#406 Listener Q&A: Histamine and Is GI Map the Best Diagnostic Test?

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I’m answering two listener questions—one about histamine intolerance and another about gut testing for a 3-year-old with allergies and chronic symptoms. If you’ve ever wondered whether histamine is really the problem or if stool testing is worth the investment, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I share why histamine intolerance is almost always a secondary issue (not the root cause), what body systems need support instead, and how I approach gut testing in young kids—especially when allergies, itching, and immune symptoms are involved. I also walk through how to think critically about testing and what questions to ask before you invest.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Why histamine isn’t the root cause—and what usually is
• How symptoms like allergies, flushing, anxiety, or hives can signal deeper dysfunction
• When DAO enzymes might help—and why I rarely use them
• What the GI MAP stool test actually reveals (and what it doesn’t)
• The #1 mistake people make with testing—and how to avoid it
• How to think like a practitioner when evaluating symptoms, history, and lab data

❓Questions for Christa? Submit it here: https://www.christabiegler.com/questions

🚨Christa is currently taking clients through the end of June! Book a call here: https://www.christabiegler.com/schedule

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

 🍽️ Over restriction is dead
 🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
 🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
 🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
 💛 Do your best and leave the rest

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:29] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:00:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Hey, welcome back. If you missed it. Last week I talked about how in the month of June, I'm gonna take listener questions and answer those on each week of the podcast. So each week I'll just do two listener q and as. It's a fun way for me to interact with you because podcasting can be a little bit one sided and I.

[00:01:04] Christa Biegler, RD: It's just nice to see what kind of questions are coming up for you. So the first question this week is from Caitlin. Caitlin says, I just listened to your lessons from Krista Health Crisis episode. By the way, this was in March. A couple of times you mentioned how histamine is a secondary issue, and I was like, yes.

[00:01:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Finally. I am still in the earlyish stage of trying to wrap my head around histamine intolerance, but it seems like all I'm finding is stuff about dietary restriction, DAO supplements, and I know there has to be more than that. That's not really sustainable long-term and doesn't address root causes. I think you mentioned in passing that the underlying issues could include stuff like gut and liver.

[00:01:42] Christa Biegler, RD: I would love to hear more of your thoughts on that. Please, thank you so much.

[00:01:46] Christa Biegler, RD: First of all, Caitlin, thank you for your excitement and thoughtful message. We are kindred spirits. We are totally on the same page, and it is absolutely a light in my day to hear someone say yes. Finally, when they hear histamine isn't the root cause.

[00:02:01] Christa Biegler, RD: It is a secondary cause. That just tells me you're ready. For a deeper level of healing. So let's go ahead and set the stage about histamine. I think we could educate on this all day, and I think context is important. So first of all, histamine is a natural neurotransmitter. It's not inherently bad.

[00:02:21] Christa Biegler, RD: It is. Meant to be there. It helps relay messages in our body and plays a role in vasodilation, which increases blood flow. It plays a role in inflammatory responses like swelling and redness, and it also affects gut, skin, brain, cardiovascular function. It can create lots of symptoms that are very familiar to people, like difficulty falling asleep, difficulty regulating body temperature.

[00:02:44] Christa Biegler, RD: If you're always turning the temp up and down in the car, and I see it all the time because I work with a lot of skin issues and food sensitivities, and it can get quite. Severe it can cause flushing and it can also just cause those typical allergy symptoms that you're more used to. It can also cause anxiety that kind of pops out of nowhere.

[00:03:02] Christa Biegler, RD: So it's a fun one that's a little bit of a wild card. It circulates in the bloodstream, so the symptoms can generally show up anywhere and I would say that it's usually a factor in most eczema in general. My thing is reducing the load. If we need to or whenever possible, which usually it is absolutely possible and to support if a person is extremely reactive.

[00:03:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay, so I think I missed a few symptoms. I would just wanna mention that I think can be really useful to understand. Headaches, migraines, flushing, hives. I mentioned anxiety, fast or irregular. Heart rate, nasal congestion, trouble sleeping, regulating temperature. I know I mentioned those already. Fatigue.

[00:03:45] Christa Biegler, RD: You can have some irregular menstrual cycles and then also some gut symptoms. So it varies from person to person. People can have the same root causes and it could present in different ways. So a reminder histamine's not a primary issue. It's a secondary issue. So genetics, like Caitlyn said, can affect how quickly you metabolize or break down histamine, meaning your genetics indicate how.

[00:04:08] Christa Biegler, RD: Fast or how slow your DAO enzymes and your HNMT enzymes will work. These are genes that dictate the speed of the enzyme. But in most people, there are things that slow those enzymes down more, namely things that are going on in the gut and the immune system and things blocking the elimination of that histamine.

[00:04:32] Christa Biegler, RD: And there's lots of things that block our elimination of things. As Caitlyn alluded to, some common root contributors can be gut imbalances, dysbiosis, bacterial overgrowth, which alone produce histamines, so it just increases the overall level of histamines. Any sluggishness to drainage liver? I. And just an overall burden.

[00:04:52] Christa Biegler, RD: So if you have a lot of histamine coming in, so any kind of mold exposure can create a lot of burden coming in that taxes, histamine even further. And finally, nutrient deficiencies, which are going to be a side effect of any of these above issues can impact enzyme function. You always need nutrients to make.

[00:05:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Make the gears turn. You always need workers to make the gears turn. So I look at histamine issues as part of an overall systems imbalance. Here's how I typically address it. One, reduce the load temporarily. This might include. The problem is this is where the internet stops with its help. And so this just means if you need to, you can reduce the load coming in.

[00:05:31] Christa Biegler, RD: This is sometimes necessary in this literal season. It is springtime. It's still officially spring as of this recording, so we've got a lot of histamine. Depending on where you are in the US or in the world, lots of things blooming, so reducing the load temper, you can't do a lot about the pollen, it just depends on how can you reduce your load, which a lot of times it is what you're consuming.

[00:05:51] Christa Biegler, RD: And we wanna make it as simple as possible. So I always tell my clients like, just sub it in with something you're not even going to miss. If it's, if you're. Consuming a lot of bananas, swap it with peaches. It's lower histamine, so that just might mean some simple food adjustments or some strategic support.

[00:06:07] Christa Biegler, RD: But it's a very, as Caitlyn said, a very short term thing. And this is, I'm never about a permanent restriction. So we can add in support if someone's really reactive. I don't really use a lot of DAO enzymes. That would be with extreme mast cell activation, which I'm generally avoiding. I don't think most people have mast cell activation.

[00:06:25] Christa Biegler, RD: It is more common in the last five years 'cause we've had a lot of more insult to injury with the immune system, with the virus that was very prominent. And also some other things that can support, aside from just correcting balance in the systems that are at the root causes of histamine. Also nervous system because the nervous system is gonna talk to the gut and immune function.

[00:06:45] Christa Biegler, RD: And so if the nervous system is out of regulation, it's gonna communicate to the gut and immune system like nothing is safe and it's gonna light those up on fire. So wherever any system is overburdened or not working optimally, those gears aren't cranking, whether it's part nutrient deficiencies, part overgrowth, all of those pieces.

[00:07:04] Christa Biegler, RD: It's about reducing system burden and repleting what's missing so the body can metabolize histamine properly. Again, there are just so many opportunities, Caitlyn, so all is good. When I'm working through it with people, again, I'm maybe reducing burden. I'm correcting those imbalances and then I'm restoring function to the systems, rebuilding those systems, and then supporting people to prevent relapse and because things happen, right?

[00:07:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Right now it's histamine season, so things happen. I am also not a person who metabolizes it well automatically because my father had significant seasonal allergies. So I can look at that history and know that I've gotta keep those systems in balance and when those systems are not in balance, I'm gonna have more symptoms potentially, and they're gonna be really subtle at this point in my life, but when they're more significant, you can get more significant improvements.

[00:07:50] Christa Biegler, RD: So the work is really about restoring balance, restoring function to the system so the body does what it's supposed to do. Yay. Music to our ears, histamine is just a messenger, so when you calm down, the chaos underneath the noise it creates, starts to quiet down as well. All right. Thank you so much, Caitlin.

[00:08:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Alright, moving on to Katie's question, this is how Katie wrote her question. So I'll just read what she wrote. GI Map for three-year-old with constant scratching slash food allergy slash reactive cough. How important in diagnosing root cause is this test? Is there a better diagnostic test in your opinion?

[00:08:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Thanks so much. So thank you Katie. Thanks for your thoughtful question. And if I'm reading it you are asking how helpful or important, I know sometimes we write things and then how I'm interpreting it, I'm just. Communicating how I think it, I'm supposed to interpret it. You're asking how helpful or important a GI MAP test is for your 3-year-old who's dealing with the scratching, the food allergies and reactive cough.

[00:08:52] Christa Biegler, RD: I assume that you already know that there is diagnosed food allergies and something I'd like to say also about allergies is your. Diagnostic practitioner should diagnose those. Generally, we think about allergies being permanent. I just for a big picture conversation, generally we think about allergies being permanent as IgE, EE as an elephant.

[00:09:15] Christa Biegler, RD: IgE reactions different than IGM or IgG or different types of other immune mediated reactions. We usually think of those being permanent. But we know in the literature that it's pretty common to grow out of allergens anywhere from, birth to age, essentially like three to five, even sometimes, or can we reduce the severity?

[00:09:38] Christa Biegler, RD: So when Katie's asking this question, I'm just assuming. That she already knows that she has diagnosed food allergies and has established that with her clinician. And I always think that is very useful for people to know those types of things, like a true allergy, because if we continue to expose ourselves to true allergens when we know it's an irritant, you probably will have symptoms.

[00:09:59] Christa Biegler, RD: It's just having that conversation with a client who's going through oral immuno, it's a, basically an oral tolerance immunotherapy to try to reduce severity of symptoms or severity of allergies more okay. So Katie's wondering if the GI map is gonna be the best possible test she could take.

[00:10:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Alright, so to answer Katie's question, we gotta zoom out. These symptoms, chronic itching, food reactions, and immune system irritation like with chronic cough or these are all kind of atopic symptoms. They do definitely point to gut and immune dysfunction, and Katie probably knows that most of the immune system is in the gut.

[00:10:39] Christa Biegler, RD: So yes, gut testing could, it can, it may help, but the real question isn't, is this test important? It is. One, will this cha test change what we do? Two, does it help us prioritize next steps? And three, are we prioritizing or expecting too much from a single test? In other words, I always tell my clients that there are two main questions.

[00:11:07] Christa Biegler, RD: They must answer before they do testing. I'm in a phase of where I prefer to do more informed testing. So one, what is the test? What am I hoping to learn? And two, is it gonna be okay if it shows me nothing? I think most people are not okay with that second question. And so you have to know that if you go into good an allergy test and it shows you that there's no allergies, we're gonna still rejoice that is good.

[00:11:29] Christa Biegler, RD: So I'll just say no test is perfect. Let's talk about what the test does and does not do. The GI Map from Diagnostic Solutions. GSL Diagnostic Solutions Lab is an FDA approved stool test that gives us a snapshot of what's happening in the gut. Things like pathogens, bacterial overgrowth, some fungal overgrowth, not very accurate for that digestive function and some inflammatory markers in kids.

[00:11:54] Christa Biegler, RD: These results can be more significant because I think I have just opinions about why I always say kid tests are more honest. They don't have a lifetime full of skeletons in the closet and in our gut, we have like layers, literally like dinosaurs, you've got them layered over, over time and your body will create different mucus layers and things.

[00:12:16] Christa Biegler, RD: So you don't always see everything in an adult stool test. Whereas in kids, they're usually a little more interesting actually. Okay. So I would say there's all kinds of compounding factors that affect that. But kids, you usually get a little bit more of an interesting or accurate or exciting test.

[00:12:33] Christa Biegler, RD: But that said, there is no one test that will give you the full picture. I'm sure you know that, but I need to confirm you're hunches and I. I had a teacher who, or a client who was a former teacher who gave me a great analogy. She said, I started to view like a stool test, like a standardized test in school.

[00:12:53] Christa Biegler, RD: They're just a snapshot of one day, but not the full story, and I thought that was brilliant, and you need to really apply that analogy here as well. You may get something from that one snapshot and that is fine, but you also. It's okay if it does not show you things. This is where we've got to look at a bigger picture.

[00:13:13] Christa Biegler, RD: It's not just the test. I always think you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you believe that the test is going to be the thing. The only thing you've really gotta look at the symptoms and history beyond the test results. Okay, so let me talk about how I would approach testing and the other considerations.

[00:13:32] Christa Biegler, RD: I like to say I take a very informed consent to testing more so in the last six to nine months with clients because there's a lot of over testing happening with under results. So I don't automatically recommend testing anymore just because I think we can go in and get started based on symptoms and history.

[00:13:49] Christa Biegler, RD: So I don't automatically recommend testing unless it's likely to change the treatment direction. Or the parent or the person or the client really needs the data to feel confident in moving forward, which is totally valid and it's extremely common in pediatrics. So I do use a fair bit of testing in pediatrics for that second reason, I do also use the GI map testing fairly often.

[00:14:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I've got a lot of experience with it, so I've got a lot of opinions about it, but I always pair it with symptom history, case patterns, clinical experience, and also client preference. If you only focus on one thing, you could miss something, you could focus on the wrong thing. And I think that it's one of our biggest failures in today's like functional medicine space, is over focusing on the test and under focusing on the client's experience.

[00:14:38] Christa Biegler, RD: I. And their history, and I think that there's a bit of an ana science to starting to assemble that history. I think the client needs to show up with a good history. I think that's a complaint I have when I'm doing one-on-one case audits, is people don't show up. Even giving me a good history, I always try to compliment people profusely when they bring me the history I ask for please bullet point the history with the timeline because.

[00:14:58] Christa Biegler, RD: When you do that, I can just help you faster, I can help you better. I don't have to try to excavate it. And guess what? Your doctor's got the same problem when you can just show up and give them a bullet point history, they're just able to look at it with more intelligence.

[00:15:09] Christa Biegler, RD: And when you show up as that kind of client, you're usually gonna get better service. It's just how it works. Okay. There is some gaps here, so I just wanna make sure because I'm not having a actual physical conversation with you, and you probably know this, but the catch is that stool tests cannot be self interpreted, at least these types of professional stool tests.

[00:15:28] Christa Biegler, RD: I don't think personally, if I thought you could, I would totally tell you that you should. I've actually never uploaded one A chat GBTI should try that. But I would not self interpret them, especially when it's your child because it's your first time experimenting with it. So unless you have a lot of experience with this, that's not the person you wanna do your testing on, right?

[00:15:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And I would say most parents greatly sell the people I have in my practice, they do not wanna cause harm to their children. As an aside, I have not been very impressed. I've been quite underwhelmed by most consumer facing test results. They're pretty vague and they don't really give much application in my opinion, so I'll just mention that.

[00:16:06] Christa Biegler, RD: That said. Just don't expect that single test to give you all the answers. Again, you've gotta look at testing as just a tool that adds more context to the symptoms and history, and they can be quite helpful when they're quite a mess. It's just really nice to show that to the parent oh, it's okay.

[00:16:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Things are a mess. You're totally validated in these symptoms being an issue, and we also need to overlay in the context of how you're responding to treatment, et cetera. I think the other thing is when you're looking for a partner. To help you reduce symptoms, reduce symptom severity overall, you've gotta find someone who aligns with your overall philosophy.

[00:16:40] Christa Biegler, RD: For me, my philosophy is I want people to understand what they're doing. I don't want to them to just ram rod through things. I want them to I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet when they're done as much as possible. Okay. So the best first step would be to release the concept that one test will unlock everything because it won't.

[00:16:57] Christa Biegler, RD: So I hope that helps you with understanding, especially when you're trying to budget different things and ask what do symptoms already tell us? Will the data shift our approach and. What else? What else do I need? What other help or support or interpretation might I need to give my child the best outcomes?

[00:17:16] Christa Biegler, RD: I know that we all, as humans, wanna hit an easy button, but combining history, symptoms, testing, client preference, and clinical experience is gonna give you the best results. So my thought is. Good luck, Katie, and if you want any one-on-one support, if you want me to review your case, I have those open through the end of June before I close my calendar for the summer.

[00:17:39] Christa Biegler, RD: I appreciate Caitlin and Katie's questions today. If you have a question, you can submit those. We'll put that link in the show notes today. But June is all about answering your questions to a week. So I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being here since 2017, or if you've just stopped by just this week.

[00:17:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Thank you so much for listening. If you're asking these kinds of questions, you're already doing more than most people. You're already exceptional. So my job is just to help you connect dots faster and with more confidence as much as possible in this one-sided conversation, but definitely in one-on-one context.

[00:18:11] Christa Biegler, RD: So keep following the breadcrumbs that your body's giving you, and if you're ready for the next level of clarity, I'll be here. See you next week.