Originally Posted by janieg

Hi Atty,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I thought I had notifications turned on for this thread, but didn't.

I've really, really struggled with figuring what foods are my triggers...and figuring it out by trial and error.. But to answer your intermittent fasting question, I kind of do that by default. I've never been a breakfast person, so not eating for 16 hours isn't hard.

I try to avoid or minimize all of the following:

- overly salty food
- any aged, smoked or processed meat
- leftover meat
- canned food
- non-homecooked food

Basically, I try to eat fresh food (low in histamine) with minimal salt. That's what helps me most, and I have no explanation for why salt may be involved.

One thing that is really abnormal about me that I apparently just got used to is that I will often get congested after I eat something savory. This was huge clue that histamine was at play, but I completely missed it. Of course the ramp of neuro systems followed.

Because histamine is inflammatory, I've been a flaming ball of fire for 7 1/2 years. A sinister side effect of it (I think and hope) is that I've developed inflammatory nodules in my lungs that are growing. I've had a biopsy that came back "non-diagnostic," which means there was no obvious sign of cancer, but it still could be. (My dad died of lung cancer at 42 which is a complicating piece of data.) The thoracic surgeon wanted to go in right away and remove the largest of the nodules so a better pathology could be done on it, but I've begged for another 3 months so I can continue doing everything I can to reduce the inflammation and maybe get the nodules to start decreasing in size. I feel so much better, that I'm hoping that's happening. We'll find out when I have next CT scan.

Needless to say, I'm very motivated to watch what I eat, take ever anti-inflammatory supplement I can think of, exercise religiously (which I hadn't been doing), and also take digestive enzymes before I eat anything because maybe, just maybe, it will help.

All I can do is cross my fingers on that.