Actually, the dietary restrictions are not a small thing. Yes, I am unable to participate in work lunches and social events and don't know what I would do if I were required to travel. I was also unable to eat out on my birthday, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. It makes social and family events awkward. I have always wanted to see the world, but now travel tours are pretty much out of the question. It's not like at age 59 I am ready to just knit in an armchair! Another things is worrying what I would do in if I ended up in the hospital and had to eat, since the first reflex of medical personnel seems to dismiss my symptoms.

The symptoms every night are this: I am fine as I lay down but within a 1/2 or hour (just as I am falling asleep) I get a heart palpitation and my left ear starts ringing. If it's not too bad I can get back to sleep but then I will often wake up later with my ears ringing, flushed, and with my left ear bright red. Usually I am also congested. When it was really bad I was up 1/2 the night with the tinnitus (which was pulsatile -like a steam locomotive in my head -or very high pitched). The only thing that can calm it down is benadryl or propranolol. (It's not just that the bendaryl helps me sleep: if I get enough histamine during the day the same things happens and the benadryl also works.) I wake up in the morning and there is usually some ringing but after an hour or 2 it's gone, unless I eat more histamine. The symptoms go up and down with the amount of histamine that I eat during the day but they never completely go away.

I have been to 4 allergists, 2 gynecologists, a cardiologist, and several primary care doctors who all either dismiss my symptoms or have no idea what to do. I had to push to be tested for celiac disease and carcinoid syndrome. I tried HRT but the estrogen made it much worse. My trust in medical doctors , initially high, is at an all time low. I am a physical scientist myself and astonished at the utter lack of response.

My thought that my estradiol might be too high comes from figure 2 of the paper "Baseline estrogen levels in postmenopausal women participating in the MAP.3 breast cancer chemoprevention trial".
It looks like only 1 to 2 % of postmenupausal women would have estradiol greater then the 17pg/ml that mine came out to be. Interestingly, that is about the percentage reported to have histamine intolerance -at least in the ballpark.

I have an appointment at Barrow in the Headache Program because my symptoms do resemble a cluster headache disorder. It will be interesting to see how that goes. Cluster headaches were once thought to be caused by histamine and this seems to be a classic case.

Thank you so much for your attention to this. I need all of the help I can get.
Beverly