I understand that histamine is used by the body as part of the immune response, widening blood vessels, etc., to aid the white blood cells in their attack. Often this ends up helping them attack perfectly innocuous foods, leading to allergy attacks.
I also understand that histamine is also used by the body in regulating the sleep/wake cycle; this is why first-generation non-discriminatory antihistamines cause people to feel sleepy.
Are these different histamines correlated with one another? Would intentionally causing an allergy attack, for instance, promote “wake” histamine, causing a person to feel more alert? (I imagine that’s a stupid idea, but in theory, would it work? I mean that it would cause a person to feel more alert because of increased histamine, regardless of any increased epinephrine levels that potentially might go along with it.)
Along similar lines, while I imagine you can’t directly measure the “wake” histamine due to blood-brain barrier issues, could you diagnose a sleep disorder by measuring “allergy” histamine and use that to indirectly determine how much “wake” histamine one has?
