Same skin, same week — the only variable was the plate
Aged ribeye, pepperoni, hot spices. Jeff's flares track high-histamine food closely enough that he now treats his diet as a second trigger alongside scratching.
Jeff ·
- Living with it
- More than 5 years
- Main trigger
- High-histamine foods on top of scratching
- What helped
- Avoiding aged and cured meats, hot spices and tomatoes
Scratching is what starts it for me, but it's definitely worse if I eat foods that are high in histamine.
It was obviously worse after eating dry-aged ribeye, or pepperoni, or hot spices, or ribs at a restaurant. Same skin, same day-to-day life — the only variable that changed was what was on the plate.
I also avoid tomatoes and tomato sauces now, which was the hardest one to give up.
I'm not saying food causes dermatographia. Mine still shows up when I scratch, regardless. But food clearly sets the level the whole thing runs at, and lowering that made my bad days a lot less bad.
If you've never tried it, the aged and cured stuff is where I'd start looking. That's where mine was hiding.