Histamines and crohn's

histamines and crohn's

As I mentioned in the my story post, I successfully treated my flares with Claritan. This after linking my flares to the pollen season and by chance googling the fact that you have histamine receptors in the bowel. So I gave it a shot and within three days after starting claritan the D would go away and I would take a daily Calritan for a few months, at some point stopping and I'd be OK until the next time, usually the fall pollen season.

Now I found some information supporting why I was successful. I'm too new to post links, so mods please forgive me for circumventing the rules, I'm pretty sure you are targeting spammers by that. www-dot-wjgnet-dot-com/1007-9327/11/2851.pdf

Inside that doc is this paragraph, "Interestingly, mast cells originated from the resected colon of active Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis were
able to release more histamine than those from normal
colon when being stimulated with an antigen, colon-derived
murine epithelial cell-associated compounds[11]. Similarly,
cultured colorectal endoscopic samples from patients with
IBD secreted more histamine towards substance P alone
or substance P with anti-IgE than the samples from normal
control subjects under the same stimulation"

Now my latest flare was bad and it just didn't work. So maybe it's the end of the road for me and this method. Then again, I started taking Advil's for some shoulder pain during this latest flare and maybe I caused my own severe flare.

I am not a doctor and so I am not recommending this for anyone, just offering a piece to the puzzle and hopefully it can help. Also I am new here so please let me know if this is too technical or not appropriate to post.

Good luck everyone!

I think it is a cool idea. I would say that I am pretty confident in my belief that allergen load in a constant chronic sense is kind of what gets me in trouble too. But I shy away from the whole "Acute target reaction" search and go for the more expanded overall allergen load over years type idea.

I have had good success with Immune suppression therapy in mitigating not only Crohns Disease but also Arthritic, Asthmatic and classic allergic issues. All these health problems seem tied together for me and have responded to the treatment.

Kenny where I live the pollen is really bad. They say you can develop hay fever just by living here long enough. So I would agree with you on the long term exposures thing.

I fix air conditioners for a living. So I can get a snoot full of pollen any time of year, just demolishing some old dusty duct work or something, and I do get flares then. When I retraced my steps back to when this first showed up I had a job of cleaning a commercial air handler that had drainage issues for a long time. It had black mold that was just thick, scrape it off the walls in big slimy goo balls thick. Of course being a young 20 something tough guy I didn't use any sort of mask or gloves. I always looked at that as maybe an acute exposure that caused my problems. But I could never prove it out.

Mastocytic enterocolitis?

I'm just going to use this thread to dump my research into on why claritan helped me in the past.

I found another article which rings a bell with me. below is the link. Has anyone ever heard of MASTOCYTIC ENTEROCOLITIS? It's said to be a new IBD disease. My colonoscopy revealed chron's entercolitis, meaning it's at the place where the small bowel attach's to the colon. As I have said before claritan worked for me. Now they didn't test my biopsies for this, too bad I guess, do they save the tissue? probably not. Anyway the food doc maybe is a good resource also. Good luck everyone!

thefooddoc-dot-blogspot-dot-com/2008/02/questions-and-answers-about-diagnosis.html

I was told by the rheumatologist that antihistamines are good for all types of auto-immune diseases. She said auto-immune diseases produce histamine
and taking a mild antihistamine is a good thing. So I take 60 mg of allegra everyday. She said it would help the rib pain I've had and also Crohns
Bethy

Bethy, My family doctor gave me an allegra prescrition once. I found it worked the same as Claritan, which I can get pretty cheap in generic form at Costco.

Do you feel like it helps with your Crohn's?

My former GI doctor said she was surprised it worked because in her opinion since you have type two histamine recptors in your gut it shoud not have helped. Claritan, and probably Allegra also, is a type 1. But I have read that type 1 antihistamines also work in your gut and that is my personal experience as well.

Yeah one time I ran out of allegra and I used claritin it worked well. I find when I miss a few doses my sinuses as well as my gut act up.
Bethy
PS I have a sneaky suspicion that this whole disease has alot to do with our bodies allergies and reactions bf I started to take allegra, one day I woke up had swollen eyes shut, nose swollen, was hoarse ,had rashes over my body, and GI difficulties.

Bethyd78,

I see my new doctor today and I am going to ask him about Mastocytic Enterocolitis or Mastocytic Inflammatory Bowel Disease which is explained in the following link, which recomends antihistamine as a treatment.

I agree with the idea that our bodies are reacting to something. What bugs me about things like Humira, which I am not knocking at all, is they just suppress the reaction. I would much rather prevent the reaction!


http://thefooddoc.blogspot.com/2008/02/questions-and-answers-about-diagnosis.html

This may be the same link I posted before in ths thread...oops sorry! lol

Thank you for the information on histamine receptors. That is a pretty important find, in my book.

I also have Fall allergies, and so does my oldest son. By chance, I mentioned this to my Chiropractor while getting my faulty back straightened out.

She gave me a homeopathic remedy for a Mold allergy. I had no indication that I had such an allergy, as I had a pin prick test done a while ago and it indicated an allergy to Rag Weed.

The Rag Weed allergy made sense from one perspective, but not another. I would get most of my symptoms in the Fall, which is consistent with Rag Weed.

On the other hand the allergy would always get much worse when it rained, which did not make sense at all for Rag Weed. Mold did make sense from this perspective.

Anyway, I have not had to take a hay Fever medication since I used the homeopathic remedy over two years ago.

My son who has the same allergy only far worse, also used the same remedy and in one week his symptoms were 90% better by his estimation.

I had never used a homeopathic remedy before, and really did not expect much from it. I cannot deny that it worked, and worked exceptionally well for my son's extremely bad allergies. Allergy shots did not work nearly as well, but did slightly reduce his symptoms.

If anyone has fall allergies, that get worse when it rains, you may want to try this out. It cannot harm you in any way, so you only risk the price of the product. You can buy it in the link below. The same product is sold on many sites, but this is the first one that came up. It is the same one we both used.

http://organicpharmacy.org/products/Mold.Mix.1.(A-21)?gclid=CLHT5oah8qECFVZL5wodPjAwmA

Dan

Ok just got back from the new doctor. He said if it was a mastocytosis disease, as the article I posted discussed, they would have seen it in the biopsies, I asked about the staining and counting the mast cells and he says not needed it just looks different. Not an answer that is satisfying, but what can you do.


He had no idea why claritan helped me in the past and suggested maybe I did not have crohn's in the past. It's hard when the doctor doesn't concur with your your own experiences of something that has worked.

Oh well.... good luck to us all.

http://indarchphotoword.blogspot.com/2008/06/mastocytic-enterocolitis-patient-guide.html

Here is some more information in mastcytic enterocolitis The treatment for this is antihistamines. Very interesting...

Th is a fascinating report. If you search the patent database (which is where you find the really innovative treatments years before you hear about them elsewhere), you will find info about using antihistamines in Crohn's.

It makes sense, and the fact that your doctor doesn't agree - there is a saying that a degree never hurt anyone who was willing to learn after getting one... well most docs are beyond learning anything new, unless it brings them research funds or honor...

Advil would cause a different type of damage to your gut mucosa, so it would make sense than an anti-histamine may not be effective there.

What daily dose of Claritan did you take? 10mg? And how soon do you notice the effect on the flare? Did you monitor with blood tests too?

Well done! The best discoveries in medicine have always been incidental findings.

hopeful said:

Th is a fascinating report. If you search the patent database (which is where you find the really innovative treatments years before you hear about them elsewhere), you will find info about using antihistamines in Crohn's.

It makes sense, and the fact that your doctor doesn't agree - there is a saying that a degree never hurt anyone who was willing to learn after getting one... well most docs are beyond learning anything new, unless it brings them research funds or honor...

Advil would cause a different type of damage to your gut mucosa, so it would make sense than an anti-histamine may not be effective there.

What daily dose of Claritan did you take? 10mg? And how soon do you notice the effect on the flare? Did you monitor with blood tests too?

Well done! The best discoveries in medicine have always been incidental findings.

Click to expand...

I would take the normal dose, 1 tablet a day. I would do so once I started getting D and pain and it usually took about three days to start clearing up. I continued for the duration of the pollen season, about mid june or so around here.

Congratulations to you for using your brains to figure the association. I wish docs would too...

In Japan they use a drug called Tranilast (a mast cell inhibitor) for Crohn's when other things don't work. It is an anti-allergy drug, pity its not available in the West.

I once had a doctor willing to perscribe allegra based on my story, I was not yet diagnosed with CD. I found it to be equally affective as Clariatn so I never refilled the script.

Antihistamines

Diagnosed with Crohns in 1987. Had a bad reaction to mosquito bite during that period and took benedryl to relieve the bite. Noticed it also relieved my Crohns symptoms. Makes sense - auto immune disorder produces histamine therefore anithistamine helps. Not saying that other symptoms related to Crohns like blockages etc can be resolved but it cured canker type sores within my GI system.

Hi Anne. I wish that Claritan was still all I needed to take. It did work for a long time. I also was able to stop abdominal pains with a biofeedback/relaxation technique. I can't explain how I did it, but I could cause the pains to subside. The immune system is very complicated.

Some interesting reading for anyone benefiting from taking anti histamines.

Next time anyone here gets a colonoscopy, I would ask them to stain for mast cells when they check the biopsies.

Hello

Just wanted to let you all know I came across this site while looking up more information on my mastocytic entercolitis. I was diagnosed in June. It does require them to do a special stain on the biopsy from the colon. Luckily I have a GI doctor who tests people for ME...If the histamines help you, you may be on to something. I take a class 1 and class 2 histamine daily..zyrtec (the class 1) once daily and then zantac (the class 2 histamine) twice daily..

I'm 32 and went from healthy to very ill overnight..I can completely understand all your struggles and hope everyone is doing ok!!

Mendy

Which site? (You probably cannot post url's as you are a new member - but if you put the name without the www. it should show us the site name). Thanks.

Hi Mendy! I was wondering when our first case of ME would show up! Do you know how long your GI has been staining for it and what prompted him to do so? It's still very rare for GIs to do so and I think some people aren't getting the proper care they need because of it. I'd love to get your GI's insight so we can determine if we should prompt more people to demand ME staining when they get their colonoscopies done.

Is your doctor Dr. Scot Michael Lewey by chance?

From the http://www.thefooddoc.com/mastoctosislinkpage.html

"The surface lining of the intestine in this condition almost always looks completely normal so to detect this disorder biopsies have to be done by the doctor even when the intestine looks normal.
Furthermore, mast cells cannot be readily seen or counted using the standard stains done on intestinal biopsies.

To be detected, MCE requires that the doctor performing the scope procedure and/or the pathologist reviewing the biopsy slides have suspicion of the condition or that they routinely perform special stains (tryptase immunohistochemistry stains) that these cells stain with and bring them to light so that they are easy to see and count."

So, crohnicaly stinky, you're doctor was plain WRONG when he said 'it just looks different. No it doesn't, he has to actively look for it (or the pathologist).

I'm having a flare-up right now and i'm using fasting to pipe it down again, combined with 4-6 grams of vitamin c a day to control oxidative damage and up to 25 mg of melatonin to improve my sleep during...proper sleep rythm is VERY important in crohn's.

I'll go out and grab some loratadin, and see if it works. I know by experience that if something works really well, i will get a fuzzy warm glow coming from the diseased parts very very quickly.

And your doctors? Forget them, they are f**king useless. I'm ill now for 17 years and i literally started getting better the moment i stopped listening to them. My GP is a far better help, at least he has an open mind.

TBH, i'm pretty sure fora like this are a far better help to most patients than the average ibd-specialist...most of them are arrogant as hell. :ymad::ymad: