Is poor methylation the root cause of your symptoms?
As a nutritional therapist we research nutritional medicine connections as part of our client interventions.
There is a reason why some women find they have more symptoms of histamine in perimenopause and beyond. Histamine is known to exacerbate oestrogen, and oestrogen excerbates histamine.
Symptoms of high histamine do correlate with some symptoms of perimenopause:
- headaches/migraines
- itchy skin, urticaria
- insomnia
- IBS
- brain fog
- mood swings
- fatigue
In perimenopause, oestrogen and progesterone may become out of balance with one another, this may lead to higher relative oestrogen levels. Oestrogen increases histamine, and histamine increases oestrogen. Some women notice worse histamine symptoms on HRT, and that makes sense! How do we manage the symptoms?
Oestrogen and histamine share the same detox pathways, one of which is called methylation, a phase two reaction that occurs in the liver. Methylation may be impaired by 70% in 8-12% of the population due to a common genetic variant (2 copies – homozygous), and 65% population have 30% impaired methylation with 1 copy of the genetic variant.
(You can find out if you have the variant via a nutrigenomic test)
Therefore, supporting detoxification and clearance of both oestrogen and histamine is key.
Nutrients needed for methylation include B9 (folate), B12, B6, B2, magnesium, and zinc. A healthy balanced diet including greens such as kale, cabbage, broccol, lean meats and seafood, nuts, seeds and legumess.
The following factors may influence nutrient status and effective methylation process:
- poor digestion, or if you take acid blocking medication
- stress drains methylation capacity
- high sugar and enviromental toxins
- high alcohol and caffeine intake deplete the nutrients listed above
Have you experienced worsening histamine symptoms? Have you tried upping your dose of HRT only to find that your sleep worsens, or you start getting more headaches? Or does your IBS becomes more than annoying?
High oestrogen and high histamine may cause insomnia – hello 2 am club, and may also be at the root of heavy menstrual bleeding – hello flooding :((