You may want to begin with a simple low-histamine diet. This includes eating fresh, unprocessed, or minimally processed foods and avoiding alcohol, aged cheese, cured meats, fermented foods, and leftover foods.

On a low-histamine diet, you try to curb or avoid foods and drinks high in histamines. Here are a few quick tips: Some foods are naturally high in histamines, but others only become high-histamine once fermented, preserved, or spoiled. Don’t eat smoked, salted, fermented, or marinated foods.

There are three categories of foods to avoid on a low histamine diet: foods that are high in histamine, foods that may trigger a histamine release in the body (called histamine liberators), and foods that block or inhibit the action of the DAO enzyme. Here are lists of foods in these various categories.

Avoiding histamine-releasing foods can help alleviate these symptoms for some people. Popular diet plans, such as the Mediterranean diet, DASH diet, keto diet, paleo, or vegan diet, often include foods high in histamine and are therefore not appropriate for people with histamine sensitivity.