Gluten, Dairy, And Lectins In MCAS

Introduction and Erica's healing journey 0:00

So welcome back to another episode of the Reversing Marcel Activation and Histamine Intolerance Summit, and we're so excited to have Erica Slik with us today. We're going to be talking about food intolerances. We're going to be talking about what to do if you're dealing with things like oxalates, lectins. We're gonna talk about how gluten and dairy tie in. And I want to tell you a little bit about Erica. So she is a nationally recognized cookbook author and blogger. And, and I and certified health coach.

She had her own chronic illness journey that got her into all of this. And on the other side of being a licensed architect, can you start air con? Just tell us more about that journey and some of your background? Yes, absolutely. So in 2012, I went on my third camping trip with my entire life and got unknowingly bitten by a tick. And for two years I went doctor to doctor. Very similar to so many people stories, but a lot of my initial diagnosis were actually food allergies. I became allergic to everything except eat foods.

I was diagnosed with celiac disease and all these gut issues, and I was reacting to everything. Now I know it was probably histamine related. But in the time I was doing a lot of work on my gut, a lot of work on my diet, and I think that kind of set me up in a good position. So by the time I actually got diagnosed with Lyme disease, I had done a lot of work around diet and gut, and then I could kind of go into my Lyme treatments, and I treated for three years, I didn't do any antibiotics. I did everything all natural.

And in 2016, I did some cell therapy. And for me, that was my magic bullet that got me into remission. And I've been in remission since, obviously, it's still kind of an ongoing journey. You know, I'm. I'm symptom free, but still managing. You know, if I enter a place that has more, that definitely sets off some histamine issues and, you know, little mold reactivity and things like that. So I've always been really conscious of my environment, still working on keeping my diet very, very clean, low in histamine and things like that.

And yeah, for the most part, you know, as long as I don't get gluten because, one of the first things that triggered on was celiac disease for me. So, so long as I don't get gluten, don't get me attacked by mold somewhere that I go, I live a pretty good life, so I'm happy to be in remission. And now I started my blog when I was kind of in the middle of my Lyme journey, and it kind of started off as like a way to track what treatments I was doing in order to help other people, and since then, it's evolved to doing a lot more kind of health tips to keep people healthy before they get into a chronic illness state, and also sharing healthy recipes to keep you healthy.

Whether you're dealing with chronic issues or just want to eat clean. And I wrote my first cookbook in 2018 all sorts of really healthy recipes to help people kind of be nourished and feel good. And I'm currently working on my second one. So now that I'm in remission, I've been able to share a lot of the information I learned, hoping to help someone not be in my shoes and people that are in my shoes be able to heal and start to live a more normal life. And when we do know that there's such a mass of connection with things like Lyme mold toxicity, celiac disease, pretty much any time we've got these multisystem inflammatory processes, there's going to be some mass unbalance.

I imagine you dealt with that as well. And so you being having celiac, I have this huge focus on gluten free. And then I know we're going to talk about some other types of food intolerance as people have. What if we start with that? Can we just start with the difference between celiac and gluten intolerance and share that part with our audience? Absolutely. So celiac disease I think they say affects about 3% of the population. And it's when your body has an autoimmune reaction to gluten. So there's little hair in our small intestine called the villi.

And gluten will atrophy those. And those are really important because they help you get all your nutrients out of your food. And you know, when they're flattened, you're going to be malnourished. You're not going to be absorbing your nutrients. So the difference between that and someone that's just sensitive to gluten is someone who is

Celiac disease vs gluten intolerance 4:07

doesn't have celiac disease, but is sensitive to gluten, will have a gluten reaction, but it's not going to be atrophying those villi and they may not be dealing with so much and lack of like absorption of their nutrients. But that being said, you know, a lot of people still have a pretty severe reaction to gluten, even if they're not celiac. And I think where people get confused is that a celiac or a gluten reaction can just be like, oh, I got bloated, or oh, my gut hurts, but it can manifest in so many different ways.

Like, for me personally, I actually don't get any gut issues from gluten. I get all neuro issues, so I get like a headache back here in the back of my head, I get really bad brain fog. You know, insomnia, anxiety, depression. I get very moody. I get tingling in my finger so it can manifest as all sorts of things. So sometimes people are just looking for a gut reaction. They're like, oh, I'm fine. But it can also be your skin, you know? Hi. Dermatitis I can that can happen especially like on your hands and things like that.

So there's a whole kind of realm. And until I think until you can strictly cut out gluten for at least 30 days and then try to reintroduce it and pay attention to all those symptoms, you're not really going to know if you're sensitive to it or not. Yeah, those are great points. And you talked about how celiac is less common. Gluten intolerance is much more common. But people are going to have some significant issues. And I think about two it can be gluten. It can be colitis, say the other chemicals that are in that gluten and in those kind of gluten grains that are so high, particularly in wheat.

And we can have destruction going on in the gut and not have bloating or gas. I just wonder, I remember when I've been gluten free for a long time, and I remember when I decided to test it out, and I had probably been off gluten for a good six years at this point, and my husband and I were on vacation and we were scuba diving and it was his birthday on the boat. The company had made him a banana cake and it looks so good. So I really wanted that piece and I thought, well, it's been six years, I can probably get away with it.

And like you're describing, I didn't have the gut symptoms, but I woke up the next morning and I could barely walk. My joints hurt so bad. And then I was covered from my fingertips to my elbows and eczema. That lasted about two months from that. Wow. So for me, that was the big the big clue. Okay, this is important for me. And not everybody is going to be triggered by gluten, but particularly in our mass audience. It can be a trigger. Can you talk about that? Why, in terms of the immune response, even for people who don't have celiac, why can gluten be such a problem?

You know, gluten is just one of those very inflammatory foods. And I think what's already going on is someone that's dealing with chronic illness or muscle. Your immune system is already so activated. So the more you kind of pile on top of that, the more your immune system is going to be angry, for lack of better words and be inflamed and caused symptoms. And, you know, kind of rile these things up. So the more the way I kind of look at your immune system is like, it's kind of like an energy bank account.

The more things you do to kind of lower the inflammation and nourish it and calm all those things, you're going to be better. You're going to have more wiggle room, you know, for when maybe you do get exposed to a high histamine food and things like that. But if you're eating a high histamine food and then you're eating gluten, all of a sudden your immune system is kind of at its boiling point. So the more you can do to kind of control that and lower that inflammation, I think the calmer in general your health is going to be and start to kind of lower that, that histamine and mask the reaction.

And, you know, it's interesting with gluten, the doctor that finally diagnosed me with celiac disease and Lyme, he said he felt that gluten was going to be like the next smoking. Like most of us know, it's not good for us. Most of us know it causes inflammation, but people are still kind of doing it anyways. But maybe in 2030 years, people are going to start to realize all the health issues and implications that it has and all the inflammation that it's causing in your body, and really start to kind of pay more attention to that.

And I think it's interesting, you know, gluten can kind of almost be addictive. It binds to the same opiate receptors as like an opiate would. So that's why a lot of times when people cut it out, they actually don't feel good. They go through kind of a withdrawal or carb flu and feel really sick and achy because you're kind of detoxing it out of your system. And so you can take a couple of weeks to actually before you start to feel any benefit of feeling better after cutting it out. So that just shows how much inflammation is causing in your body and how much kind of dependance on your brain and your immune system, is being affected by.

It has a great points. And I tell my clients they need to be 100% gluten free for six weeks, and then if they actually get an exposure or back at week one, just reset the whole system. Because of these things that you're describing. We know that gluten they're particular receptors on the mast cells that can trigger an increased mass activation. That's one of the primary things that I ask people to try out and stay gluten free throughout, addressing their root causes, even if they don't have histamine intolerance.

And some people's nasal activation may not have histamine intolerance. But that gluten can be such a trigger. And then we know those proteins also are so similar to thyroid proteins. And thyroid autoimmunity is very common in this population. So it's really either to help reduce that thyroid out or immunity or to help prevent developing some of it. And while we're getting out of issues like mold toxicity and Lyme, that can be so helpful. So then there's another food group that triggers not everybody but a lot of people.

And that's a dairy. Let's know about dairy. So dairy I feel like is kind of a gray area food. And I've done a lot of experimenting for myself personally to try to cut it out, see if I react to it in kind of the same diligence that I took with gluten. And I think it's easy to call all dairy one, but, you know, there's factory farmed dairy that's low fat and, you know, very inflammatory and not good for you. And then you have across the dairy and then there's even raw dairy from like grass animals.

And I think they're all very different. And it's another one of those foods I definitely recommend taking out for 30 to 60 days experimenting with do not reintroduce factory farm dairy that shouldn't be avoided at all costs for any diet. But maybe experiment with some grass fed dairy or grass fed ghee grass and butter. Those. Usually that tends to be less inflammatory for people because it doesn't have a lot of casein. It doesn't have a lot of lactose, which is what usually causes an issue with dairy.

And then, you know, if you're open to it, raw dairy can have a lot of benefits as well. It has immunoglobulins and lactoferrin and some of the enzymes that, you know, people might have difficulty digesting dairy can actually tolerate it when it's intact and not pasteurized.

Why gluten drives inflammation and mast cell issues 10:48

So it's kind of one of those gray area foods. It's not like gluten where you can kind of lump it all into, like all gluten is not good for you. You know, there's there's caveats with dairy. But again, it's one of those that I think for sure, when you're first kind of embarking on your diet journey and chronic illness journey, 100% cut it out for, you know, maybe even three months at least, minimum, just to give your body a break, let your body kind of recent you those signals and then start with those very high quality dairies or the ones that are going to be less inflammatory, like some grass fed ghee, and see how that goes.

And then from there kind of expand and see if it's something that you can incorporate, or if it's something that just doesn't work for your body. Yeah. And I really like the I think a lot of people can tolerate the grass fed ghee. I like that much better than the conventional because in that you're going to have those growth hormones. Absolutely. You're going to have a lot of other kind of chemicals, antibiotics and things like that that are going to get into that. So but with the, the grass fed ghee, we don't have that casein, that milk protein or dairy protein that can be an autoimmune reaction or other types of immune reaction or the the lactose in there.

And, and it's such a good spot to cook with because it has such a high smoke point and, you know, it's a very stable fat to cook with and, use on your food. So I'm a big fan of grass fed you. Yeah. And then it has that beautiful filling that can help with that repair. So that's really nice. And ghee as well. We like to use that sometimes with detox protocols to help with the gut and with the dairy and the wheat. These are such complex proteins. And what I've found is a lot of times people will come in and they will have had a very simple food test or like an IG food test, but we need to think of much bigger when we're looking at things.

Foods like wheat, dairy, even corn and have these complex multi types of proteins and easily mix it with the those types of just what we think of as like a food ID food panel. And this is because they're only testing 1 or 2 proteins. And you might have antibodies to one of the other 3040 proteins that are in these. So there are some tests like the vibrant food Zoomers are my favorite for those complex proteins. People can get through a practitioner and look more deeply in that. And then we want to look at even IDs and particularly for this mass.

So population one just circled back just a little on the raw milk too. I used to drink raw milk and I found it. It felt really nourishing. And for people that, can get it from a really clean and safe source, that can be a great option. That way to make those milk. Just wanted to do a quick a side note that it can be a little higher histamine. Now for people with the histamine a tolerance, which isn't everybody. But, I always think about those keys. So we've talked about gluten. We've talked about dairy.

Let's talk about lectins, something that's not frequently talked about and tell our listeners, what are lectins and how might they know if if they have elected intolerance or this is something they might want to look at. Because of course we don't want to whittle our foods down unnecessarily, right? Yeah. So lectins kind of fall into the category of an anti nutrient. And an anti nutrient is something that is in a food or plant compound that reduces the body's ability to absorb the nutrients from it.

So a lot of times it's to protect itself against predators and birds. And you know the plant is doing what it can to survive. But at the same time, it may not be good for us humans eating it. So lectins are definitely a type of anti nutrient. And they're a protein that attaches itself to the sugars in your cell. And so this can really disrupt the metabolism and absorption in your small intestine. And keeps your small intestine from absorbing foods. So again going back to gluten if you're celiac and you already have that villi atrophy, you're not absorbing your foods.

And then you're adding in lectins which are causing more absorption issues in your intestine, you can start to see it's a really kind of chain reaction of issues absorbing your nutrients. So lectins are generally found in like beans and nuts and grains. Anything that's kind of like a seed that needs to protect itself. Nightshades can have it too. A lot of times with nightshades, the lectins, if you cook it, tend to kind of, you know, come out of it. And for the most part, you eat most nightshades cooked, tomatoes, like it's not necessarily always cooked, but better to eat them cooked.

Just to kind of break down some of that irritation. And then a lot of times, you know, people are like some of the symptoms that you can get from lectins is going to be things like joint pain or brain fog. You might have skin issues, migraines, things like that. So if you're starting to notice that when you eat foods that have lectins, that can be kind of a way to notice it. And, you know, the more lectins you eat, the more damage you're going to be doing to your body. So you don't want to eat high lectin foods in every single meal.

You know, again, going back to the grains and things like that. And you talked about like the proteins, as well as like being sensitive to those other things. So I always recommend an and like an elimination diet is really the best way to do it. You know, you can do these tests, these food allergy tests and sensitivity tests, and they might give you like a good baseline to start and be like, oh, well, it says I'm sensitive to tomatoes. I should pay more attention when I eat that. But you may eat them and feel fine and not notice anything.

But again, you know, doing that 30 to succeed elimination, cutting out some of these lectins, cutting out gluten and dairy and then reintroducing those things one at a time, you'd be surprised the signals your body starts to give you again after you've kind of given a break. And cutting these things out isn't forever. You know, like I said, I was allergic to it. Like I could only eat about eight foods and I can eat pretty much everything now. There are some foods I avoid, like gluten and things like that just because they don't work for my body, but I can eat them without having a severe reaction.

Or if I eat them, I know I may not feel optimal for a day or so, so it's not forever. You know, you're really just kind of reteaching your body, relearning what works for your body. And I think it gives you a really amazing kind of feedback loop to doing an elimination diet, because you start to notice how things affect you, and you can kind of use that with other things too. You know, you can use that, like when I walk in this room and I don't feel good, there may be like mold or something going on in there or even with people, you know, like you start to get this really intelligent feedback loop with your body that you can use with diet,

Dairy intolerance and better dairy options 16:58

with lectins, with gluten and in your surroundings, which I think is just such a key piece in healing from any chronic illness. Definitely. And then that's a great thing that you brought in that you were down to eight foods, and now you can eat pretty much anything other than of course, you'll probably be gluten free. Oh yeah, I feeling like I react to a microscopic problem of gluten. Unfortunately, that one I'm still, very sensitive to. Yeah, but I love that bringing hope. And I was down to ten foods at one point that I was barely tolerating.

So I just want to remind people that if you're in that small amount of food, don't go to whittling away more. And I do have some people who are down to just 3 or 4 foods, and that includes wheat and that includes dairy. So that's not the time to do the elimination. It's it's when you have a lot of variety and then you're working on figuring out what what specifically may be triggering you. So with these lectins, what's interesting too is that wheat contains a huge amount of lectins. And while we can pressure cook out some of the lectins it was so high in wheat and corn we can't pressure cook those out.

Oats have lectins rice, quinoa I think of like the New World vegetables. So this is going to be the nightshades. You described that the eggplants, the tomatoes, the peppers. Then we're going to have things like squashes, winter squashes and summer squash. And so cream and yellow squash and then sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and then interestingly, almonds, the skin of the almonds, but not underneath the skin. So if you blanch the almonds now we'll talk about oxalates and almonds in just a minute here.

But we found also that lectins will actually dock on a receptor on mast cells called the toll like receptor, which is the same receptor for bacteria like Lyme, for viruses, for molds and I see an increase of sensitivity in people dealing with more toxicity to lectins. And particularly when people have autoimmunity, then, lectins have a role in the auto immunity, they have a role in cardiovascular issues. And cancer cells can be some of the applications. To start to look at it, I started reintroducing.

So lectins got rid of my getting out. Lectins got rid of my joint burning. I had this this ongoing joint burning like they were on fire. And then when I started to reintroduce, I found that I still can't do tomatoes. I still can't do cucumbers. Although if you peel them and seed them, that can help you do so. But I can do rice and I can do pressure cooked winter squashes, which is so exciting to give back. And I know it's always exciting when you can out of food back and you're just like, oh my God, my life is so much better now.

I'm just one extra food. I don't care about getting junk food. I could never eat this again. I want the vegetables like I want the variety there. Well, let's now talk about oxalates. Tell us and for our listeners what oxalates are, what kind of foods there and and symptoms associated with those. Sure. So oxalates are another one of those anti nutrients. Another way for the plant to protect itself. And these are mostly found in raw cruciferous vegetables. So kale spinach you know it can even be in charred and buckwheat parsley even has it which I actually use a lot poppy seeds.

So these are oxalates will bind to the calcium in your body and they'll create, like, these sharp little crystals that will end up in your muscles. They can also cause, kidney stones. So, you know, if you have, like, any muscle issues where you feel kind of some sharpness or something kind of hard in your muscles, that might be due to oxalate. So eating that kale smoothie or green juice and spinach salad as healthy as you think you might be being, it's actually not great to eat those in high amounts. Raw.

Now cooking them, we'll get rid of it. Or if you soak things in water or acidic water, that can really start to break down the oxalates as well, so you can enjoy your spinach sauteed a little bit across that perfect. But eating it raw can really, really start to cause issues. It can also cause some burning sensations that I've heard in some people, like in the eyes and the mouth and nose area. So it's really interesting. So if you're feeling any sorts of symptoms, regarding like those kind of like sharp crystals or that burning sensation, try eliminating foods that are high in oxalate again for like 30 to 60 days.

And then seeing how if any of those symptoms improve. And that might be one of the reasons. Yeah. And I think about our, our top oxalate foods that in the testing data shared sweet potatoes beets, spinach, Swiss chard plantain quite high and let me think, chocolate is a bit high. You might have missed one, but those are some of the biggest ones. And and then there's different levels of oxalates in these foods. So like you're saying, we do know that boiling will lead to the oxalates. And so we want to reduce it, but we want to think about swapping foods.

I think about replacing instead of whittling. I know you do to. And so we want to look at well clearly kale is much higher oxalate. So let's go to dino kale. And that's a good swap into a spinach which also super high histamine I love to swap arugula, which is a great sub and even more nutrient dense on some of the mass muscle stabilizing nutrients. So you can do that. I do want to caution people not to go low oxalate cold turkey, because these oxalates get stored in the tissues, and then they can start flooding the bloodstream, and they can trigger kidney stones and can trigger what's called dumping.

And that's so painful. So I like to have people take about six months to taper down

Lectins, elimination diets, and food reintroduction 22:40

if they're doing a lot of beets, sweet potatoes, they're doing a lot of, Swiss chard and spinach and thinking about taking one of those foods down by about an eighth of their normal quantity per week, and a slow taper at the same. This was a game changer for me. When I heard my own story was I was in such severe joint pain by the time I was 28, my friends were, you know, out having fun, and I was an orthopedic shoes and hobbling with a cane. I could barely walk across the room. I was like walking on ground glass and my joints, and I had been screened for every kind of autoimmunity.

I thought I had some kind of really rare form of rheumatoid arthritis, but I had no visible redness or swelling. I didn't have any heat. But it was it was severe, but it would move around and it would come and go, and I it would be much worse in the winters when I was really loading up on seasonal vegetables that were more available, like the, the, the curly kale and, doing lots of beats for sweet potatoes, things like that. And then it would get better in the summer. And the oh, one other tip is that curly kale is high oxalate.

The flat leaf is much slower. So there's again you just swap. You just it's so interesting how in the same plant, it can just be such a different set of nutrients or anti nutrients that you can get into your diet. Yeah. And you talked about oxalates finding calcium. We can take minerals with our meals to help reduce those oxalates as well. So if we take magnesium with the meal or calcium in meal it can help lower those oxalate loads. So we've got some great information, great background here about gluten and dairy, about lectins and oxalate.

How how can people start to navigate. Let's talk more. You mentioned before the the doing an elimination. How can people start off navigating these food intolerances and sensitivities. But but still get the nutrients that they need to be a concern in this population? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's hard, you know, you hear these lists of all the foods like you shouldn't be eating and you're like, well, those are healthy foods. Why can't I eat those on top of everything else? But, I think one thing to kind of remember is like the elimination diet is not forever, you know, 30, 45 days, maybe 60 days.

If you're in a really chronic state and, you know, you definitely want to try to do like low histamine foods, I find doing a mostly animal based, elimination with some of the vegetables, like arugula and things like that, that are not going to cause any of these other kind of histamine issues or oxalate or, you know, leptin issues like that, being conscious of that. So trying to do kind of like an AAP without the histamine issued foods and then doing mostly animal based and on an animal based site.

You know, I've seen some amazing transformation stories, kind of starting with that, people are getting really healthy, really strong. They're eliminating a lot of these issues, eliminating a lot of inflammation. And it's so nutrient dense. Your body can definitely live off of that for 38 and 45 days. As you start to add in new foods into that. And I'm not saying like, don't eat any vegetables at all, you know, like there's definitely vegetables and fruits that are safe that aren't going to cause inflammation and causing these other issues.

You know, incorporating eggs, of course. I always say to use fresh herbs, not to use like, seasonings. For a couple reasons. First of all, they could have hidden gluten, hidden starches. Also, a lot of our spices these days are irradiated so that they do that to prevent mold growing in it, but that also kills all the nutritional value of the herbs. You know, also there could be like a histamine mold issue if you get one that's not irradiated. So I kind of stay away from jarred spices in general and just try to stick to fresh herbs as much as possible.

You know, avoid citrus fruits if you're having histamine issues. Unfortunately, that can kind of cause a little bit of a histamine reaction. Doing rice, if you can tolerate it. White rice for is preferred over brown rice. It's a little easier to digest. And one good thing with rice is if you cook it and then you cool it, it can actually be a resistant starch, which can be really good for your gut, your gut bacteria. So that's a good way to kind of support your gut and get a little bit of grain and starch in there and, you know, use that.

Well that white rice we don't think about that as being a good food, but it does give people starch source. Plus that white rice is going to be lower histamine and lower lectin than the brown rice, which is counterintuitive. Yep. And then yeah I mean you can eat it cooked in warm obviously, but cold kind of gives you that extra bonus. And then also, you know, using healthy fats, I think one thing we didn't talk about as like something being very inflammatory is seed oils. Like, they're just so inflammatory for our body.

They're basically like most of them are just a byproduct of industrial waste that's been marketed as heart healthy. And it's the farthest from the truth. Like I completely avoid those. And I've noticed cutting those out of my diet really made a big difference in my inflammation. So, you know, sticking to coconut oil grass fed give you tolerate it using some tallow, things like that. Can be a much more stable, healthy fat to cook your food and give you some of those healthy fat, calories to keep you full and nourished and healthy while you're kind of going through this elimination phase.

That's a great point on the fats, because so many times we're really weighted heavily towards the omega sixes and versus omega threes. And it's not like the Omega sixes are bad. We need some. But it's about the ratio in the balance. Absolutely. And particularly with the omega threes they get converted in our bodies to something called special pro resolving mediators or pro resolving mediators. And these resolved ends and protections that get in our body. We convert the omega threes to a very natural stabilizer.

And they're really needed to balance inflammation. So we can get those from as people can get and tolerate frozen salmon that was frozen after catch, then that's going to be lower histamine.

Oxalates, symptoms, and how to reduce them 28:38

And that's a source that can have really good omega three profile. And there's some supplements that a lot of people with histamine tyrosine tolerate fish oil. But there are some supplements around that that just have these pro resolving mediators that I'll have on our resources page for the summit for people to to look into as well. So what kind of foods do we've talked about? Foods that can be problematic. And then we've been touching on some foods and things like the fresh herbs, which I also love because fresh herbs are some of the most nutrient dense foods are the closest to what we would have eaten in the wild, and those are the most nutrient dense.

If you can go out and you don't spray your yard and your neighbors don't spray and you can get really fresh dandelion greens, those are incredibly nutrient dense. Or the wild onions, make sure they're really onions because there's some things that look like wild onions. But I, I bring I bring these things in from our yard quite a bit. And we live near woods. And so I've learned how to forage and recognize some of the wild foods that are next fast. Are these nutrient dense, fresh herbs. And particularly people can grow their herbs.

That's even so it's so easy to grow an herb garden. Yeah. Now, what other kinds of foods do you recommend for people with masks on histamine issues that are going to be really nutrient dense and healing? Yeah. So like I said, I think an animal based diet is really great. So, you know, trying to do meats, you don't want me set up and sitting out a while. You don't want to do, like, leftover meats because I can kind of strokes and histamine things, but, meat, especially if it's been frozen right away.

I sometimes shop at a vendor called Wild Fork, and they freeze our food as soon as they butcher it. So I'm, I'm hoping that's a little bit lower in histamine by doing that. You know, eggs are really great. You know, you want to eat those fresh herbs. Like I said, the healthy fat, as far as, like, milks and stuff go, you know, experiment with the raw dairy, but, you know, see if that works for you. If not, coconut milk, tends to be a healthier kind of milk, as long as you don't have any with, like, additives in it.

You want just straight coconut milk. You know, and then again, with those other foods, like you're not cutting them out forever. So, you know, the spinach may not have to, like, cut it out forever, but just see how it affects you and, you know, like you said, swap it out for a regular, swap it out for foods that don't have as many seeds in them, fruits that don't have as many seeds. And seeing how those work for your body and we talked about finding the the meat that's frozen after slaughter. So helpful for histamine intolerance.

And it can be hard to find that. So you mentioned wild for can we have a couple of our partners on our resources page. Northstar Bison and White Oak pastors are really good at that. People don't often think about meat as being so nutrient dense. So think about it like macronutrients and protein. But in particular, there's some of these. What I love about these companies is they have things like unaged bison and HP. So you can get that iron, rabbit. Some people have trouble thinking about eating rabbit, but rabbit is an elk are really high protein and and iron and the type of heme iron that our bodies need.

And then if we can get organ meats like, I was going to. Yeah, that was my next one. Organ meats. Like trying to incorporate that into your diet as well because that's so nutrient dense. Like getting that liver in and you know, all the different organ needs that you can you can do. They just benefit your body so much, gives you so much vitality. And there's like a few supplements that make them now too. So if you have a hard time actually eating it, you can try it in the supplement form. I don't know how that is is for a system, but there's one in particular.

I just got that actually. I forget what organs it has in it, but it's meant to help with histamine and your immune system to kind of, help support that. So, yeah, like that fall down too. Yeah. Kidney's high and DHA that helps break down that histamine and and those organ needs as well. People don't realize that there's a lot of choline. There's a and then there's actually B vitamins and those sometimes some of the organ meats even have a little vitamin C in them. So there's so interesting and places like we're describing like the way that pasture is allowed for the North Northstar bison.

They have these organic needs available frozen after slaughter, and the North Northstar Bison had all of their meats tested, and they came back with negligible amounts of histamine. That was actually a lot of testing levels, including the ground. And they have some grinds with it's called North Star use in North Star bison. Yeah. And they have some grinds that have that. We're going to meats and they're mixed in. So it kind of hides that. Yeah that's such a good way to do it because it's like you're a little averse to it or the smell getting it in that ground me or even making a part of it somehow with some fresh herbs and things like that can really be a way to sneak it in.

Well, this has been fantastic information. I know you have a lot of recipes on your website. They're not all low histamine, so the kind of different options for people at different stages of healing, which is really nice. But I just saw that you had, looked like a chicken rice cilantro dish that was really tasty looking and beautiful pictures on their great recipes. How can people find you? Absolutely. My blog is the Trail to health.com and then you can find me on Instagram, Pinterest, all the socials as the trail to health as well.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us Erica. Really appreciate you sharing knowledge and and and your life experience in this area to help people heal, you know, thank you for having me. It is great to share, share this information and talk with you.