Tonight I found two gems that I wish to share

“The major effects of stress on gut physiology include:

1. alterations in gastrointestinal motility;
2. increase in visceral perception;
3. changes in gastrointestinal secretion;
4. increase in intestinal permeability;
5. negative effects on regenerative capacity of gastrointestinal mucosa and mucosal blood flow; and
6. negative effects on intestinal microbiota.

Mast cells (MC) are important effectors of brain-gut axis that translate the stress signals into the release of a wide range of neurotransmitters and proinflammatory cytokines,”[2011]

Histamine released from Mast Cells cause many of the symptoms of a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction. So I was about to do a quick review of PubMed for candidates that reduced Mast Cell release:

• Lactobacillus GG (LGG) [2014] – strong impact – Commercial Probiotic: Culturelle
• L. salivarius HMI001 [2012]
• L. casei Shirota (LCS)  [2012]
• Lactobacillus plantarum depends on the specific strain — if not known, avoid
  • LS/07 CCM7766 [2015] – moderate impact
  • L. plantarum WCFS1 – INCREASES Mast Cell release [2012]

I have an ongoing interest in this area, and this is a followup to my Jan 20th post dealing with Histamine Producing Bacteria and their treatment. In that article I found that Cinnamon, Clove, Sage were good candidates for reducing Proteus morganii  (All species) which is likely an overgrowth in sensitive individuals (To confirm that, we will need a population of histamine-sensitive people getting their gut bacteria sequence).

When I did from googling on those and histamines, I found that they were frequently referred to as histamine liberators [Amy Burkhart, M.D.]. That description is probably very correct — the histamine is being released from dead and dying Proteus morganii.

Unfortunately, some cases writers deem them to be histamine producers [ref, ref] which clouds the issue for sufferers and may prevent them from being released from this problem!

Die-Off or the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction

Wikipedia has a good summary of the “Herx”. I have experienced this on several occasions and actually view it as an indicator that I am taking an effective herb, spice or antibiotic for what was making me sick. The Herx stopped with remission. By moderating the dosage, I could tune the herx to last only a few hours (or at night, all night long) – with the result that after the herx ended, I felt better.

• “plasma histamine concentrations rose appreciably before and during the clinical phase of the reaction.”[1985 Full Text]

So the question then becomes one of moderating the histamine release. I recently came across G. Pelletier’s “Naturally Occurring Antihistamines in Body Tissue” in Histamine II and Anti-Histaminics Handbuch der experimentellen Pharmakologie / Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology Volume 18 / 2, 1978, pp 369-380

He found that arginine – an amino acid, had significant impact and was the easiest to obtained of items listed. Interestingly, I found that arginine was usually associated with histamine in most online patient-written articles and recommended to be avoided. In other articles, I found that histidine and arginine tend to bind to each other (potentially reducing the risk of histidine being converted to histamine?). Going to PubMed, I found

• “Our findings reveal that malarial-parasite-infected mice, like humans, develop L-arginine deficiency, which is associated with intestinal mastocytosis, elevated levels of histamine, and enhanced intestinal permeability.” [2013], so arginine deficiency and elevated histamine appears associated. And supplementation can reduce it.
• “Arginine and glutamine attenuate IgE-dependent human mast cell activation” [2013]
• “while the histamine response in cells cultured in a high Arginine concentration was suppressed” [2013]

The histamine model for CFS may apply to some. I know two people that had CFS which ?progressed? to histamine intolerance. With the gut model for CFS, a percentage could go down that pathway. My thinking is that a percentage of histamine intolerance patients is caused by overgrowth in the gut some histamine producing species, thus reducing them should reduce symptoms.

Tonight I decided to gather up as much information about known histamine producing species as a start point. A 1991 study found just 55 of 568 examined bacteria produced histamines (about 10%) and of these 55, 51 were Enterobacteriaceae.

• Proteus morganii, All species. This is a species that is normally in the gut, thus it’s overgrowth is reasonable.
• Klebsiella pneumoniae, 5/6 of the species
• Escherichia coli, just 1/3 of the species
• Enterobacter aerogenes,
• Enterobacter cloacae ,
• Proteus sp., (vulgaris, mirabilis.
• Edwardsiella sp. ,
• Vibrio spp.
• Source: [ref] [1991]

The Proteus species were more active at a pH of 5(acid) than pH 7 (Neutral), which may account for severe reaction to lemon and grapefruit juices because they will grow much better in that environment. It also hints that using baking soda (high pH) may reduce the histamine production.

Fish: Many species have high or even extreme level of histamines, these include: saury, tuna, bonito, butterfly kingfish, mackerel and mahi mahi.

What are the convention symptions of histamine excess?

“Onset of the poisoning symptoms ranges from a few minutes to a few hours after eating. Victims generally experience a flushing of the face and neck, a throbbing headache, dizziness, faintness, and an itching, burning sensation in the
mouth and throat. The fish, as consumed, may have a sharp, peppery flavor and invariably contain high levels of free histamine, usually in excess of 100 mg/100 g”. Fresh tuna have been reported to be often at 600 mg/100 g.

Treatment of Morganii

According to Wikipedia, the following have a high success rate, but more and more resistance is reported.

• Ticarcillin
• Piperacillin
• Ciprofloxacin
• Third-generation and fourth-generation cephalosporins

In terms of herbs, Salvia officinalis (common sage) has a 75% inhibitory rate[2004 Full Text] (versus 90% with the above antibiotics). Clove Oil, lemongrass and sweet basil oils are also reported effective (listed in order of effectiveness)[2013]. Another study found Cinnamon and clove did better(significant effect) than turmeric and cardamon(moderate effect) [1996]

So we do have a set of easy to obtain spices and herbs that would inhibit Morganii (assuming that the histamine issue was cause by an overgrowth of them).

Over the last month, there have been significant stress in my life from health concerns for someone close to me. The stress has resolved and my stress response is dropping. Since I had a Thryve report before the stress and another one during the stress, I thought that it would be nice to see if my changes matched any of the changes reported in the literature. The literature tend to be from long term stress, hence the results of cascading changes. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to see what changed against what was reported in the study.

The process is simple, go to the Samples page and click the compare (you will be comparing against yourself).

The next page is just selecting the sample and any reference literature you want to compare against. In this case, stress

This takes you to the comparison page. I am only interested in items with Direction where my before values as between 25-75%ile and the value shifted to match the literature. There were three genus as shown below

I then went and checked these 4 genus to create a hand-pick sample to get suggestions for.

The suggestions actually included many things that I had started taking due to a gut feeling (bad pun).

Bottom Line

Stress is something that can rarely be avoided. If you have an unstressed reference sample then when stress happens, you may be able to identify critical shifts and counteract the stress impact on the microbiome..

Of course, this is all theoretical.