You react to aged cheese and red wine and leftovers. You also react to certain fresh foods on certain days and not on others. The pattern does not fit a clean food allergy. The IgG panel was inconclusive. You suspect histamine.
Histamine intolerance and food sensitivity overlap in the experience and diverge in the mechanism. Food sensitivity is an immune response to specific food proteins, mediated by IgG or other antibodies, repeatable on testing, food-by-food specific. Histamine intolerance is a buildup of histamine the body cannot clear fast enough, often because the DAO enzyme that breaks down dietary histamine is depleted or genetically slow.
The histamine pattern includes foods that are themselves high in histamine (aged cheese, fermented foods, leftovers, alcohol) and foods that release histamine from the body's own mast cells (citrus, tomatoes, strawberries, shellfish). The reactions accumulate through the day. They are worse after a poor night of sleep, during the second half of the menstrual cycle, and during perimenopause when estrogen fluctuation directly affects mast cell behavior.
The treatment differs. Food sensitivity is best addressed by elimination and then reintroduction once the gut barrier has healed. Histamine intolerance is addressed by supporting DAO activity, lowering total histamine load, and stabilizing the mast cells that are releasing it.
Chinese medicine reads the pattern beneath both. For histamine intolerance the underlying picture is usually Liver Heat with Blood deficiency, often Spleen deficiency layered in. The herbal approach calms the mast cell response while supporting the digestive function that produces and clears histamine.
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