Anyone have experience with this? Hives with heat...

[Joker]

Cholinergic Urticaria - my dd gets hives when she sweats, is emotional, takes a shower, etc. She's had it for about a year now and takes a daily generic Zyrtec. She has problems if she misses just one day and I'm wondering if anyone has experience with it and how long it lasted. Today was particularly bad. She forgot to take her meds yesterday and when she got out of the shower tonight she was miserable for a while. She took her pill but it still took quite a bit and she was asking these questions. The allergist has no real answers for how long it could last so I was hoping some here may have experienced it and could tell me about how long it lasted for them or their dc. Thanks!

 

Also, was there anything that helped other than meds? If you avoided certain foods or such, did it help?

[kalanamak]

Doxepin can be used, but not the cleanest of drugs.

 

I have met people who have moved to the cool Pacific Northwest to cope with this problem. I hope your daughter outgrows it first.

[Joker]

Doxepin can be used, but not the cleanest of drugs.

 

I have met people who have moved to the cool Pacific Northwest to cope with this problem. I hope your daughter outgrows it first.

 

We actually moved from CA to FL due to dh's job. :glare: This is probably why we didn't have this problem with her until we came here.

[Create Your Ritual]

I grew up with hives almost nightly when I was in 4-6th grades. I got them when I was stressed, or anything like that. Back when I was a kid though, all we had was benedryl and I was 'drugged' up from it. Not good. ;-)

Many years later I was diagnosed as a celiac.

 

I would suggest looking into a food allergy first of all. Typically something else has your body on alert already, and then if ANYTHING like stress, common allergens, or just some random thing comes along it takes a body that is already full up and has it overreacting to odd things that otherwise might not bother them.

 

You might consider something to lower the histamine levels naturally, like Quercetin/Nettle and a good fish oil for essential fatty acids daily. After that I would consider cutting out foods like wheat (gluten perhaps??), milk (generally people can handle cheese and yogurts though), along with any food dyes or additives. Try eating as close to nature as you can for a bit and see how it goes. You should know within a month or so if it is helpful.

 

I can't say that those two foods would be the only or THE culprit, so if you are interested in reading more consider getting Eat Right for Your Type and Eat Right for your GenoType. Also, there are many allergy books out that connect food intolerance to asthma, hives, etc. It's not much of a stretch, and it's at least a direction to move in so that you are feeling like perhaps you are actually fixing the issue rather than trying to treat every symptom.

 

In WA State NDs (Naturopathic Physicians) are paid for and considered family physicians same as MDs. NDs are a bit different though as they will work with your diet, lifestyle and can do different types of tests to get to the root of it. Try and find a board certified one that is licensed by the state you are in if you can and consider making an appointment.

[Mommyof4ks]

Doxepin can be used, but not the cleanest of drugs.

 

I have met people who have moved to the cool Pacific Northwest to cope with this problem. I hope your daughter outgrows it first.

 

This helped me, but I was so sleepy that I could not take it long term even with the lowest dose. My hives are part of a bigger medical issue though, so I might just have a bad reaction to doxepin due to that.

[Jilly]

I have this, and have had it since I was a teenager. As a teenager I had it for a number of years, and since then it comes on every once in a while for a few months. I think it is related to stress. Even though it is related to stress the hives come on because of heat. They come on very suddenly, and they are uncomfortable. It is more than itching, it almost stings at first.

 

The only thing that helps me is to avoid high temperatures. That means lukewarm showers with hardly any heat, which is not fun but necessary. Also avoiding the sun/heat on very hot days. This is probably hard for your daughter since you are in Florida.

 

I am sure she won't have to deal with this always. I hope it passes soon. :grouphug:

[Joker]

Thank you all. I think after today she might remember to go lukewarm with her showers. She likes them hot but knows she could break out if she's missed a day with her pill.

 

We do eat healthy but I am looking for ideas on what to try to eliminate. It seems very daunting though. She is tall (taller than me already) and skinny. She seems to burn through her food so fast no matter what it is. I am going to come up with a plan and eliminate certain foods and see what happens.

 

It just seems very hard to not be able to have an actual answer and solution for her. Thanks for your experiences. I'll share them with her tomorrow.

[Create Your Ritual]

There are A LOT of changes going on with a girl in middle school.. hormones being first on the list. They may abate as she gets older. My mom always felt horrible as my hives were so bad I would take nightly oatmeal baths. ugh. I remember calamine lotion spread everywhere too. It was not fun. I would consider an ND and perhaps looking into diet, but stress and new changes (location, move, etc.) mixed with hormonal changes can definitely put a body over the top for a bit. Good luck!

[justasque]

We've had a bit of this several times, with several people, though not as bad/long-lived. For us, the key was to absolutely avoid triggering the hives for a period of time, on the theory that the histamines need to calm down. (Not scientific, I know, but the analogy worked for us.) If we could avoid triggering the hives successfully for a period of time, the body seemed to calm down and the tendency went away. If, however, the hives were re-triggered too soon, we basically had to start all over again. The quicker we could respond with a period of non-triggering, the easier it was to suppress it.

 

So lukewarm showers were a must - cold enough that it doesn't trigger the hives. Avoiding sweating was also a must, and washing any sweat off promptly seemed to help too - that is, doing sports then going to bed without showering seemed to be a trigger. AC if you're somewhere hot helped too. Foods weren't an issue for us (although at one point the doc put ds on a diet where we avoided salycilytes (sp?), which didn't seem to do anything at all). Stress wasn't an issue for us, except that a rash-y person is miserable, and if they have to function that day, it will be stressful. That is, for us the stress was a result of the hives, not the cause.

[elise1mds]

Have you tried something like Pepcid to see if that would help? That's what our pediatrician and allergist both suggested when DS began getting hives. His are due to cold, but I assume the treatment would work just the same. I hate hives. They're so scary :(

[Joyofsixreboot]

:confused: It has a name? my oldest dd gets hives from hot water, heat, a scratch, exercise and the doc said she didn't know what it was/is and basically blew it off because it didn't affect her breathing. Grrr. She is now doing a gluten free diet (a whole other story). I need to ask her if her hives are better. My 4yo has started this too. Now I'm armed with a name I think I'll take her into the doc. Thanks random thread gods.

[Lizzie in Ma]

Cholinergic Urticaria - my dd gets hives when she sweats, is emotional, takes a shower, etc. She's had it for about a year now and takes a daily generic Zyrtec. She has problems if she misses just one day and I'm wondering if anyone has experience with it and how long it lasted. Today was particularly bad. She forgot to take her meds yesterday and when she got out of the shower tonight she was miserable for a while. She took her pill but it still took quite a bit and she was asking these questions. The allergist has no real answers for how long it could last so I was hoping some here may have experienced it and could tell me about how long it lasted for them or their dc. Thanks!

 

Also, was there anything that helped other than meds? If you avoided certain foods or such, did it help?

 

Yes, our daughter went through 2 years of this. In addition to cholinergic urticaria she also had cold urticaria, pressure urticaria, heat urticaria and random episodes of angioedema bad enough for ER runs.

The dermatologist we finally went to said she would most likely outgrow it and put her on an old-school antihistamine. I don't remember the name of it, sorry.

Prior to seeing the dermatologist we had gone the allergist route. She was tested for everything under the sun and had no allergies but he gave her meds too to no avail.

We then did a 6 month elimination diet and she had now food sensitivities either.

It was a nightmare, there was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go that she didn't end up with hives of some sort or other.

I hope your dd outgrows it soon. It is lousy to have that kind of misery. :grouphug::grouphug:

[jplain]

My hives are mostly just there (ie. no physical trigger), but I sometimes have mild heat urticaria (shower) or pressure urticaria (wristbands and pant hems).

 

My hives started up immediately after my first child was born. They were horrendous. In the summertime I was very self-conscious about going out in a t-shirt and shorts, because my arms and legs were often covered with hives. It was assumed that it was a lactation/oxytocin reaction that would go away over time...but it didn't. My physician checked liver enzymes (fine) and suggested Claritin. Eh. I'm not a meds person.

 

My daughter's pediatrician was the one who helped me make a breakthrough. She suggested that I become strict about food quality, eating as unprocessed as possible. She even suggested going all organic, but I decided to hold off on that unless absolutely necessary. I started shopping only at the outside edges of the grocery store (meat, dairy, produce). I avoided processed food, and chose to eat at "nicer" restaurants that were using higher quality ingredients.

 

Amzaingly, cleaning up my eating cleared it up, almost completely. I still get some hives if I get sick (GI bug or virus with a fever), and I often get mild hives when traveling (restaurant food).

 

I think I've narrowed my issue down to oils used in processed and restaurant food, both fried food and condiments like salad dressing. So when I'm traveling I carry my own olive oil and vinegar to use as salad dressing, and I try to stick with grilled meats and veggies cooked dry (no oil). If a restaurant will give me pats of butter, I'll use those on my veggies, but if it comes in a little cup I have to assume it's margarine. I don't seem to have the same problem with upscale restaurants, so I think it really is a food quality issue.

 

If it seems like reactions to food really are the answer for your daughter, you might want to do some reading up on leaky gut. Many are starting to believe gut permeability can contribute to the development of autoimmune disease. For some people, hives may be an early-ish warning sign of an over-permeable gut.

[Tigger]

Not posting this to scare you, but seriously - newly developed hives following a warm/hot shower, upon sweating, in humidity are often a sign of low-level carbon monoxide poisoning.

 

What, if anything, has changed in the last year? New hot water heaters? New furnace? New gas stove or oven? New something fuel-burning at her job (if she works outside the house)? Older car with possible leak into the car? Fireplace? Gas washer or dryer problem you're not aware of?

 

If it is this, it happens due to secondary polycytemia vera, so a CBC will show elevated red cells and elevated white cells (specifically neutrophils); the definitive blood test is a carboxyhemoglobin, but that needs to be done while she's exposed, not hours later since we cycle CO out of our blood fairly well and quickly when we're not being exposed and are breathing instead clean air.

 

I'm posting since this is exactly what happened to me a couple of years ago - I was, for almost two years, watching helplessly as my health declined and no one (multiple doctors) could figure out what the heck was wrong with me.....I finally hit on it in google and requested the blood test and the lab wound up calling me at midnight since they couldn't hold results to the next morning my CO levels were so high in my blood (fatal zone).....and it was due to our hot water heaters - I was the only one in the house here the longest each day, so I was hardest hit by it - it was low-level, so our CO alarms didn't go off since it wasn't high enough to trigger them!

 

A list of symptoms is here.

 

ETA: Secondary polycythemia can be caused by other things too; a quick way to figure out if her blood chemistry is "off" and is contributing to the hives is to take a benedryl BEFORE a shower at a temp that triggers the hives to see if it prevents them - if it doesn't, it's not a histamine based reaction causing the hives and needs further investigation!

Edited November 14, 2011 by Tigger

[Parrothead]

:confused: It has a name? my oldest dd gets hives from hot water, heat, a scratch, exercise and the doc said she didn't know what it was/is and basically blew it off because it didn't affect her breathing. Grrr. She is now doing a gluten free diet (a whole other story). I need to ask her if her hives are better. My 4yo has started this too. Now I'm armed with a name I think I'll take her into the doc. Thanks random thread gods.

I have an epi-pen because i have had some pretty severe episodes. I've had face, neck and head swelling. So far mine are all external hives and I haven't had any breathing problems. My allergist is pretty sure I won't be so lucky one day. I mostly have reactions to cold and summer is my worst time with it.

[katilac]

We've had a bit of this several times, with several people, though not as bad/long-lived. For us, the key was to absolutely avoid triggering the hives for a period of time, on the theory that the histamines need to calm down. (Not scientific, I know, but the analogy worked for us.) If we could avoid triggering the hives successfully for a period of time, the body seemed to calm down and the tendency went away. If, however, the hives were re-triggered too soon, we basically had to start all over again. The quicker we could respond with a period of non-triggering, the easier it was to suppress it.

 

This, definitely. Our longest episodes have been six to eight months of battling frequent, fairly severe recurrences (once for me, once for oldest dd). Milder, sporadic episodes? Lifelong, so far :tongue_smilie:

 

We (dds & I) have multiple triggers; chemical sensitivity and having multiple sources 'build up' is the issue more so than specific triggers. In general:

 

*go as fragrance free as possible - laundry detergent, lotions, soap, cleaning products, candles, etc.

 

*avoid food dyes - yes, they are in everything, but try! we definitely have a tipping point, so if we go to a party or have a bad few days of junking out, we know we then need to focus on simple, clean foods. if you like snack foods, the 'good' ones are things like all natural ice cream, home made baked goods, etc

 

*lots of sleep and a more relaxed schedule can help the emotional aspects

 

Good luck.

[Annie G]

Our youngest daughter fought this for several years- starting when she was about 12. Hers was stress related, and was easily identified as such because it always happened when she was about to audition for a show, compete in a spelling bee, etc. However, the docs wanted to do a good bit of allergy testing- which turned up nothing. She learned to recognize it as soon as it started to happen, jump into a cool shower or use a cool washcloth (hers was mostly on her hands and arms). She took benedryl when possible, and it worked well, but since hers was related to auditions and such, it was really necessary to learn other coping methods.

Oddly enough, I thought when she started college she's have many such events- first time in a class, etc. She hasn't had a single one for two years, even during auditions. I think hers was puberty related and also required her learning how to cope with stress.

 

I feel for you- it's not just a nuisance, it can be downright disruptive and scary!