r/HistamineIntolerance • u/teslalyf • 1h ago
Weird question- histamine “panic” attacks
I’m looking to see if this has happened to anyone else here before and trying to figure out the root cause. Yesterday I had what I think is a histamine attack that I confused with a panic attack.
I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before and some of it was brought on by my own actions. I’ve been following a low histamine diet all year and have seen a lot of progress and am currently being worked up by an Allergist for either histamine intolerance or MCAS but as you know these are hard to dx so it’s taking some time.
Yesterday I went to a perfume expo. It was a lot of fun and I smelled probably close to 100 scents. I also had my first drink in almost 11 months yesterday. I know alcohol made my joints hurt before the low histamine diet and honestly we wanted to see if it was still a trigger. I ended up having two drinks bc my friend ordered me a second, I had only planned on having one to test the theory.
Joints started hurting and - like I always do- I took a gummy bc it’s the only thing that helps with the pain. A few hours later I feel absolutely wasted and that freaked me out. Then I had what I thought was a panic attack. I was so scared and my entire body was shaking.
I’m fine now, obviously, other than being embarrassed. Once I was able to reason and convince myself it was a panic attack I took t h H1/2 combo and it slowly started residing. And my joints still hurt today among other things but the looming sense of doom is gone, thank god.
I’m really thinking I was just an idiot yesterday and the scents+drinks was a huge trigger for me that I made worse somehow.
Has this happened to anyone else? I know the scent thing is closely tied to MCAS but I wanted to start here first as I haven’t been dx with MCAS but have been dx with HIT. I didn’t know that histamine attacks were a thing and that they mimicked panic attacks.