About a month ago, I experimented with flooding my system with histamines to see if it would trigger any ill effects. I did this via food intake, custom-tailoring a day's meals to add external histamines to my system. The results were not spectacular, but they did have promise. I experienced worse than usual brain fog, lack of focus, a burning in my stomach lining, and some trouble breathing.
As it turns out, overloading my system with histamines wasn't actually the best experiment I could have tried, because the results were simply in degrees of discomfort. A better experiment would have been to remove them entirely from my system and observe the results, particularly during hard exercise. So I did that!
As it turns out, as much as vitamin C is excellent for you and a good day-to-day solution, a good over-the-counter anti-histamine is more rigorous and quick to take effect. Your basic allergy medicine, in fact, will handle this, though naturally you shouldn't be taking allergy medicine every day unless you actually have allergies and can't manage them without it. So, knowing the effects were likely to be obvious, I took a single store-brand Benadryl, gave it 15 minutes, and then went biking as hard as I could.
I went for half an hour, and pushed myself hard. Sustained cardio exercise at moderate-to-high intensity has reliably made me miserable in a hurry, so even though I was opting for an exercise that allowed for breaks, I figured I could just keep pedaling rather than taking my usual breaks for breathing. The area I live in doesn't have all that much by way of hills, but it didn't matter, because...
The results were about as telling as I could have wished. I got tired, and had to work very hard... but I did not get miserable. Histamines, apparently, had been choking me out of my oxygen and proper brain function. Effectively, I was having an allergy attack every time I exercised... until now. It was extremely strange to be working my body so hard without becoming mentally exhausted and depressed.
The bane of my existence has always been exercise, and it's because, to the best of my knowledge, I run short of oxygen very fast and spend the rest of the time simply trying to survive the exercise with enough oxygen to not fall over or stop. I had a summer cold a couple months ago and experienced the same symptoms (misery and low oxygen intake) from simply sitting, so it was easier for me to recognize the second time around.
As it turns out, overloading my system with histamines wasn't actually the best experiment I could have tried, because the results were simply in degrees of discomfort. A better experiment would have been to remove them entirely from my system and observe the results, particularly during hard exercise. So I did that!
The Exercise Experiment
The one thing I didn't really try during this food overload experiment (quite possibly because I felt too poorly to consider it) was exercise. I made a note to try the exercise later, but didn't really set up a good experiment for it until just recently.As it turns out, as much as vitamin C is excellent for you and a good day-to-day solution, a good over-the-counter anti-histamine is more rigorous and quick to take effect. Your basic allergy medicine, in fact, will handle this, though naturally you shouldn't be taking allergy medicine every day unless you actually have allergies and can't manage them without it. So, knowing the effects were likely to be obvious, I took a single store-brand Benadryl, gave it 15 minutes, and then went biking as hard as I could.
I went for half an hour, and pushed myself hard. Sustained cardio exercise at moderate-to-high intensity has reliably made me miserable in a hurry, so even though I was opting for an exercise that allowed for breaks, I figured I could just keep pedaling rather than taking my usual breaks for breathing. The area I live in doesn't have all that much by way of hills, but it didn't matter, because...
The results were about as telling as I could have wished. I got tired, and had to work very hard... but I did not get miserable. Histamines, apparently, had been choking me out of my oxygen and proper brain function. Effectively, I was having an allergy attack every time I exercised... until now. It was extremely strange to be working my body so hard without becoming mentally exhausted and depressed.
The bane of my existence has always been exercise, and it's because, to the best of my knowledge, I run short of oxygen very fast and spend the rest of the time simply trying to survive the exercise with enough oxygen to not fall over or stop. I had a summer cold a couple months ago and experienced the same symptoms (misery and low oxygen intake) from simply sitting, so it was easier for me to recognize the second time around.
The Histamines' Source
So if it wasn't what I was eating (I'd established in the last experiment that I mostly avoid all the foods that are high-histamine), why was my system overloaded with histamines?
The answer appears to be (at least) twofold.
This is the pond out my back door. All the snot-colored splotches in the water are algae. They're some type of toxic species that happily grows in all the fertilizer runoff from the condos on my side of the pond and the apartments on the other side. Normally they treat the pond for this mess, but after July was over, they kind of stopped, and this is the result. I have a very high quality furnace filter cleaning the spores out of my house's air, but it's not like the house is airtight. I may set up an air purifier in the bedroom as well, since I spend a third of my day in there.
The "this is definitely a problem" experience that makes me sure this is part of the problem happened when I went out to get pictures of this algae once. I was out there for maybe two minutes, in the hot summer sun, last year... After I got back inside I had to lie down for like three hours because I felt so bad. It was like my brain function had been repressed, almost like being extremely drunk, except without the visual impairments, coordination impairments, and nausea. I had enough presence of mind to take my N-Acetyl-Cysteine, which helps detoxify my system, and drink a ton of water to help flush things out, and then I simply lay down, closed my eyes, and waited it out.
I woke feeling a little better, but not really back to normal, and with a much healthier respect for the toxic sludge that lives outside my back door... Even opening the back door for a couple seconds has deleterious effects on my brain, though thankfully not the "go lie down for three hours" effects. More like "you're going to feel kind of bad for 15 minutes."
So, I'm pretty sure the algae is factor one. Factor two? House dust mites.
My mother is allergic to these, which is fortunate because otherwise I probably wouldn't have attached any importance to the fact that my nose starts plugging up when I lie on bedding that hasn't been washed in a week. She actually has it much worse, in that she actually can't sleep if the mites are bad. Her nose just keeps running and stuffing.
I mentioned this to my doctor, and she recommended washing my bedding in hot water. The problem is that hot water shrinks things, and I don't really like fighting my spouse for blanket. Fortunately, my mother has a solution:
More the former than the latter, but if the former doesn't entirely fix the problem, the latter might. Or might just help with the algae also. I've ordered a bottle of the deMite, and will try it next laundry day.
I still have the years of misery associated with exercise, of course... but I'm not going to let that stop me. Movement is immensely important to mental, physical, and emotional health. If I can incorporate it in my life without the historically destructive, all-consuming misery, that would be a massive improvement... and it might make all the difference. I might actually come to like exercise. (Given my past history, this last sentence would normally equate to "pigs might fly." The future might be different, though!)
In the meantime, I need to manage my daily histamine levels. This often means careful diet management, but in my case, I basically don't eat anything that's high in histamines anyway. I need merely cut a couple foods that I wasn't extremely fond of anyway. My doctor has recommended an herbal supplement that should help with the day-to-day management of this histamine overload.
In the meantime, further experiments with vitamin C are in order! I've had promising results with drinking a dose of my vitamin C powder about 30 minutes prior to biking. But biking is just the easiest option. If I can, I'd like to experiment with my archnemsis of exercise: jogging. I have a long history with failing miserably at jogging, and it'd be a real turning point if I could succeed at it and get really good, intensive exercise at the same time. I'm very hopeful!
The "this is definitely a problem" experience that makes me sure this is part of the problem happened when I went out to get pictures of this algae once. I was out there for maybe two minutes, in the hot summer sun, last year... After I got back inside I had to lie down for like three hours because I felt so bad. It was like my brain function had been repressed, almost like being extremely drunk, except without the visual impairments, coordination impairments, and nausea. I had enough presence of mind to take my N-Acetyl-Cysteine, which helps detoxify my system, and drink a ton of water to help flush things out, and then I simply lay down, closed my eyes, and waited it out.
I woke feeling a little better, but not really back to normal, and with a much healthier respect for the toxic sludge that lives outside my back door... Even opening the back door for a couple seconds has deleterious effects on my brain, though thankfully not the "go lie down for three hours" effects. More like "you're going to feel kind of bad for 15 minutes."
So, I'm pretty sure the algae is factor one. Factor two? House dust mites.
My mother is allergic to these, which is fortunate because otherwise I probably wouldn't have attached any importance to the fact that my nose starts plugging up when I lie on bedding that hasn't been washed in a week. She actually has it much worse, in that she actually can't sleep if the mites are bad. Her nose just keeps running and stuffing.
I mentioned this to my doctor, and she recommended washing my bedding in hot water. The problem is that hot water shrinks things, and I don't really like fighting my spouse for blanket. Fortunately, my mother has a solution:
More the former than the latter, but if the former doesn't entirely fix the problem, the latter might. Or might just help with the algae also. I've ordered a bottle of the deMite, and will try it next laundry day.
A Healthier Life?
I'm really hoping those are the only two factors, and that good care with both of these factors will sort the problem out. If it does, I'll be able to exercise more regularly, and at higher intensities than I've ever been able to before. I've been reluctant to exercise... well, at all, really. But especially at moderate to high intensities, because... misery. If you're miserable every moment you're doing something, you tend not to repeat that activity.I still have the years of misery associated with exercise, of course... but I'm not going to let that stop me. Movement is immensely important to mental, physical, and emotional health. If I can incorporate it in my life without the historically destructive, all-consuming misery, that would be a massive improvement... and it might make all the difference. I might actually come to like exercise. (Given my past history, this last sentence would normally equate to "pigs might fly." The future might be different, though!)
In the meantime, I need to manage my daily histamine levels. This often means careful diet management, but in my case, I basically don't eat anything that's high in histamines anyway. I need merely cut a couple foods that I wasn't extremely fond of anyway. My doctor has recommended an herbal supplement that should help with the day-to-day management of this histamine overload.
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| Notably high in vitamin C, of course, but the various herbs listed there also help with histamine management. |
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