Chronic hives

[bwb]

I have had hives for almost three years now. Every antihistimine and stomach pill (that has a histimine blocker) has been tried. The only relief I have gotten was when I went on Cyclosporine for six moths. This is an antirejection drug. I do not want to stay on this, but have been off of it for five months now, and hives are starting to return. Sometimes they are red splotches on my skin, other times they are thick welts, both itch unreal. My eyes, lips and feet swell also. My eyes and lips swell till I look like someone has beat me...Any sugestions???

[jdode]

Yes, the itching is a problem.   I do take some medication for the itch, but sometimes it is so bad that I can't stop rubbing the area.  That's when I applied a lotion, by chance and the itching stopped.   I think any lotion would work.   I just happened to have Jergens Soothing Aloe Relief on hand.  In the beginning, I bought some Benadryl Spray and that works, too.

Don't be surprised that when you stop your steroids, the hives will return the next day.  I actually took Prednisone for 9 months and then finally I refused to take it anymore.   3/4 of my hair fell out because of it.  Plus, I gained 30 pounds.   The steroid causes constant hunger pains.  I found myself constantly eating and I couldn't exercise because getting hot makes the hives more irritable.

Keep up with this blog.  I've found more helpful info here than I ever got through my three allergy doctors.   One of the earlier posters mentioned a trial medication that is not approved yet.   She said she gets an injection once a month and is hive free.  I think I'll ask my doctor about it.   I saw him last week and he mentioned trying Dapsone on me.   It's an antibacterial and some patients get relief with it.   Some patients believe an infection is the cause of their hives, but my doctor doesn't believe it.  I told him that I suspected a minor tooth infection and I would be seeing my dentist soon.   I might get lucky and find that extracting the tooth will get rid of the hives.

Good luck!

[jdode]

After I read your post, two things really stood out.   The nausea and the inhaled allergen aspect.   Last summer I was looking at some properties that were for sale.   The grass and weeds in the back yard were chest high to  me.  I took 2 pics of the yard and had to leave immediately.   My throat became very tight and my voice became high pitched.   I already had hives, but they became twice as bad within 15 minutes.   I immediately took 50mg of Benadryl.

About the nausea; I think you may be having gastrointestinal angioedema with your hives.   It causes nausea.  I have chronic urticaria with angioedema.   However, my daughter has gastrointestinal angioedema associated with her natural hormones.   When she ovulates and when she has her period, she becomes very nauseous for a week with each episode.   Poor kid.  The doctors never knew what she had, but I actually saw it on Mystery Diagnosis on TV.   Since I have angioedema episodes, it's easy now to see that she has it, too, but in a different way.  There are some lab tests that will confirm whether or not it is hereditary or not.

I still don't know what started my hives, and now I've had them for a year.   I have a positive ANA and my immunes system is sort of whachy.  One of the posters on here stated that Maltodextrin in foods is the trigger for her hives.   I eat mostly natural foods, but now and then I eat processed foods.   Last night I decided to test the Maltodextrin aspect, so I looked in the pantry and found some Ramen noodles that have that ingredient.  I fixed them for dinner last night.   Sure enough, this morning my hives were the worst they've been in a long time.   So, now I know to look for that ingredient.... it's in almost every processed food.

I found that eating alkaline foods really helps a great deal.   If I eat acidic foods, the hives pop out all over in about three hours.  So, the Ramen noodles are not only acidic, but they also have the Maltodextrin.  In order to tame the hives, I drink a tablespoon of lemon juice in a tall glass of water with some Stevia sweetner.  I try to stay alkaline in my eating, but I backslide a lot.   Something that helps is to just eat an apple or two every day.   The odd thing is that the apples got rid of my heartburn completely!

I'm glad to read that you don't have troubles at the beach.   Maybe your elderly parents should sell their home and all of you move to the beach right now!  Take care and good luck!

[jdode]

Paintergirl9...  thanks so much for your thoughts on the hive situation.   I believe you are on target.    Why can't physicians open their minds to more than what they learned in med school?   Obviously, not all hives are allergy related, so why do the doctors try to treat all hives as though they are?  My doctor has run the gamut of his beliefs; if not allergy, then stress; if not emotional stress, then physical stress.  He must be kidding me!   When I clean house or mow the yard, my blood pressure is LOW... 90/58.   Now that he's had me on quadruple prescription antihistamines (4 Singulair per day, 4 Zyrtec per day and 2 Zantac per day, PLUS Cyclosporine 100 mg 2 per day) my blood pressure was 158/98 in his office after sitting for 2 hours.

Earlier, in another post, I had mentioned an alkaline diet.  I think the alkalinity of the body causes the bacterial infection to lower and perhaps that's why the alkaline diet helps me.   I really do think I have a low grade infection in a tooth or elsewhere.  I do know that my heartburn went away with that diet and because of that, I eat an apple everyday and the heartburn hasn't returned.

If I have some antibiotics in the medicine chest, I may try it and see what a few days of them do for me.   However, they may be contraindicated due to all the other meds that I'm taking.   I do know that colloidal silver, an antibacterial that was in widespread use prior to the use of penicillin, has worked wonders for me in the past.   I make my own and it has cured many an infection and lessened colds on the first day to the point of nonexistence.   My former husband was a doctor and his grandparents were doctors, so he was quite familiar with colloidal silver.   Up until the mid 70's, all babies had silver nitrate drops put in their eyes at the time of birth.  I know, because I used to be a medical transcriber and it was dictated in all the birth notes.  Anyhow, I might have better luck with silver water instead of antibiotics and it won't affect the drugs I'm taking.

I've had hives for a year and I'll keep after this until I've exhausted all possibilities.   Thank goodness for the Internet and the wealth of information.   Some of the people on this forum have had hives for 15 years!  I'm an older woman and I sure don't want to live the rest of my life like this.  On a couple of occasions, I've had hives so bad that I desperately scooped handsful of ice cubes from the freezer and rubbed them all over my body.  Within 15 minutes I had complete relief from the severe burning and itching.  I'm sure a cool oatmeal bath would have done the same, but I didn't have time to run a tub of water!  That's how bad the hives were.

Thanks to all who've written and related how they think their hives started.  By the way, I'm still reading through the posts.

[paintergirl9]

Hives lasting more than 6 weeks are not likely to be related to allergies.  My research into my own case leads me to believe it is caused by an underlying autoimmune imbalance or infection somewhere in the body. This is what I found as possible causes:  

1. build-up off toxins in the digestive system that overload the liver
2. dental or gum disease
3. infection (particularly in the stomach)
4. viral infection
5. parasites or fungal infection

Treating the symptoms with allergy meds is plain lazy on the part of the doctor in my opinion. It is important to do your research and pay attention to things in your body and lifestyle that may be the actual cause.  Process of elimination is the way to go. After changing all my soaps, washing every linen article I own in hot water with Borax, and buying vinyl bed coverings...I can safely say I do not have a problem with bugs or allergies causing my chronic hives.  I am a painter and have theorized that I need to do a detox cleanse and balance out my body chemistry.  I have begun taking probiotics, flax seed oil, B12 and Vitamin C. These help a little, but fingers crossed for my up-coming cleanse!

Hope this helps someone!

[jdode]

Thanks for the alert on maltodextrin.   When I went on an alkaline diet and the hives went away, it may have been because those natural alkaline foods didn't have any maltodextrine in them.   It's certainly food for thought.

I'm still going to have my sensitive root canal tooth extracted, as a previous poster stated that her hives went away when she had a problem tooth extracted.   A mild infection of the tooth might well be the cause of the hives.

[jdode]

I noticed the same black gunk in my softener dispenser when I took it apart for cleaning.   That was 18 years ago.  After that, I only used vinegar in the dispenser.   I now have a new machine and it has never had softener used in it.  The vinegar breaks down the soap, so there won't be a residue of it built up over time on the other side of the tub.

My hives started a year after getting the new machine, so I don't think that's my problem.   However, I'm glad you mentioned it to all the other readers.