Glad to hear your anecdotes and the success story, sounds like hell.
I've found the work of Carl C Pfeiffer interesting, seems to apply to me, histedelia, although pun intended I do take it with a healthy dose of salt. I've seen a lot of professional dismissiveness towards the idea. More recent blog reading material seems to term it as a 'methylation' issue. What I found most 'appealing' about the theory was that he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics personal biology: when intoxicated the histadelic feels 'good' whereas they normally always feel 'terrible'. This is in contrast the average person who feels 'good' sober a lot of the time.
I would 'go nuts' every 18 months like clockwork before making a lot of diet changes after a year of psychosis a few years back. One thing that prevented issues in the past were high levels of physical exercise, so I had a handful of years here and there without issues.
I wouldn't say I'm 100% now but I have more good days than bad. I'll try this levomefolic acid.
Thanks for your comment. I don't have a success story yet, but I'm optimistic. I've learned a lot, and hope to leverage my 'trial by fire' to help others.
> he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics
hmm? Searching for histadelics: "If youre lying in bed at night hoping for sleep, but your brain won't stop, this can be the chatter of histamine expressing itself. Histamine is metabolized through methylation. When histamine levels increase, the pool of available methyl donors can be depleted..." [0]
Oh, how helpful. Thanks, I hadn't really looked into this a whole lot. The old anti-histamine drug cyproheptadine is also an anti-serotonin drug, many people have problems with "serotonin syndrome" that are really helped with this safe prescription. Serotonin and histamine must have some important interaction, I'll have to look into this more.
Another interesting quote from [0] (my comments are sometimes my notes that I go back to...):
"An interesting and illustrative anecdote on folate and histamine was observed by the late Carl Pfeiffer, M.D. who was a leader in this field. He reported that he and his colleagues were puzzled that so many histadelic patients relapsed in the summer months. Eventually, the reason was found to lie in the increase of dietary folate that was found in green, leafy salad vegetables that people ate throughout the summer months."
It's considered pseudo science, and I've yet to fully work through any of the Carl C Pfeiffer books.
There are lots of different anti-histamines with different effects and side effects. Salt and adrenalin are apparently 'natural' anti-histamines, I would go with them over medication, though sometimes I need anti-histamines for allergies. That cyproheptadine seems to be contra the general trend of anti-histamine -> pro-serotonin (I think the mechanism here is that once the histamine is gone, more serotonin can be made, this takes a long time, days not hours or minutes).
a quote from the above link:
"Nutritional treatment for drug and alcohol users will depend on the results of a test for blood histamine levels. In one series of such analysis, all users proved to have high histamine levels, leading the scientist to conclude that this abnormality – with its impact on brain function – is a major force in creating addiction. [Nutrition Guide for the Prevention and Cure of Common Ailments and Diseases, Carlton Fredericks, PhD. p.58]"
I'd swear I've seen Carl C Pfeiffer quotes saying similar things but haven't turned them up after a cursory google.
I should mention I know during opiate withdrawal many addicts take antihistamine to counter the itching from the histamine released by the opiates, which might confound attempts to establish a link to addiction.
I have particular problems with allergies during the summer months, so it's not just eating too much salad - "salad bowl depression", ha - but a combination of both tree and grass pollen. Another thing I found interesting is that there are foods that are low in histamine but high in histidine, which gets turned into histamine in the gut.
Optimism, a healthy dose of skepticism and diary for food and activities seems to be a good way to check things out personally, although not exactly scientific. One thing I found interesting was the claim that too much histamine in the stomach prevents vitamin-c from being turned into gut serotonin. So oranges are high in vitamin-c but also high in histamine, so the 'material' recommends ascorbic acid instead. Personally I enjoy oranges more than any other fruit so I go ahead, I don't think I have the worst symptoms anyway.
One final edit, a lot of vitamin and multivitamin tablets quietly include 'folic acid' so watch out for that avoid them and buy tablets that do not have it, if you are convinced of an issue here (this is also in a lot of food as fortification as you already know).
Pfeiffer, Nutrition and Mental illness 1988, p31, the addiction quote:
Having tested twelve hard-core drug addicts and found them to be high in histamine,
we voice the strong opinion that more can be done to correct biochemical imbalance in order to correct the drug addict.
We know that heroin and methadone are both strong histamine releasing agents.
The histadelic person is depressed and compulsive, and has abnormal thinking. There-fore, heroin, methadone, uppers, downers, alcohol, and sugar
all are often craved to compensate for these feelings. The compulsive day-in-day-out drinker of alcohol
is usually found to be histadelic. Moderation must be taught tactfully to these individuals as they slowly but surely improve on the nutritional program
I've found the work of Carl C Pfeiffer interesting, seems to apply to me, histedelia, although pun intended I do take it with a healthy dose of salt. I've seen a lot of professional dismissiveness towards the idea. More recent blog reading material seems to term it as a 'methylation' issue. What I found most 'appealing' about the theory was that he blames the substance abuse on the histadelics personal biology: when intoxicated the histadelic feels 'good' whereas they normally always feel 'terrible'. This is in contrast the average person who feels 'good' sober a lot of the time.
I would 'go nuts' every 18 months like clockwork before making a lot of diet changes after a year of psychosis a few years back. One thing that prevented issues in the past were high levels of physical exercise, so I had a handful of years here and there without issues.
I wouldn't say I'm 100% now but I have more good days than bad. I'll try this levomefolic acid.