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Alternatively, try a low histamine diet. Many people who have been told they need surgery to correct "deviated septum" or need cpap have found their problems g

Alternatively, try a low histamine diet. Many people who have been told they need surgery to correct "deviated septum" or need cpap have found their problems go away. Edit: to downvoters - why the closed mind?

eesmith 3y ago
I was not able to find any paper on Google Scholar about a study on the effect of a low-histamine diet on obstructive sleep apnea. How many is "many" and where is this documented? The few matches for low-histamine diet and apnea come from what I would consider fringe and untrustworth research, often suggesting a low-histamine diet helps a large number of medical issues, but not pointing to study giving numbers, describing the severity of the apnea, and other things I would expect. I was able to find papers which studied the effect of anti-histamine drugs on obstructive sleep apnea, like https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2500/ajra.2013.27.3921 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2500/ajra.2013.27.39... for when people also have allergic rhinitis. "adding [anti-histimines] to this treatment did not show improved effects compared with placebo treatment". I presume people taking anti-histamines would have a lower amount of histamines in their body, so if there were a correlation it would have been seen. (Alternatively, it says that a low-histamine diet is not effective for CPAP when suffering from allergic rhinitis.) It is apparently quite hard to identify what "low-histamine diet" means. In "Low-histamine diets: is the exclusion of foods justified by their histamine content?" at https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/5/1395 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/5/1395 , which specifically concerns "the symptomatology of histamine intolerance", notes the "great heterogenicity in the type of foods that are advised against for histamine intolerant individuals. Excluded foods were, in most cases, different depending on the considered diet. Only fermented foods were unanimously excluded." > The design of a low-histamine diet is challenging due to different handicaps. One of these is the lack of consensus on the histamine level below which a food is said to be considered low in histamine. Thus, variable histamine levels in food ranging between 5–50 mg/kg have been pointed out as potential thresholds, while other authors are much more demanding and consider foods with low histamine concentrations to be those that contain amounts below 1 mg/kg [ 12 ,26 –28 ]. Moreover, there is no specific regulation for the food industry to declare the occurrence or absence of histamine in food labelling, which could help histamine intolerant individuals to make suitable and informed choices. > Overall, providing dietary recommendations and guidelines in the frame of a low-histamine diet is difficult for healthcare professionals. If it's difficult for healthcare professionals to even determine what is low-histamine - and that's for people who are specifically histamine intolerance - and no studies to back up your suggestion ... why should anyone think your proposal has merit? There is a long history of using the "why the closed mind?" argument to sell snake oil treatments, so I would not advise using argument and instead point to supporting evidence.
seattle_spring 3y ago
> Edit: to downvoters - why the closed mind? Unsolicited medical advice is not appropriate. It suggests that the people suffering from the condition in question have put literally zero effort into solving their problem, when in reality they likely have already heard about and tried every "trick" or "alternative treatment" you're going to suggest. Other common scenarios: * Telling a chronic pain sufferer to "just try cannabis, it works better than pharmaceutical pain killers!" * Suggesting [common behavioral quirk] is a very obvious sign of ADHD, and encouraging them to take Adderall. * A whole host of "x supplement fixes y chronic condition" suggestions.
- tomohawk 3y ago
  Let's not conflate "medical advice" with the suggestion on HN that you might want to look into a dietary change. That seems like a form of catastrophization. If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Just because it relates to your health or body doesn't mean it's medical. I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap. If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    > If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Yes, without doubt. Scurvy is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include vitamin C. Beriberi is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include more thiamine. Quite a few people have allergic reactions to the content of their food, like celiac disease due to an allergic reaction to gluten, which is resolved by switching to a diet without that component. Some young children got lead poisoning because they would eat paint chips which tasted sweet due to the lead content. Their medical problem is helped by switching to a non-lead paint diet, often by removing the old paint from where they live and repainting, or by moving somewhere without lead paint. > I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap. Snoring does not mean someone needs a CPAP machine. How were they diagnosed? How severe was it? Was the food actually low in histamines? How low was it? Did it affect histamine levels in the blood? As I pointed out elsewhere here, the histamine variability in foods is quite high, and hard even for nutrition professionals to get right. Is there a response curve between the amount of histamine and the amount of obstructive sleep apnea? How do you know the cause was due to low histamine vs some other dietary change? For example, it seems excluding citrus fruits is part of a low histamine diet even though they do not contain histamine because they are thought to "trigger the release of endogenous histamine" (quoting that paper). But perhaps there is something else in the citrus - the acid content, for example - which causes the problem. How does an low histamine diet compare to taking anti-histamines? Why should we expect the former to work if the latter does not? What is the proposed method of action? We have only to look at the history of scurvy and vitamin C treatment to learn how important it is to understand the details of why a treatment works! How long does it take for the change in diet to affect people? 1 day? 1 month? 1 year? Does it work for everyone with obstructive sleep apena or only a sub-population? > If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not. I was curious. I looked into it. There appears to be no substance behind the idea.

eesmith 3y ago

I was not able to find any paper on Google Scholar about a study on the effect of a low-histamine diet on obstructive sleep apnea. How many is "many" and where is this documented? The few matches for low-histamine diet and apnea come from what I would consider fringe and untrustworth research, often suggesting a low-histamine diet helps a large number of medical issues, but not pointing to study giving numbers, describing the severity of the apnea, and other things I would expect. I was able to find papers which studied the effect of anti-histamine drugs on obstructive sleep apnea, like https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2500/ajra.2013.27.3921 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2500/ajra.2013.27.39... for when people also have allergic rhinitis. "adding [anti-histimines] to this treatment did not show improved effects compared with placebo treatment". I presume people taking anti-histamines would have a lower amount of histamines in their body, so if there were a correlation it would have been seen. (Alternatively, it says that a low-histamine diet is not effective for CPAP when suffering from allergic rhinitis.) It is apparently quite hard to identify what "low-histamine diet" means. In "Low-histamine diets: is the exclusion of foods justified by their histamine content?" at https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/5/1395 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/5/1395 , which specifically concerns "the symptomatology of histamine intolerance", notes the "great heterogenicity in the type of foods that are advised against for histamine intolerant individuals. Excluded foods were, in most cases, different depending on the considered diet. Only fermented foods were unanimously excluded." > The design of a low-histamine diet is challenging due to different handicaps. One of these is the lack of consensus on the histamine level below which a food is said to be considered low in histamine. Thus, variable histamine levels in food ranging between 5–50 mg/kg have been pointed out as potential thresholds, while other authors are much more demanding and consider foods with low histamine concentrations to be those that contain amounts below 1 mg/kg [ 12 ,26 –28 ]. Moreover, there is no specific regulation for the food industry to declare the occurrence or absence of histamine in food labelling, which could help histamine intolerant individuals to make suitable and informed choices. > Overall, providing dietary recommendations and guidelines in the frame of a low-histamine diet is difficult for healthcare professionals. If it's difficult for healthcare professionals to even determine what is low-histamine - and that's for people who are specifically histamine intolerance - and no studies to back up your suggestion ... why should anyone think your proposal has merit? There is a long history of using the "why the closed mind?" argument to sell snake oil treatments, so I would not advise using argument and instead point to supporting evidence.

seattle_spring 3y ago

> Edit: to downvoters - why the closed mind? Unsolicited medical advice is not appropriate. It suggests that the people suffering from the condition in question have put literally zero effort into solving their problem, when in reality they likely have already heard about and tried every "trick" or "alternative treatment" you're going to suggest. Other common scenarios: * Telling a chronic pain sufferer to "just try cannabis, it works better than pharmaceutical pain killers!" * Suggesting [common behavioral quirk] is a very obvious sign of ADHD, and encouraging them to take Adderall. * A whole host of "x supplement fixes y chronic condition" suggestions.

tomohawk 3y ago
Let's not conflate "medical advice" with the suggestion on HN that you might want to look into a dietary change. That seems like a form of catastrophization. If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Just because it relates to your health or body doesn't mean it's medical. I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap. If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not.
- eesmith 3y ago
  > If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Yes, without doubt. Scurvy is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include vitamin C. Beriberi is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include more thiamine. Quite a few people have allergic reactions to the content of their food, like celiac disease due to an allergic reaction to gluten, which is resolved by switching to a diet without that component. Some young children got lead poisoning because they would eat paint chips which tasted sweet due to the lead content. Their medical problem is helped by switching to a non-lead paint diet, often by removing the old paint from where they live and repainting, or by moving somewhere without lead paint. > I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap. Snoring does not mean someone needs a CPAP machine. How were they diagnosed? How severe was it? Was the food actually low in histamines? How low was it? Did it affect histamine levels in the blood? As I pointed out elsewhere here, the histamine variability in foods is quite high, and hard even for nutrition professionals to get right. Is there a response curve between the amount of histamine and the amount of obstructive sleep apnea? How do you know the cause was due to low histamine vs some other dietary change? For example, it seems excluding citrus fruits is part of a low histamine diet even though they do not contain histamine because they are thought to "trigger the release of endogenous histamine" (quoting that paper). But perhaps there is something else in the citrus - the acid content, for example - which causes the problem. How does an low histamine diet compare to taking anti-histamines? Why should we expect the former to work if the latter does not? What is the proposed method of action? We have only to look at the history of scurvy and vitamin C treatment to learn how important it is to understand the details of why a treatment works! How long does it take for the change in diet to affect people? 1 day? 1 month? 1 year? Does it work for everyone with obstructive sleep apena or only a sub-population? > If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not. I was curious. I looked into it. There appears to be no substance behind the idea.