Jo of Palatine
Heir Apparent
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2006
- Messages
- 3,323
- City
- Munich
- Country
- Germany
christinacg said:I was reading an article about Kate in one of those weekly magazines yesterday, and they said that Kate is allergic to alcohol. Is this true? They said she can drink small amounts but not a lot. It sounds kind of weird to me.
If so, she is not allergic to alcohol but has a problem with the hormone histamine. Histamine is what your body produces when you have an allergy - it's normally produced to protect your body but with an allergy your body just believes he is endangered - thus the histamine is not needed and causes the problems of migraine etc. The body can only get rid of a certain amount of histamine at a time, so when you have an allergic reaction, you have suddenly too much of it. There are some medication (eg beta-blockers against heart-dieseases) which in addition block the reduction of histamine, thus could cause allergic reactions if the level becomes too high.
Histamine, alas, is a by-product of fermentation. Products which are made through fermentation are wine, spirits made from fermented products, some sausages like salami, cheese... glutamate is as a yeast product made through fermentation as well.... So eating or drinking any of these products can increase your level of that hormone and lead to an pseudo-allergic reaction. You can get rid of the histamine eg on wine-making but many producers don't bother because it means better products to start with, clean food processing etc. and that costs really money.
Fortunately anti-histamines can be bought in any drugstore or pharmacy without a prescription and they are pretty cheap. So anyone who thinks he/she is allergic to alcohol or cheese should try to take one tablet before eating or drinking and the chance is high that there will be no more problem.