My Red face after exercise stays red all day!!? Help?

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  • shaumom
    shaumom Posts: 1,003 Member
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    It honestly sounds like a histamine reaction. That could indicate an allergic reaction, or other things.

    But basically- histamine is used by the body for all sorts of processes, so you always have some histamine floating around. You can think of histamine levels kind of like a bucket- there is no problem with histamine in the bucket, but if the histamine levels rise and the levels get past a safe threshhold, the bucket overflows essentially, then the body will have problems and you get symptoms.

    This is what happens with allergic reactions, for example. A ‘histamine flush’ is something that can happen to the skin when histamine levels are high in that area. Itching or rashes or hives are another. Even fatgue or stomach upset- if the histamine release hits the whole body, or the gut.

    One thing folks with severe allergies will learn (if they have a good doc) is what processes naturally release histamine, so that if they have a reaction, they won’t accidentally make it worse. Exercise is one of these activities - histamine is commonly used by the body to elevate the heartrate, so anything that does that can potentially be a trigger for extra histamine. There have been cases of people having a secondary allergic reaction because they exercised too soon after a major allergic reaction.

    For cases like yours, however, where you are not having a reaction except for exercise? What often has happened is that something is elevating your normal level of histamine. So when you exercise and the histamine level goes up, wham, it overflows the bucket and you react.

    Some things I know of that can cause this are a low level allergy or two, just low enough that the histamine doesn’t fill up the bucket, just makes the levels high. It can happen with a really bad hay fever season sometimes. Or you can have developed histamine intolerance- the body starts making less of the DAO enzyme that breaks down histamine so it builds up. DAO is available online without a prescription, actually.

    I would seriously consider getting allergy testing though, because if histamine levels really get high it can cause some bad reactions.

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