Yes, high histamine levels, especially from histamine intolerance, can directly cause or worsen anxiety, panic attacks, and nervousness, as histamine acts as a neurotransmitter influencing brain functions like mood and stress response, with excess levels activating the nervous system and leading to feelings of unease, restlessness, and an alerted "fight-or-flight" state.
How to Reduce Histamine and Anxiety
Individuals with histamine intolerance often present with a constellation of neuropsychiatric symptoms, including:
For example, respiratory symptoms associated with histamine receptor intolerance include rhinorrhea, rhinitis, nasal congestion, dyspnea, and sneezing [19,21]. Histamine receptors are present in the skin; therefore, there will be skin manifestations, including pruritis, flushing, urticaria, dermatitis, and swelling.
Currently, the only evidence-based strategy for alleviating or preventing symptoms is adherence to a low-histamine diet, often supplemented with exogenous DAO to enhance histamine breakdown at the intestinal level [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16].
Vitamin C. Vitamin C is a very common and well-known nutrient to strengthen the immune system and reduce inflammation. Vitamin C is also required to produce the necessary enzymes for the process of histamine breakdown, making it a vital anti-histamine nutrient.
Many people believe they experience a “histamine dump.” This phenomenon usually happens at night when your body releases a sudden surge of histamine. A histamine dump can interrupt your sleep and cause headaches, flushing, itching, anxiety, and a racing heart.
Medical Conditions
Autoimmune disorders affect immune system function, which might lead to more histamine being released (11). Another condition causing elevated histamine levels is mastocytosis, rare disorder involving abnormal mast cell growth—the cells that make and store histamine (12).
Thus, histamine is an important regulator of sleep—wake cycles and probably contributes to the diurnal changes in other brain functions as well. Histamine also reduces seizure activity, another H1 receptor-mediated effect. H1 antagonists increase seizure onset and/or seizure duration in humans and animals.
Vitamin B 6: Often there is a deficiency
In studies and in practice, it was found that many affected people have histamine intolerance, a vitamin B6 deficiency. Some sources state that vitamin B6 is required for the synthesis of the enzyme dao and is involved in the breakdown process of histamine.
Acute stress increases the histamine turnovers in the diencephalon, nucleus accumbens and striatum. Histamine regulates anterior pituitary hormones. Anxiolytic drugs also decrease brain histamine turnover. Histamine H1 receptor antagonists and H3 receptor agonists decrease the anxiety state.
Vitamin B12 supports the methylation process—a biochemical pathway that helps the body detoxify and regulate histamine levels. When B12 is lacking, methylation slows down, leading to higher histamine concentrations in the blood.
Antihistamines can effectively reduce histamine levels in your body, which may alleviate anxiety symptoms associated with histamine intolerance. These medications work by blocking the effects of histamine on your nervous system, providing relief from allergic reactions that can exacerbate anxiety.
Histamine-induced anxiety can feel like restlessness, a racing heart, palpitations, or a sense of unease.
Like Benadryl, hydroxyzine is an antihistamine. It has sedative properties and is frequently used off-label for many conditions. These include insomnia, nausea, vomiting, itching, and skin rashes. Unlike Benadryl, hydroxyzine has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of anxiety.
H1 and H2 antihistamines.
H1 histamine inhibitors include cetirizine, loratadine and fexofenadine. They usually treat allergy symptoms. H2 inhibitors include ranitidine and famotidine.
Excess histamine can cause a variety of different symptoms which very often mimic allergic reactions. The most common symptoms are rashes (e.g. hives), itching, flushing, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), indigestion, breathlessness, palpitations, migraines, dizziness, anxiety/panic, joint aches and nasal congestion.
Lifestyle Changes to Calm Neuroinflammation and Promote Brain Health
Consequently, drugs that act as antagonists and block histamine activity in the CNS would decrease the level of arousal or alertness.
An unbalanced and elevated quantity of histamine in HIT seems to be the main consequence of the ingestion of histamine-containing foods [2]. Predominantly, in HIT, the intestinal enzyme diamine oxidase (DAO) has a reduced ability to metabolize and degrade histamine.
Yes, magnesium helps regulate mast cell activity and can reduce histamine release. Does B12 stabilize mast cells? Yes, vitamin B12 supports nervous system health and may help stabilize mast cells, especially in MCAS patients with neurological symptoms.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) develops when mast cells become overactive and release their contents, which include histamine and other substances that cause inflammation and allergy symptoms.
Histamine levels are another potent downstream target. Allergic symptoms exacerbate during nighttime and plasma histamine levels exhibit nocturnal peaks. In mastocytosis patients, peak levels of plasma histamine were observed in the early morning with the lowest in the afternoon (19).
Under normal circumstances your GP should be able to make a diagnosis, or send you to the right medical department that could investigate further.
So if you suffer from histamine intolerance, you should prefer calmer sports such as strength training, Pilates or yoga. Interesting fact: Cardio training releases histamine and other inflammation substances, but the effect only takes temporary (up to 72 hours).