Histamine and Restless Legs

A fellow sufferer pointed out to me a while ago that an allergy or intolerance to histamine can play a role in restless legs. I did not know that.

Apart from RLS, she herself also has to deal with irritable bowel syndrome. When she told about her complaints, she had been cutting gluten in her diet for some time.

I had never really delved into histamine and what food it is mainly in. I have now done so and I am paying attention to it in this blog.

What is histamine

Histamine is a substance that occurs in your body and is also found in food.

This substance aids in digestion. Histamine is also a neurotransmitter. It regulates your sleep rhythm and contributes to wound healing. Histamine is also important for your immune system in the defense against unwanted substances in your body.

Normally, your body is able to regulate the amount of histamine present on its own. The enzyme DAO takes care of that.

A disturbance in the production of this enzyme creates a surplus of histamine in your body. This stacking causes problems.

An excess of histamine can also be caused by inflammation. Examples of such an inflammatory reaction are allergies and various intestinal disorders such as celiac disease, Crohn’s disease and SIBO (too many bacteria in the intestines).

Finally, an excess of histamine-rich or histamine-releasing foods can be the cause of accumulation.

Histamine intolerance

A histamine intolerance occurs when there is too much histamine in your body.

If you have an intolerance, you are not so much allergic to histamine. However, your body cannot process the excess amount.

A temporary adjustment of your diet is often necessary. Stress is in many cases also a factor that needs attention.

It is advisable to first find out with a test what the exact underlying cause of a histamine intolerance is. You can then choose a specific approach based on the outcome.

For example, one option is to take histamine inhibitors. Your GP can prescribe it. Another option is to take a supplement that contains the enzyme DAO.

A third option is to get and keep the inflammatory activity in your body as low as possible through food.

An increased level of histamine can cause a whole range of quite different complaints. One of them is restless legs.

Restless legs

In the information I find about histamine, restless legs are always in an extensive list of possible complaints.

The exact interaction between histamine and restless legs is not entirely clear to me.

The link that seems most plausible to me is the one where you think of histamine as a neurotransmitter. I can imagine that with a surplus of histamine the balance in the entire hormone system is disrupted. The production of, for example, dopamine may also be negatively affected.

I don’t know if this reasoning of mine is correct. I would like to learn more about it.

A dietary adjustment in which histamine-rich and histamine-releasing products are avoided still seems quite complicated to me. I sometimes wonder what I still can eat.

Before I am really clear about this, I will leave such an adjustment aside for a while.