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know the Are we allowed to say product name?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, I only know the product name. I can't tell you what strain it is, but it's a spore probiotic, and so what we've found is we use now a combination of a lot of probiotics with these people, so we could, I think I know which. Sorry to cut in, carolyn.
Speaker 1:I think I know which one you're talking about. It used to be called Lactobacillus spirogenes in the old days. Now it's called Bacillus coagulans.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, forgive me Continue.
Speaker 2:No, that's fine and what we're finding is that it's really we use, say, we might use an SB probiotic with a histamine reducing probiotic and a spore probiotic all on the same day, so we might use one at breakfast, one at lunch and one at dinner and we're finding that really using those high-dose probiotics are amazing because it just helpens to dampen down and we'll use a binder. Often we go in quite low with, you know, say, a charcoal, something really simple, to start once a day and then as they progress we'll go to the stronger binders. Because the problem is you go in with a really strong binder up front, you're pulling out a lot of stuff and a lot of these people, particularly with the mold, their detox pathways are jammed and they can't detox, so you don't want to detox. We have a pre-tox program where we get the bile moving. You know we make sure that we're sort of addressing things, really simply making sure that they're going to the toilet every day, putting the probiotics in, helping them with the Dow enzyme. All of these things are super helpful with the diet to dampen down that histamine response very quickly.
Speaker 2:My favorite anti-inflammatory at the moment, for a variety of different reasons, is resveratrol and I use that because it's a great neurological antioxidant. It helps up-regulate catalase, which is one of those enzymes that's helping rid the hydrogen peroxide and helping recycle with that glutathione peroxidase. It's just a brilliant anti-inflammatory. It's safe to use in preconception, it's safe to use in pregnancy, and so we're actually finding a lot of research studies that are saying even through pregnancy it's really helping with the anti-inflammatory effect and helping the placenta and the health of the placenta, and so a lot of women have histamine problems in pregnancy and so we use that as one of our strategies with the other things as well.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Is this. Can I ask all trans-resveratrol? What dose do we use? Have we got any data?
Speaker 2:We use a 99% trans-resveratrol at 500 milligrams once, sometimes twice or even three times a day.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, that's decent.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you've got to. You've got to go quite hard to get the reaction that you need because remember, epigenetically, when we want a nutrient or a vitamin or a mineral to have an effect on an enzyme, you have to sometimes use really big doses to have that effect.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because we're really trying to either up-regulate or down-regulate something and you've got to use quite high doses. So we go back to the research and we say what does the research says say that the optimal dose is to have an effect on this enzyme. So we don't use little doses, we use what the research tells us is an efficacious dose to get the effect we want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned something else that greatly interests me, and that was IgG. Take us through that, because it's now available in Australia and, like I am a still am a big proponent of colostrum, this is just taking it to a next level and I'm just so excited about this.
Speaker 2:I do. You know, I've never been a fan of colostrum because every patient I ever gave it to reacted, and that's what led me to this and I thought I really want to try this on my high histamine patients and we've been using it for years and it's one of my favorite go-tos.
Speaker 2:When someone has this histamine response and our, my little prescription for them at bedtime is the IgG with the probiotic and some magnesium and go to bed and we step up the dose of the immunoglobulins, because what we're finding is that it not only helps digestion and the mucosal system, but it has an amazing effect at reducing inflammatory cytokines, and that's what we want. We cannot reduce histamine unless we're reducing the inflammation, because the inflammation is always, always going to drive histamine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2:And so we've been getting really good effect.
Speaker 1:What about other things like these really innocuous herbs like Slippery Elm Apple Pectin? And I'm quizzical about glutamine. Are you worried about a glutamate issue there?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am, and I don't often use glutamine until I know I've got glutamate under control. If I can see that there's problems in glutamate or B6, I won't use glutamine. Not that I don't think it's fabulous for gut, but there's too many ancillary neurological issues that happen with the glutamine being converted and if they've got problems with GABA, chances are you're going to be shunting that glutamine into glutamate and we don't want that. So I tend not to use that. I tend not to use a lot of Apple Pectin unless we've got Helicovac to Pylori and I'm going in with a definitive protocol. But as a general rule, no, we dampen down the gut with the probiotics and the immunoglobulins. We get histamine out of the diet. We use the quesitin and the resveratrol to dampen down the inflammation and that's really our go-to protocol really. And, as I said, it's really important we do a pre-tox if they've got detox issues. So that will often be the way that we approach it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got to say Carol. And every time I chat with you, before I chat with you, I feel like, yep, I've got to handle on things, I've had some experience. And then, after I chat with you, I feel like an infant. I want to go back and learn it all again. No it's not that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It's not that You're not like that at all, Don't feel like that. It's just that it's new concepts and it's things that we're just expanding our horizons and we're just learning more and more. And I guess my message to all the Prachys listening to this ago oh my god, that's so complicated, Don't think of it like that. Just pick your area of expertise when do you feel most comfortable, and just delve into the genetics of your field. What is it that you really love to look at? And then just explore. And we've got a lot of resources on our website. Just play with it. And if you feel like, we've got a lot of practitioner programs that can help people. It is a bit of a minefield when you start, but it makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:What really spurred me on in the very beginning is that a doctor, a reporter, told me that MTH survival was just a fad and I said it's a biochemical pathway. How can it possibly be a fad? You know, yes, I think we've got a lot more environmental things that are affecting that, but genetics can't be a fad. You know, you either have a genetic predisposition to something and we don't look at genetics that cause disease states. We're looking at metabolic genetics. How do you make your B12? How do you make your folate? Can you use it? What's your detox pathway? Like these things help people every day sort of run the gauntlet of diseases, and it's it makes the difference how they bounce back versus how they don't.
Speaker 1:And this is where we see the benefit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Like. Even in in just clinical orthodoxy. Forget integrated medicine, just orthodox medicine. How can you bypass the the import of looking at single nucleotide polymorphisms in those people that are on triple therapy for helicobacter pylori when you know that there's a significant portion of their, of patients, that aren't going to get efficacious eradication of that organism and therefore they're going to have to go on to quadruple therapy or rescue therapy later on because their compliance is crap? What if you could prove that compliance? That's genes. There are some people who need double the dose of a meprosol. We know this. This isn't a fad, this is medicine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like and the exciting thing is that the research is evolving every day and they're looking at combinations of genes. I mean, that's what people are really interested in, because if you've and we've seen it with some of our patients you know you can pick up a few key snips that can be absolutely life changing if you metabolically fix the issue. And it means that they go forward and they don't. They might yes, they might get a little bit sick here and there, but they never fall in the the hole that they have been in before, and that's where it's really powerful.
Speaker 1:Caroline, I love your heart, I love your dedication not just to patients but for furthering the science for practitioners to be able to grasp a hold of things later on in their careers. So thank you so much for your work and thank you for joining us on Wellness by Designs today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoy these conversations. We have to do another one.
Speaker 1:It is my absolute delight, as always, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Remember you can catch up on whatever we can put up on the website. It's going to be huge. And also, of course, the other podcasts on the Designs for Health website. I'm Andrew with Feel Cook. This is Wellness by Designs.