I’m healing, not curing (my histamine intolerance/mast cell disorder)

Crystal therapy

 

Ask any “healthy” person to really, truly, focus inwards on their body and list everything they feel happening, or anything that bothers them, and you’ll likely get an “I’m healthy as an ox” type of answer. Probe a little deeper, persist, or even just ask general, open ended, round about questions about their health, and you’ll soon find a list emerging.

The difference is that they choose to live their lives focusing on things outside themselves, rather than worry about the little things that go bump in the night (or the body).

Thanks to some deep soul searching, an incredible turn around in health, lots of meditation and a focus on happiness, I’m 100% ok with however I feel.

But it’s all impermanent: today’s good health is tomorrow’s medical catastrophe. I’ve learned to enjoy the here and now.

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED HEALING HISTAMINE PLAN. 

Please, do me a favour. Right now. I’m serious!

Go out and find a piece of paper, and then a beautiful diary embossed with unicorns, Swarovski crystals, whatever floats your boat (I’m a plain Jane: a bog standard Moleskine notebook does me just fine), and write at least a page whenever you feel better, good, amazing, so happy you want to shout from the roof tops. Keep it, and read it, on the days when you’re sharing last night’s cheeky Indian take out with the toilet, and are convinced you’ve made no gains at all.

Now get yourself another. A dark, brooding, nasty one. Something adorned with migraine inducing geometric patterns. Write your heart out when you’re unwell. Pour your every misery into it.

But promise me you won’t read it! (This is important.). Wait at least 3 – 6 months before dipping into it. Then go for it. Feast on your former misery, appreciate how far you’ve come, and go out and inspire others to do the same.

My food/emotional/symptom diary formed the basis for most of my early, private, blog posts. They were my diary and I’m SO glad I kept track of them.

Because of my change of heart from a stressed out, relatively pessimistic, worrywart, to born-again healing goddess (yeah, in my head only), I do worry sometimes that my relentless optimism, incessant talk about my healing, is depressing some folks, or prompting them to measure their journey against my milestones, maybe those just starting out, the ones so daunted by the interminable NO or HIGH HISTAMINE (Danger! danger, Will Robinson!) lists people love to scare the crap out of us with, to make us believe we need their potions, their snake oil, in order to heal.

Hear ye, yeah ye:

YOU are your best treatment.

Nutrition is your most powerful tool.

A positive attitude will carry you through the inevitable downturns.

An appreciation of the suffering of others and a sense of perspective as to your own, is essential. Go to a hospital, or to Africa/Mid East if you have to. Believe me, when you see how people are truly in the poo, with not enough food, missing limbs, female genital mutilation and more, you’ll feel grateful for the health you have.

I like to believe though, that by sharing my story, I’m showing it can be done, whereas I personally believed for so long, that there was no hope for a “cure”. I now understand that my mind is the best (only?) cure (read my interview with author Donna Jackson Nakazawa on how her mind helped her heal).

You might think, if you only read my blog but are not active in any online communities, that I am the only one healing. While it’s lovely to be able to share with you, almost weekly, the incredible progress I’m making, thanks to diet and meditation, thankfully, that’s not the case.  An ever-growing number of people in my online groups, as well as those who write to me, are also healing at an incredible rate. I like to believe that simply by sharing my story, I’m showing there’s hope for all of us. Something I could have used hearing myself in those early, dark and desperate days of elimination and despair (more on how I healed by quitting the histamine elimination diet here).

To want that little extra, to feel totally normal, should be something we all strive for, an unattainable goal, because let’s face it, once we’ve grabbed those brass rings, the only way is down!

 

You’ll find recipes full of foods with antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties my books Anti-Recipes and The Anti-Cookbook

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED HEALING HISTAMINE PLAN. 

Please don’t forget antihistamine, pain killing foods can still hurt us, so please always check with your doctor before adding new foods to your diet. 

12 responses to “I’m healing, not curing (my histamine intolerance/mast cell disorder)”

  1. Branchofthevine Avatar
    Branchofthevine

    I needed this today. I am so discouraged about the prospect of more and more medicine just to make it through each day, and my body will not tolerate it at all. But I am not able to eat ANY whole foods without a reaction, some severe. I bought your On The Go book. Do I just eat something, and take anti-histamines to survive?? What did you do to force your body to take the nutrition? and for my little MCAD friend, when she eats veggies and her chest hurts, what do we do, keep eating? Its so confusing, and scary.

  2. girl Avatar
    girl

    I think it’s harder to take this attitude when you’re still going for something that your health might make impossible. Say you are deeply invested in a career path that isn’t going to work for you if you can’t make it to 80% pretty reliably, since it’s too physically or mentally demanding or competitive. Even without the career investment, if you’re trapped in a stressful job that is your only source of health insurance, and you know that you’re under performing because of your health, and your health is being affected in turn by your job… no matter what happens, you are going to lose a lot of things you care about. If there’s still some hope that you can keep everything you have despite the way you feel, then you are absolutely going to scrutinize your symptoms — it’s not negative thinking. It’s actually the result of being too optimistic — of clinging to belief that you will get better, catch up, keep up (with your peers, with your bills, with your career–everything that you’ve fallen behind on while sick). There’s a lot to grieve and a lot to let go of before reconstructing a new, happy life that doesn’t yet have the same appeal as the life you’re giving up!

  3. Tanya Avatar
    Tanya

    @girl: Well said!

  4. jane Avatar
    jane

    I similar and would love to
    you can eat veg if it causes a reaction Maybe someone might post how they got over this hurdle. It would also be good if some of these people who were healing could post their stories to give the rest of us hope and tips. I for one can’t even take meds so any alternative would be great i wonder if acupuncture had helped anyone for instance.

  5. thelowhistaminechef Avatar

    Hi there, I know what you mean. For me the key was viewing the body as a whole rather than just trying to control histamine/mast cells. The body needs to be in good condition overall, and that’s something we need to work on first. I began by cutting ALL the crap foods out of my diet, then slowly adding high nutrient foods back a spoonful at a time. Quercetin and mangosteen were lifesavers for me, as was green juice.

  6. thelowhistaminechef Avatar

    Hi Jane, I talk about all that in the anti-cookbook and the 101 book. Also, there’s tons of information on getting over reaction hurdles, including by using meditation and juicing. I began with drinking just a thimbleful of green juice at a time. You build slowly and you need to re-train the brain using meditation.

  7. thelowhistaminechef Avatar

    Sometimes we need to ask ourselves if we’re on the right path in life. I so desperately wanted to be a journalist that I tried to fit myself into a role that was making me sick. And yet I persisted, because it made me happy. But at the end of the day, I have to ask myself if my career was making me miserable, and thereby making me sicker. It was only once I made my peace with letting that part of me go, the warrior traipsing through war zones, pretending the death and devastation were not taking their toll on my soul. There is of course time to be taken to grieve, I did. It’s only normal. But at some point it’s time to let go. Some people hold on longer than others. I hope that by sharing my experiences I might make that transition, should others choose to make it, just a little easier, by knowing that others have been on this path.

  8. thelowhistaminechef Avatar

    That’s very kind of you to say thank you Issie. You’re very very right on all counts. I’m glad to hear you’re doing better!

  9. Everything Matters Avatar

    I’m healing at an incredible rate! and yeah…I have a post with a similar name…or several really…it’s a theme on my blog…healing is a lifestyle…and it doesn’t end…

  10. Everything Matters Avatar

    I’m healing at an incredible rate! and yeah…I have a post with a similar name…or several really…it’s a theme on my blog…healing is a lifestyle…and it doesn’t end…

  11. Molly Avatar
    Molly

    You are a true inspiration. Your words hit me every time and I feel your posts are helping me break this vicious cycle. Can relate to so much of what you’re writing. I’m still in the very beginning of my healing journey, and that’s why I appreciate your blog so much. Especially your writing on the body-mind connection. Thank you!

  12. Molly Avatar
    Molly

    You are a true inspiration. Your words hit me every time and I feel your posts are helping me break this vicious cycle. Can relate to so much of what you’re writing. I’m still in the very beginning of my healing journey, and that’s why I appreciate your blog so much. Especially your writing on the body-mind connection. Thank you!

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Welcome!

Yasmina was an award-winning broadcast journalist with a decade of experience covering war zones for CNN and the BBC. She devoted her journalism skills to researching and writing about histamine. Click here to learn about her. Each post is carefully and fully referenced with the latest scientific research. Not sure where to start? Here’s a four week meal plan and overall Histamine Reset.


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