The Tyramine Intolerance Handbook: Prevent Migraines, Palpitations, Anxiety, Blood Pressure Spikes, and More

By Dr. Christie Hartman

Suffering from migraines, palpitations, or blood pressure spikes after eating?

React badly to cheese, cured meats, wine, or fermented foods?

Told you need to avoid "tyramine foods" but have no clue where to start?

 

You need this book!

 

If you suffer from bad headaches, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, or bouts of anxiety for what seems like "no good reason," especially after eating, you might have tyramine intolerance. If you take monamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) medication, you definitely need to avoid high-tyramine foods.

 

Tyramine intolerance isn't well known, but the inability to efficiently break down tyramine in foods such as aged cheese, cured meats, and fermented foods is a problem for some people. Scientist and blogger Dr. Christie Hartman is one of those people, and she has gathered everything there is to know about tyramine intolerance into one book.

 

This book will:

• Explain what tyramine is, why it can make some people miserable, and why no one's heard of it
• Help you discover if you're tyramine intolerant
• Explain which foods are safe to eat, which aren't, and why
• Offer tips to cope with a tyramine flare

 

To make your tyramine intolerance journey easier, this book also offers:

• Meal ideas, recipes, and substitutes for high-tyramine foods
• Support groups, books, and other resources to help you
• Tips on talking to your doctor about tyramine intolerance

 

Pick up The Tyramine Intolerance Handbook today and find some relief!

• Language: English
• Publisher: 5280 Press
• Release date: Mar 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780998944593

Book preview

Introduction

Before picking up this book, did you have any idea that tyramine intolerance existed? If you’re like most people, you’d probably never heard of it. This is true even if you’re a physician or healthcare provider.

But tyramine intolerance is a real thing. In a nutshell, it’s the body’s inability to efficiently break down tyramine in foods. As a result, foods with high levels of tyramine can resulting in unpleasant (and possibly dangerous) symptoms.

Sounds straightforward enough: if you ingest a high-tyramine food or beverage and get symptoms, then you know, right? Not necessarily. Many types of foods across different food categories contain high amounts of tyramine, and many of those foods contain other compounds that can cause problems.

Take red wine, for example. If you get headaches or palpitations after drinking it, is it the sulfites? Tannins? Histamine? Tyramine? The fact that you drank a cheap merlot instead of a fancy pinot noir? Most assume it’s the sulfites, tannins, or brand, when it could be the histamine or tyramine causing the problem.

To further complicate things, some people can eat a high-tyramine meal and feel fine, and only suffer miserable symptoms if they eat high-tyramine foods the next day as well. Or, you can eat perfectly safe low-tyramine foods and react to them… if they’ve been sitting in the fridge for two days developing amines.

With conditions like this, identifying the cause of your symptoms can be really tough. As a result, many people go for years and even decades suffering with terrible headaches and all kinds of other symptoms before they discover what’s happening to them. This can take a toll on one’s overall health, not to mention one’s wellbeing.

I believe tyramine intolerance is more common that we realize, and that there are many undiagnosed people out there suffering from migraines, anxiety, palpitations and other unpleasant symptoms who don’t get relief because they’ve never heard of tyramine, their doctor hasn’t heard of tyramine, and the nature of tyramine intolerance makes figuring out what’s going on really difficult.

Fortunately, awareness about tyramine intolerance (and food intolerance in general) has grown. Popular medical websites such as WebMD and Healthline have pages devoted to tyramine intolerance now. If you google tyramine intolerance, you will find some decent information. That was not the case ten years ago.

Why I Wrote This Book

I wrote this book for a few reasons. First, as I write this, there are no books out there on tyramine intolerance. What little information there is on tyramine lays scattered about the internet. I wanted to change that.

Also, as I mentioned above, I believe many people suffer from tyramine intolerance (or intolerance to all amines) and don’t know it. I want to create more awareness about this type of food sensitivity among the public and among health providers. Even if you aren’t tyramine intolerant, cutting out some of these foods could still help you if you’re prone to headaches or other symptoms of tyramine intolerance.

Another reason is I happen to have the ideal mix of qualities needed to increase awareness about this topic. I’m intolerant to high-tyramine foods myself, so I get it. I’m a scientist and have the knowledge and curiosity to go digging for answers. Also, I love to write, so getting a book written and published is doable for me.

And finally… I want to help. Food sensitivity can be a real suffer-fest because there are still more questions than answers about why it happens and what to do about it. Getting people to even take you seriously can be a challenge. If I can help in some way, I want to.

Having said all that, keep in mind that I’m a scientist, not a physician or health provider. While I can provide information about tyramine intolerance and offer tips on dealing with it, it’s important to work with your doctor or another provider to monitor your health and food reactions and make sure you’re taking care of your health.

What the Science Says

Does science support the idea of tyramine intolerance? Yes and no.

Tyramine intolerance isn’t an official diagnosis and physicians and other providers don’t typically learn about it during their training. However, it exists, both in those who take monoamine oxidase inhibitor medications and in others who are sensitive for reasons still unknown. An elimination diet will make clear what foods we can and cannot tolerate, and some people cannot tolerate tyramine.

Most of the awareness that currently exists about tyramine intolerance was started by grassroots food intolerance groups such as the Food Intolerance Network (fedup.com.au), based in Australia, a country that has been ahead of most when it comes to food intolerance. Plenty of anecdotal evidence exists from people who’ve tested tyramine via elimination diet and found they’re sensitive, and I’ve even read accounts from parents whose normally sweet children turn into monsters after consumption of high-amine foods. However, anecdotes aren’t a great form of evidence.

In terms of scientific studies, there are (older) studies examining the relationship between tyramine and migraines. Some found a link between the two, some did not. I’ve found papers about tyramine in general (with no reference to tyramine intolerance), papers about monoamine oxidase inhibitor medications (those who take them must avoid all tyramine foods), papers about the monoamine oxidase gene which codes for the enzyme that breaks down tyramine (most are examining mental illness), papers about headaches/migraines, and papers examining the relationship between amines and autism.

In other words, there’s a decent amount of research on tyramine that suggests it can have a powerful impact on the body, but it’s siloed in unrelated research areas. Maybe it’s time to begin connecting the dots between these separate areas.

I’ll talk more about the science of tyramine intolerance in Chapter 3.

Who Needs This Book?

A few different types of people will benefit from this book:

Anyone with symptoms of tyramine intolerance. If you suffer from headaches or episodes of heart palpitations, chest tightness, increased blood pressure, or anxiety after ingesting foods high in tyramine, you may have tyramine intolerance and this book will help you begin solving that mystery.

Migraine sufferers. If you suffer from migraines or bad headaches, it’s possible you have tyramine intolerance. Even if you don’t, many high-tyramine foods are migraine trigger foods, and this book will help you identify them and offer resources that can help.

People taking MAOIs. If you take monoamine oxidase inhibitors, a type of medication, you are tyramine intolerant as a result. You need to be especially careful