Food, tea and me

As I am going through that wonderful mid-afternoon I-want-to-crawl-in-a-ball-and-sleep phase, I looked up stuff about tea. I am not feeling too well this week as it is and I went to make some tea for the afternoon and I was stumped: which do I make? which will have less of an impact on my already fragile system? So I looked up tea processing and fermentation of tea. As discovered, fermented food and beverages are a no-no for someone with a histamine-intolerance. The end result: white and green teas are safe for me. Most green teas are not oxidized (ie. fermented) and white teas are not fermented at all (http://www.enjoyingtea.com/teaprocessing1.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_processing, http://altmedicine.about.com/od/herbsupplementguide/a/whitetea.htm, etc). Black tea is, of course, the most fermented. Pu'erh is post-fermented, so it goes through the process twice (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155370/?tool=pubmed). Each of these teas have their benefits of course with anti-oxidants, pu'erh is good for digestion, etc. However, that word histamine causes pause to wonder what is the best teas for me to drink. I will keep my black and pu'erh teas in my collection, but have them very sparingly. I have some fantastic green teas and some white. Then I wondered about the Rooibos. It too goes through a fermentation process similar to black tea.

When looking up studies on histamine in PubMed, I discovered that most studies were done in the mid-1990s. I have made some fantastic discoveries. I remember the time I first tried spinach and I felt absolutely gross after. Guess what! It contains a LOT of histamine. I know there are other things that are not agreeing with me, but no idea what or how to tackle the situation. So, after talking it over with mom, I finally made an appointment with my family doc and filled him in on things since I last saw him and asked for a referral to a dietician. It was nice that he wasn't rushed. He even had time to ask if there was anything else and asked about my mom. He calls us the "Bobbsey Twins"; we look very much alike and been having a hell of a time with health stuff over the last couple of years. But we keep smiling and figuring things out. He also sent me for more blood tests to check on things. I will call in a week to ask if the results are in and if I need to make an appointment to see him again. See how it goes :)