Hormones And Histamine: Uncover Their Critical Link

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Thank you so much. I’m super honored to be at today’s summit.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Well, we are excited to dive in. Everything—hormones, histamine, everything like that. But before we get started, could you just give us a little bit of your background and how you got into this space?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Oddly enough, I grew up in the South; I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and my health coach, health class, or wellness club, whatever you want to call it, Whatever we had, like middle school and high school, was taught by the football coach. You can imagine how that went. I realized very quickly that I wanted to be a doctor, but I knew very little about how my own body worked. We weren’t taught that. By the time I found my way into medical school, I was obsessed selfishly with how I function, how my hormones work, and what’s going on with my friends and family. I heard over and over and over again, women say, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that’s how that happened. I just assumed it was normal because my mom or my sister had it too. My best friend does this as well. The more I dove into hormones, the more it made sense to me, so I stuck with hormones through medical school and my residency in private practice. Of course, as you said, I was with the Dutch Test Precision and Analytical for almost a decade and just kept getting deeper and deeper into hormones because they’re so important and we’re not taught a whole lot about them. That’s my background.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. Well, I know we did. We are not. I mean, it’s amazing that we’re just put out. When you think about a gynecologist as someone you’d think to go to for your hormones, I hear over and over again how it’s just like, okay, we’re given birth control or you’re not given any answers, and we need more and more people to look at the hormones. I think one thing about hormones is that they fluctuate your whole life. It’s not something, even though that is a bad thing. It’s just a natural thing. But you always have to be on top of it to keep things balanced as you change, too.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

That’s a key point. What a lot of people, males and females, don’t know is that in our cycling years, our hormones change a little bit every single day. Our estradiol, which is an estrogen or progesterone, affects all the other hormones. It affects our glucose, our insulin, our thyroid, and even our histamine. I mean, it affects everything a little bit every day, depending on where you are in your cycle. Then we do the transition into perimenopause, where it feels very chaotic. Then we transition completely out into menopause, where everything on our ovarian hormone side drops down. If you aren’t taught this, told this, or know this, then this is part of your cycle. You may feel crazy about parts of your cycle; you may have all these symptoms, and then all of a sudden they go away for maybe years or decades. You’re thinking to yourself, I always get this, and I don’t know why. Not realizing it’s completely linked to the cycle and these changing hormones. Just understanding that part can help women feel so much better, so much less, crazier, and so much less like something’s wrong when just our hormones shift.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

I hear a lot of people say they feel good two weeks out of the month. Then, when I hear that, I’m like, Yes, we have a hormone.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes, we do.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

It does say that. Well, can you? It is very interesting with this hormone-histamine connection. I think that people aren’t even expecting a lot of things; when you hear histamine, you first think of allergies. That’s what we’re trying to share. This affects your whole body, hormones being one of them. I know we have a cyclical relationship. Can we first dive into a little bit about how estrogen levels affect histamine and how histamine affects estrogen?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Well, interestingly enough, years ago I remember posting because I knew this information and I posted on social media and I said, Do you ever feel like you come into maybe ovulation or around your cycle and you feel allergic, or you feel flu-like, or you feel itchy, or you like get a headache, or your hives flare up? I was listing all these histamine symptoms that can happen. I probably had a thousand-plus comments from women saying, Yes, that’s me. Then I either get through ovulation or I get through my cycle and it goes away. I just assumed it was something I ate, or it was ragweed season, or it was something very generically histamine-related. they said, but it happened cycle after cycle after cycle. Or, it happened consistently enough. They didn’t realize it was attached to their cycle. I realized at that time, years ago, that we weren’t even taught about our hormones, but just beyond that. 

When we go through our menstrual cycle, we produce estradiol, which is our main estrogen. We have a few estrogens, but estradiol is our main one, and when you get your period, it’s nice and low. Then, before you ovulate or release the egg, it goes up. Think of it like being in a city, and then you’re going to the tippy top of a mountain. That’s the dramatic rise of estrogen. It’s supposed to. That’s what’s supposed to happen. But for some women, an increase in estrogen and estradiol affects their histamine because estrogen and estradiol slow down the rate at which, break down histamine, particularly in foods but it also uses the same cofactors to break down itself. The cofactors we use, like magnesium or zinc, or there’s, some people know the supplement SAM-e, but we call it SAM. SAM-e helps break down estrogen, but it also helps break down histamine through one of your other enzymes. When you have all this estrogen, then what people can say is, I had a glass of wine and completely overreacted. Or I had meat and cheese for a snack and completely overreacted, or maybe I didn’t have any of that stuff and they just felt they completely overreacted with histamine. 

Now, as we get through ovulation, we release the egg. Your estrogen comes down, and then it rises more like a bunny hill. Instead of going up to the top of the mountain, it goes up to a bunny hill. Then it drops down before our period. Then again, that shift in estrogen and progesterone comes down at that point. It shifts in estrogen, and progesterone and then again affects our histamine. On top of that, it’s a two-way street histamine as a molecule can go to our ovaries and say, Hey girls, make more estrogen. The ovaries are like, Okay, let’s do it. Now we can have excess estrogen. Then we were planning on making our little estrogen factories dialed up because of the histamine. Now we can’t break it down. It just keeps going back to the ovary factory and saying, Okay, we’ll make more, and now we get stuck in this conundrum of too much estrogen at that point and too much histamine. We feel terrible. We get all the symptoms, which is not fair.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

I know. Yes. And, I started to see the connection a lot with people who have hormonal migraines, too, because, when you’re looking at that threshold, there’s often that estrogen and histamine. We’re looking at all the connections. It’s like both of them are there. Then you get that hormonal migraine too.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes. The hormonal migrant cramps. There are a lot of receptors in our uterus and a layer of our uterus. It’s the point of it is for implantation. If you are going to. It’s not everybody wants to. Now let’s say you want to. We need histamine, everything is balanced, like Goldilocks. What happens is that estrogen will cause mast cells to release the granulation. Now we have all the systems in other molecules floating around. The point is to tell the uterus, Hey, if a sperm and an egg meet and they want to implant, you need some histamine. You need someone in that area to do their job. But if you don’t want it, we don’t want all the side effects that go with it. I don’t want cramps, and I don’t want diarrhea. I don’t want, like, any of those things down there. I’m not looking to become pregnant. We can also experience symptoms. Just as you said, you might feel it just in your head. You might feel it just in your abdomen. Or you may feel it all over and in your skin. You have itchy skin, or your hives come back. Or, in the worst-case scenario, you have all the above. I mean, I’m sure people are listening, nodding their heads, and going, I have all those things. Yes, that’s all of me. Yes, well, I didn’t realize this.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. and I think that that is so confusing with histamine because you do think like we’re saying, you think of it as allergies, you think of those. But it’s, it comes from almost every cell in our body. We’re starting to see some of these changes. Now, let’s talk a little bit about perimenopause and how this can bring some of the symptoms out more.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

It’s so not fair. As I was saying about the menstrual cycle. Your estrogen and progesterone pretend that you’re on a roller coaster. The roller coaster is very controlled. You’re on rails. You can’t get derailed. That’s what it’s been like through your cycling years. In your teens, your 20s, and into your 30s, you should ideally be very predictable up, down, up estrogen, and then down, up progesterone. The roller coaster when you become perimenopausal, so generally late 30s into your 40s, maybe early 50s, you are shifting. You’re doing the opposite of puberty. In puberty, everything comes online in your brain to get you ready for reproduction and to have a period. When you’re perimenopausal, you unhook everything. You uncouple is what I read in a research paper once said.

I was like, that’s how I feel. That’s so not fair. When you’re making this change, this, this, reverse puberty, so to speak, you go off the rails on your roller coaster. What a lot of women experience is a drop in progesterone. They do not release the egg. They don’t know if they should release the egg. But the cell quality of their 20s is not the same as the cell quality of their 40s. The little progesterone factories have been around for a few decades, but they’re not great at making progesterone anymore. On top of that, the signal to get estrogen is all over the place. One day you’re on the top of a mountain; the next day you’re on a bunny hill; the next day you’re down at city level; then you’re back up on the mountain; and then you’re back at the city. It’s these wild swings, and women feel it. They’ve got hot flashes, night sweats, and brain fog, and their period comes and goes. Now they’re super heavy. then they skip two months, and the joints hurt and their ears itch. All these symptoms happen. Because that estrogen is wild, not a control, histamine, follows suit. 

Because estrogen up and down is affecting how your mast cells do or don’t do granulation. It’s affecting how you do or don’t break down histamine. That’s affecting how you do or don’t balance, so to speak, your immune system, of which your mast cells and histamine are a part. Would these women, who were that much more sensitive or have been struggling to clear their histamine and estrogen out of their bodies, feel more allergic or feel more of these histamine symptoms, and they’re thinking to themselves, What changed? What happened? I didn’t do anything but have a birthday like I didn’t. I didn’t do anything that turned me 45, and all of a sudden I’m getting all these crazy symptoms. I’m so itchy. I’m so runny. I’m so, I know my migraine cure. I get my monster migraines all the time now. I’m like, I don’t know who designed us. I would like to have a word. I know, but this is how they go hand in hand. But there’s stuff you can do. Thankfully, yes.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Then do you see some of these? When we’re talking about his like that overload of estrogen, we know it goes down. If you go through menopause and then you see some of these symptoms start to clear up, then how do you see postmenopausal women?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

When I’m not my own, I am not menopausal, yet I am perimenopausal. But all my menopausal patients were like, It does get better. Like some of these symptoms, not all of them, but some of them do abate, especially if they didn’t know. Like if they didn’t find me till after or find you till after. Then they’re like, I, unfortunately suffering for 10 or 15 years, got through menopause. Thank goodness, my hormones are steady now; they’re low, which is a whole other thing to address. But because they have this low, steady state, like a roller coaster that just stays flat, the histamine isn’t as out of control anymore. It’s a wild ride. Those symptoms do tell me a bit because even one of the very first symptoms of perimenopause that I hear over and over again is that I can’t sleep. I used to sleep, and now I can’t sleep. I can’t fall asleep, and I can’t stay asleep. We know histamine is a pretty stimulatory neurotransmitter in the brain. 

When you are in those wild swings of perimenopause, while that contributes to insomnia or you can’t stay asleep or fall asleep, the swings in histamine do as well in the brain. Just knowing that can be helpful. We can do something about that, like, You’re having these other symptoms. Let’s address both of these molecules and both of these hormones at the same time. Because then, when you get into menopause, I want you in your best shape. I want you to be feeling great and doing great. Supported well. When all the hormones drop, then that’s the next thing we can support. It’s a multi-step process, but just understanding again, I keep going back to saying, like, just understanding that you’re not crazy. Again, I don’t know who designed it. I’m not thrilled, but this is why it’s happening. Then there are things we can do to help support it.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Before we get into it, because everyone wants to know, what do we know? But before we get into it, why don’t we do it? When you’re working with someone with hormones, how do you start to think there is a histamine issue? Like, how do you start? What do you do to identify? We’re having estrogen issues. We’re maybe having low progesterone, but we’re also having histamine issues.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

A lot of it is symptomatic. I always get a very thorough history, just like you. I’m like, What’s going on? What are the symptoms you’re having? A lot of times, they tell me the symptoms without even realizing they’re hormonally attached. Or I will just straight up ask them, knowing they’re having a lot of hormone issues, I will say, Do you get headaches? Yes, I get headaches. Do you treat your headaches? Are these cyclical? Do you of them every day? Do you have them twice a month? Can you tell if they’re around ovulation or your period? For the women who don’t track me, let’s start tracking some of these symptoms. Get an app for free. A period tracker app. Let’s start to track this stuff. For the women who are spot on and can tell me, Carrie, I get a migraine at ovulation, or I get a migraine before my cycle. Okay. Do you feel sick or flu-like before your cycle, or do you feel allergic at all before your cycle? Do you feel an itchy, runny nose? I just ran through some of the histamine symptoms. If they’re like, yes, mind reader, how did you know? I’m like, okay, let’s talk about histamine. A lot of women do tend to show up with some lab work already, maybe done by their OB-GYN or primary care. I may, just as a cheater method, look at the CBC, the complete blood count, look at their eosinophils, and see if they’re out high or even on the high end of normal. The basophils just to get an idea, of starting to look histamine-like to me based on the symptoms, without even spending any money, just going by the symptoms. Some like quick cheater tests; I can go, but if they’ve done their estrogen, if they’ve done their hormones and their progesterone, like sometimes again they come in with it, then I can evaluate from there and go, and your estradiol is higher and your progesterone is lower. You’re already out of balance there. You’re already out of balance with your symptoms. You’re already out of balance in some of your other blood work. I think we have a solid case here. Let’s go forward. Yes.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. It was a surprising question when people were wanting to talk about hormones and you’re saying, Are you congested? 

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

You’re like.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Why are you asking me that?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

I know, yes.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

It fits together that there are reasons why we ask these questions.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Or they’re allergic people. I mean, definitely, in the allergy season, seasonal allergies, or maybe food allergies, sensitivities, or intolerances. To them, it’s nothing new. They’re thinking I’m just an allergic person like I am, my gosh. In the springtime, I’m a hot mess. If I eat certain foods, I’m a hot mess. I’m in and out of antihistamine medications, supplements, or what have you? To them, it’s normal, especially if it runs in the family. When I’m trying to tie it into the hormones, I see all these light bulbs go on. I didn’t realize the hormone imbalance could make the histamine part, the allergic part, so much worse, and vice versa. If we can empty that bucket, we can bring it all down and get it all in rhythm. They can feel so much better.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

That’s yes, that is a great point because, as you said, I think there are a lot of things, and I think the allergy symptoms are one of them that are just normalized. Like, people just think, That’s something I have. That’s something I’ve had my whole life. You normalize like that, that it’s just part of you, rather than realizing, I don’t have to feel this way.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Even in the springtime, or depending on where your allergies are, I would ask women, either when I educate on stage or when I’m talking to patients and clients in the springtime. As an example, is your PMS worse than what your migraines were like? Can you look back? Can you ask your family or your partner, Hey, has anyone noticed? and it’s amazing to me that the number of women echoes. Hold on. Wait a minute. Yes, I got terrible migraines in the spring, and it’s usually around my cycle or my gosh. Yes, my PMS is ten times worse in the spring. I just, and they’ll maybe associate it like I just thought it was because I was rundown. I was constantly a sniffly, snotty mess. Whatever antihistamine medication I was taking or trying to do, I just thought it was stress. I didn’t realize it was just adding more to the bucket like the water was overflowing and it overflows vice versa into the hormone symptoms. Maybe they don’t have PMS in December, January, February, or anything gross, depending on where you live. But then, when you add more seasonal allergies and environmental allergies that set off the histamine, the mast cells, the hormones yesterday, and the progesterone were almost with the histamine, like getting out of my bucket. Then they get all these symptoms, and vice versa. 

The histamines, well, you’re releasing them like you’re encouraging my release. I’ve heard that so many times. Same for foods. When people say, I thought I just thought it was a GI issue or I saw it, I just, I thought I couldn’t have red wine or cured meat or something with histamine, obviously histamine ever again. Then and then I’ll say, this is going to sound weird, but have you ever noticed, like, leading up to your period or after your period, that some women have someone who is like, Yes, I can’t have a glass of wine leading up to my period? I’m just sneezy, snotty, itchy, a hidey headache, the whole thing. But then, after my period, for some reason, I can have a glass of wine. I’m like, not for some reason. It’s it’s it’s the whole system is connected. I’m not saying I’m not trying to advocate for red wine consumption. However, for people who want the occasional glass, it all ties together.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. Because before they understand the bucket, they think, It’s very confusing because it’s like, sometimes I can have a glass of red wine, but sometimes I can’t. But then they start to think, the red wine is not the issue. I mean, it’s a piece of the puzzle. When you sometimes have it and you sometimes don’t, it’s hard to pinpoint if that specific thing does bother you or not.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes, especially if nobody has taught you, it’s about your cycle. Like we just don’t, for the longest time—decades and decades, hundreds of years—we were left out of research studies. Women were because the researchers didn’t want to account for where we were in our menstrual cycle. On the one hand, I can’t blame them because it would be tough to wrangle in. Even if you had a small study of 30 women, it’s hard to wrangle us into things like where you are in your cycle and what you do with whatever the treatment is for a controlled study. But imagine having a study of 1,000 or 10,000 women, and now you’re like, I have to. I have to control all of these during the menstrual cycle. For a long time, we were not taught to include our cycle in anything. It was more the bane of our existence. All the commercials on TV tell us it’s awful. For some women, it is awful. Therefore, we don’t think it through. We don’t know how to think it through when it relates to our health, the rest of our health, and how it interacts with all of our systems. Just understanding that it’s so empowering, honestly, I want us to know that having a menstrual cycle is 100% what makes us us, and we should keep it in consideration.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. I agree. Now let’s get into a little bit of where you would start.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Where would I start? Yes. first and foremost, a lot of it. I, as I said, have a thorough intake. A lot of people have probably been nodding along. They recognize that they have a lot of these symptoms. Maybe they’re going to go back and talk to their practitioner about what’s going on. Number two is that I do like to do testing. I would like to see an example of what estradiol and progesterone are. Now we’re very specific about the testing. If you still have a cycle, you’re on a fairly regular cycle. We’re going to test you about 5 to 7 days after ovulation, which, for a lot of people, they were never told about before. They were told, you’re here today on a Tuesday. Let’s just go ahead and draw your hormones. Meanwhile, nobody’s asked you where you are on your cycle. You want to test in what we call the luteal phase. 5 to 7 days after ovulation. If you are about a 28-day-old person, from period to period, you’re about 28 days old. Generally, you will test on days 19, 20, or 21. That’s first and foremost: get your timing. 

Then you can get a blood draw. You can make estrogen and progesterone in your blood. I do prefer the Dutch test. I’m a little biased, having worked for them. I don’t work for them anymore, but I do like the test because it gives us these breakdown products called metabolites. A metabolite tells me where my hormone is going. You make estrogen, like estradiol. We’ve been talking about where it goes. Not all the pathways are that healthy or that helpful. to the body. I want to know where we’re going so I can help optimize it. When estrogen gets broken down, one of the pathways that it can go through is called methylation. A lot of people have heard of methylation, probably because of MTHFR, and folate. They freak out. I have them so far. 

But actually, what we’re going to talk about is another enzyme called COMT, Catechol-O-methyltransferase. Now here’s why it’s important for histamine that methyltransferase that COMT uses the same cofactors that one of the enzymes that histamine gets broken down by HNMT, Histamine N-methyltransferase. They use the same cofactors. If you’re struggling in the co-factor department, if you’re struggling with estrogen, or if you’re focused on estrogen, then histamine gets left behind and circulates the body, and vice versa. Histamine is taking all the cofactors and histamine is getting broken down. Then estrogen gets left behind, and estrogen circulates the body. I want to see what that’s doing so that I know, as a methyltransferase, we can support it. What are the cofactors? The big one is magnesium. Magnesium is the main cofactor. Zinc can be used as a backup for a lot of your methyl B vitamins. methyl folate, methyl B12, your methyl B6. These B vitamins are super helpful. Phosphatidylcholine. Phosphatidylcholine is prevalent in foods like eggs, for example, egg yolks, and so choline can be helpful. There is another nutrient called trimethylglycine, TMG. Super helpful. Methionine is super helpful. Now for a lot of people, they’re like, these words are going over my head. Just focus on magnesium, and maybe a bit of zinc, because I would argue, and you may or may not agree, that a lot of people are probably deficient in magnesium, especially in immune system stuff. They’re deficient in zinc as well. 

Those are the two main minerals that do the job, humans tend to be deficient in minerals. Those can be helpful with that. I do that testing because I want to gauge, like, what’s your estrogen doing? Then I can extrapolate it to know, like, what is histamine doing? if I can get estrogen back into a good rhythm, meaning I can get it to fire off at the part of the cycle when it’s supposed to be a mountaintop or when it’s supposed to be a bunny hill. If I can get it to go through what we call the garbage system, the like, get rid of it out of the body system, your detox system, then I know it’s only going to beneficially impact histamine as well because it’s estrogen. Super happy Goldilocks! It’s just too big or too small. Then histamine is going to be very similar. Now, there are a lot of antihistamine supplements or medications. I will touch on one prominent one because we hear about it a lot in estrogen, and that is quercetin. 

Quercetin with Q. Quercetin helps your estrogen detoxification. It does help your estrogen go down the pathway in the beginning. It’s a healthier, more helpful pathway. The problem is that quercetin can slow down the second part. If you’re trying to get out of the house and you like to go out of your bedroom, you walk through that door, and then, like, you try to walk out the front door. Quercetin will help open your bedroom door, but it will close the door to the outside. With estrogen, estrogen can get out of the bedroom. But then it’s still in the house. It can’t get out of the front door. We have to do a little bit more of that. Again, magnesium, zinc, or a methyl B complex of some sort. That will help open the front door. Then estrogen can get out and go away. We like quercetin for the histamine part. It’s an antihistamine. But I do have a lot of women who say to me, I take so much quercetin during allergy season. March, April, May, June, and my PMS are the worst. I’m like, well, it could be the histamine, but quercetin also keeps the front door shut. Let’s support that more, specifically for estrogen, and help get it out. There’s a lot of information. But I do want to know why you want people to know that there are things you can do.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

We can link all of those. That way, if someone’s looking for them, we can link them to the summit resources. People can go find them. You brought up so many good points there. One of which is that again, so I’m someone whose genetics is not happy with processing histamine. From an early age, I had a lot of histamine issues. But, as some of the things that drew me into this, because I have to always work on those pathways, there’s a lot of genetic variants. But what you’re saying, which is what we know, is that even if you have these genetics that are setting you up to metabolize certain ways, we can change that.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes, change in support, which is what I love. That one histamine, genetic HMNT, again, anything MT is methyltransferase, COMT methyltransferase. What they do is take a methyl donor and transfer it onto something; they transfer it onto histamine; they transfer it onto estrogen. The whole point of that is to get it out. It’s part of the like; goodbye now. Thank you. Goodbye. Now you need to go. Here’s your card to go away. Like go out the kidneys or go out the stool, etc. We have over 200 methyltransferases in our body. We’re just talking about two today. This methyltransferase is if any of them are struggling or if you’re deficient in any of those nutrients that I mentioned, the magnesium, the zinc, the methyl B vitamins, the choline, etc., it’s going to affect all your methyltransferase. It’s possible your histamine is not necessarily because of these genetics that breaks histamine down, but could also be because you have other methyltransferases that are sucking up all the resources. Histamine and estrogen get what’s left over. That’s not fair. We can make these changes. 

Again, I mentioned this supplement part because I know this summit is so good and I know the speakers are so wonderful. There are a lot of lifestyle suggestions in a lot of these talks. Since I am specifically focused on estrogen, instead of repeating what’s already been repeated with all the lifestyle stuff, I’m just going to stick to it. It’s pretty key for estrogen and histamine. But to know that if you have other methyltransferase issues, just supporting them will support all 200 of them. That’s wonderful. We can now get all the cogs on the clock turning at the same time. Now with estrogen 2, we do want to be aware we can’t necessarily test for them per se, but even estrogenic chemicals do play a role. Your estrogen may be okay. 

But if you are swimming in parabens and phthalates and synthetic fragrance and plastics, which are part of that, etc., from your detergent, your skincare, your makeup, and the candle you burn and the plugin, you have the plastic you’re eating out of that acts estrogenic. Those are what are called the endocrine-disrupting family of chemicals and estrogen. Your ovaries sit in the endocrine system. If you disrupt that system, you’re going to get symptoms. It’s also going to affect your histamine. Something as easy as switching to glass, stainless steel, or porcelain for your cooking. You’re storing your drinks by looking at the ingredients for your skincare and your detergent. Be mindful of those candles being real, or just don’t even use those plug-ins. Like, come on, just these baby steps can be a huge deal for taking, again, the water out of the estrogen bucket. Not only is detoxification important for both histamine and estrogen, but we also like to be conscious. What are you adding to the bucket at the same time? What can we do to reduce that load?

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes, I agree. If you feel overwhelmed, just take one product at a time and take your time.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. Because I think sometimes people are like, Well, what do I do? I have to change everything, and maybe it’s expensive, but if you do one product at a time and think about that new product, then eventually it’s going to be all cleaned up.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

I’ve been doing this. I don’t know how long you’ve been doing this, but I’ve been doing this wellness thing for 24 years. I tell people I’m in the 24th chapter of my book, and if you are, this is your first exposure ever. That means you’re in chapter one. Like, please don’t compare yourself to how far I’ve come. I did not do all the things I wanted to do 24 years ago. It’s taken me 24 years of work to get where I’m at and make the changes from top to bottom, everything from air filters to water filters. My mattress. I did not buy that stuff in the beginning. I started with products like, okay, I’m out of detergent, new detergent. Okay, I’m out of deodorant, get a new deodorant. Okay. I’m like, let’s find a clean makeup company and go from there. Let’s find clean skincare and go from there like I just did. Candles. No more of the popular, super-scented plug-ins. Now, everything I’m doing, it’s the essential oils, healthier, and trying to reduce that risk. Yes. and just one at a time. I’m such a big fan of Don’t Go Broke and Don’t Stress Yourself Out, because it recently added to the bucket.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes, but.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

It will be helpful. Yes.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

I read that it was about that same time, about 24 years ago. I read my first book about toxins and all in the products, and I had to put it down and, just like, set it aside for a month. I was like, okay, this feels so overwhelming, and I can’t, like, bring it all, like, how do I even start? I just set it aside. Then I came back to it and was like, Okay, what, and where do I start? What’s that one thing you can do? If you keep doing that, you get to the point. Now, the one other thing a lot of women have is low progesterone. How do you see that playing into this overall picture too?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Progesterone and estrogens are best friends. They need each other, and they come out dominantly at different parts of your cycle. Your estrogen is pretty dominant before you ovulate, and then after you ovulate and release the egg, whether you’re trying to get pregnant or not, it doesn’t matter. But when you do, you’ll still ovulate, hopefully, and then you’ll make a boatload. You make, like again, like two mountaintops worth of progesterone. You make more progesterone than you do estrogen in your body in that second half. It’s a relative ratio between the two. Do you have epically high levels of progesterone? Then Bunny Hill levels of estrogen. That’s typical. That’s what you should have if that’s out of balance at all. If you are not ovulating, you don’t make progesterone. Or if your factories are not making progesterone that well, You’re making pretty low levels of progesterone. Now that you’re out of ratio, you’re out of balance. You will often see it referred to as estrogen dominance.

What we’re referring to is a longer statement that we shorten. We’re saying that in the second half of your cycle, in the luteal phase, your estrogen is winning relative to your progesterone. You feel these symptoms, and they’re the same: higher estrogen and lower progesterone are the same. When progesterone is low, this imbalance of estrogen is going to affect your histamine as well. Studies have shown that when you have great, healthy, wonderful levels of progesterone, that can actually help keep estrogen in check and therefore also keep histamine in check as well. Now what happens is that if we don’t ovulate, we call it anovulatory cycle, which is common in conditions like PCOS, and polycystic ovary syndrome. It is common in perimenopause. It’s common for a lot of reasons. 

I’m not saying it’s normal, but it is common. These women tend to show more histamine symptoms because they don’t have that countermeasure of progesterone floating around in higher levels than their bodies, and estrogen seems to maybe run wild, to be a good analogy, and allow histamine to do its thing, and vice versa. Then histamine gets higher and tells the ovary factory, Hey, make more estrogen. it does. There’s no progesterone there that referees or police a situation. Even just supporting progesterone in these women, getting them to ovulate again, figuring out why they’re not ovulating, or maybe they’re at an age where they need progesterone by bioidentical progesterone. That alone may make a big difference in their histamine symptoms because now you’re giving them that progesterone back again. 

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Yes. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for all the great information the great information you have shared. I know, this is an interest for so many women out there. I think a lot more women are having this issue than even realize that they are when it comes to the hormones, the histamines, and all of these connections. Can you tell our audience where they can find you?

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Absolutely. I am at the drcarriejones.com and I am on social media as well, it’s the same. Instagram @dr.carriejones and I am dipping my toe in TikTok, @DrCarrieJones. I would love to teach more about hormones over there.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. Her Instagram account is great, funny, and fun. Go over and check it out. Thanks for joining us today, Carrie.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Thank you.

Meg Mill, PharmD, AFMCP

Have a great day, everyone.