Probiotics, histamine and urticaria/hives

I have suffered from hives for over 40 years intermittently -primarily when I travelled toward the equator for holidays ( I live in Canada) and like many Canadians we like to go south for the winter. I was beginning to think I was allergic to the equator. My doctors said it was food - but travelling in South America and South East Asia provide very different foods. I figured out my problem by accident. I get hives from the sun only when I drink alcohol. I can stay in the sun as long as I don't drink alcohol - the kind of alcohol doesn't seem to make any difference.
I can drink alcohol in a cold climate with no obvious side effects. I have been living at the lake this summer and this is the first time I encountered the problem in Canada - from reading this form I am guessing my liver is getting older and doesn't stand up as well as when I was young. If someone breaks out with hives on a southern holiday I hope this post helps.

Hello! I suffered from severe urticarial and angioedema for the past 8 months. It was bad. disfigured face. Swollen eyelids to a closed eye completely. Itchy. Ugly. there were days I took 6 zyrtecs and 3 prednisone tablets and Benadryl to sleep... I was miserable.I don't even remember I found a research paper that spoke about a particular combination of 3 meds...
1 zyrtecn 10 mg
1 zantac
1 montellukast 10 mg

I take them as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. Gone. It took 3 weeks to have them all gone. The beginning was just smaller patches. Then one or two specks on my forearms or legs. And now it has been over a month and a half of no shows! My husband is an ER Physician. He explained to me why it s working. It has to do with distinct histamine blockers in the cells. I hope this helps someone! I have had blood tests done to see if the three meds are causing anything else on my body. But no. Everything is perfect.

My hives are associated with chronic Lyme disease. Lyme mimics many other diseases, so it's worth checking into. Just know, the blood tests for Lyme are unreliable and you can have it but the test can come back negative.

you should remove what ever you installed in your house, since those maybe causing the problem. Prednisone is not good for long term use, have you tried using fexofenadine(allegra). Wood can also contain microscopic particles, that can cause allergies.

I have had hives off and on for about 4 years. The triggering event seems to have been going to Iraq in the Army. Since then, every irritant is treated by my body like an allergen. The hives most recently returned about a month ago, with bronchitis. Two more weeks till I see the allergist. I also have asthma. I think I will try just eating organic and adding some probiotics to see if that will help my body calm down. They are definitely made worse by stress.

I've been suffering from chronic idiopathic urticaria and delayed pressure urticaria for about 3.5 years now. I also have endometriosis, and in the past year I have been trying to find a better treatment for the endometriosis because I was having intermittent dizzy spells.

My gynecologist put me on Visanne, and after giving it two tries to work, I will never take it again because it made me miserable. Visanne is a low dose progesterone pill that is meant to treat endometriosis by stopping periods. Unfortunately, because it's a hormone it has unfortunate side effects for anyone who suffers from chronic hives.

For me, what happened was it took about a month for my body to adjust hormone levels and then I broke out in hives that would NOT go away for at least a month on higher doses of cetirizine (up to 40mg a day). Every time I tried to wean off cetirizine, they would flare up again. The first time this happened, I went off the Visanne for a while and the hives went away.

But to rule it out as a coincidence, we tried it again and the same thing happened.

I was so worn out and desperate to find a way to make things better. I did some reading and came across articles recommending vitamin D. My doctor okayed it and I now take 4000 IU per day of vitamin D3. And it actually helps!

However, the side effects with the Visanne kept getting worse. I have been absolutely exhausted almost constantly for the last month or so. I get too hot in my sleep and often wake up with hives on my scalp and behind my ears. I also can't seem to have a restful sleep. My flares were more frequent and intense and took longer to get rid of. My daily limit for standing/walking was noticeably reduced. Standing for more than an hour would use almost all my energy for the day and I'd have to not do any more standing or walking where I could avoid it for the next 12-24 hours plus take cetirizine. My gynecologist said to stop the Visanne because it caused too many problems for me.

Unfortunately I do have to take something for the endometriosis, but my gynecologist is now wary of recommending any hormone based option because it could make the hives worse.

Just wanted to mention that anyone taking hormonal treatments (including birth control pills) might want to carefully monitor if that makes their hives worse.

I just started something new for managing my endometriosis, but it could be up to a month before the side effects of the Visanne completely wear off. It's so disappointing that in trying to fix another issue, my hives got worse :(

For background, my hives were initially set off by a flu-like virus. It got bad enough that I had chest pains for a couple days and went to emergency twice (the second time with half my face swollen). I took prednisone for a while, prescribed by one of the ER doctors, but it turned my hives into bruises and made me feel worse as a result. Especially since my feet and the backs of my thighs ended up covered in bruises.

It was about 4 months until I finally saw an allergist the first time. He recommended a higher dosage of cetirizine for my flare-ups, and to wean off at the end of a flare up. He also said to avoid Aspirin, ibuprofen, and most other pain killers aside from acetaminophen and Celebrex. If you take any prescription pain killers, please have your doctor check to see if there's any possibility they can cause hives. It's better to take something that doesn't have that chance!

Avoiding Aspirin helped quite a bit. I also take cetirizine as a preventative measure when I need to walk/stand more than an hour. And lots of breaks to sit down or I have to use a wheelchair. If unchecked, my feet will swell up to half a shoe size and it's too painful to walk when that happens. If I need to take a flight anywhere, I have to take cetirizine about 30 minutes before the flight and get up every 30 minutes during the flight to walk a little bit otherwise I overheat and get hives on my lower back/tail bone/thighs.

The second allergist that I saw more frequently said that when I have to walk/stand pretty much all day (like a convention) that it is okay to mix antihistamines if I stagger when I take them and only take for 2-3 days. She said to start with cetirizine (10-20 mg) then four hours later take Allegra D. Four hours after that, I can take cetirizine again OR if I'm about to go to sleep, take Benadryl.

I tried this recently and it upset my digestive system a bit, so I think it might have been a bit much for me. However, it did keep the hives mostly in check and I was able to walk as much as needed for a 3 day convention. So that might be an option to ask your doctor about for really bad situations.

I'm still trying to figure out a good balance for me so I don't have to feel so fatigued all the time and that the flares are more manageable. I hope that some of what I mentioned above may be helpful to others at least. This can be such a stressful, limiting condition.

I had hives for 8 months from 9/14 - 6/15. After many many doctors visits and an ambulance I found out that the HCL in my medicine Lisinopril (PRESCRIBED BY MY MAIN DOCTOR WHO WAS ALSO TREATING ME FOR HIVES was causing the problem. Another doctor (at Kaiser) explained that HCL causes hives. CHECK IT OUT. once I stopped taking LISINOPRIL for blood pressure my hives disappeared. then I was prescribed CIPRO HCL and they came back. Its the BINDER USED IN THESE PILLS manufactured in China. I am trying to get my strength back. but I feel that irreparable harm was done to my immune system and strength.

I've had chronic hives for six years. When I turned 35 I suddenly became allergic to wheat, corn, soy, codeine, nsaids, I could go on and on. Also, I get hives from pressure - my palms after mowing the yard -you can forget a back massage. I've had little relief from zyrtec and elimination diets. I finally asked my physician for something for depression. I scratch until I bleed and the scabs / scars on my legs were really weighing on me. I swear to you - I've been taking prozac 20 MG once a day for the last 11 days and I can't remember having hives in the last week! I just read an article about 3 other people who have experienced this. I was the worst hive case my doctor had ever seen - she talked about me at seminars for chrissakes. I. Don't. Have. Hives. No clue how long it will last, but I've been waiting 6 years for relief and I found it!

I've been suffering from chronic idiopathic uticaria for over 4 years. I tried different anti-histimines, diets, prednizone, accupuncture, and herbs. It got to the point that I had hives riddling my back and shoulders, neck almost every day. I finally got a referral to an allergist who prescribed taking a morning and evening zrytec and xantac for 3 months to see what happens. I'm about 2 months in and my hives are pretty much under control. I do sometimes feel them coursing through my body but they don't really break through.

The game plan is to get to the point where I'm hive free for a while to see if my body will reset and then hopefully I'll be able to wean off the zyrtec and zantac (H-2 blocker).

It's interesting what people are saying about the root canal connection. I always associated my trigger with antibiotics. I developed hives while on a course of antibiotics after some minor skin surgery. about 2 years later I took another course of a different antibiotic due to an infection around an old root canal. The hives got really really bad after that. My allergist said its probably not a reaction to the antibiotics but rather to the trauma of the surgery and infection.

I should also add that I had been vitamin d deficient and I started taking vitamin d supplements around the same time I got on the regimen of 2 pills of both zyrtec and zantac daily. My allergist said there have been correlations of vitamin d deficiencies and hives...

Post Edited (goawayhives) : 5/16/2016 10:44:17 PM (GMT-6)

Hello,

My name is Erica James I am 27 and I wanted to share my CIU story because I know others stories and treatment trials helped me immensely to cope and find things that worked during my struggles with the disease.

The very first time I got hives was in January of 16' and I woke up in the middle of the night with them covering my entire body, some the size of pancakes. I had never had hives so you can imagine the feeling I had seeing that!! Plus I was miserable and In pain! I would take benedryl or sleep it off and they'd go away but they came back every day for about a month. I finally saw a doctor and they gave me a shot and told me to keep taking the Zantac and Zyrtec I was taking that would get rid of them daily. But they didn't ever go actually go away. This went on for about 4 months straight hives every day until they just never went away period for weeks, I felt like my body was on fire, literally miserable! I cried, I was depressed, I couldn't go out or do anything! And doctors were no help!! So I decided to up the dose and take them 3 times a day no matter what. And it worked they stayed gone for a few months. Then they came back, with a vengeance, and this time the Zyrtec and Zantac was not working. So I went back to the doctors got a shot and 5 days of prednisone. They went away on day one, but as soon as I finished the prednisone, they came back even worse. So I went back and got more and finally got rid of them while also still taking Zyrtec and Zantac. I did this song and dance for a few months, they would leave and come back almost every other week. Finally I did some more research and I found a lot of people talking about gut health and diet, so I put myself on a low acid diet and I started drinking green juice and taking probiotics. This actually seemed to help a little but still I would get a little but if hives every now and then. I continued to have small bouts of hives a few times each month but Zyrtec and Zantac instantly fixed it. But I still was in search for something to prevent them!

I was introduced to a nutraceuticals company called Kyani, by a friend. I started taking their triangle of health, one of the products is the sunrise, which is juicing in a pouch but better! With 22 super foods, which was way better than the juices I was drinking and the food I was eating. The other two products are also amazing and have helped with my sleep and other issues... I have been taking the triangle of health for 3 months now, and I havnt had a single bout of hives! 🙌🏼 Because kyani changed my life, I actually became a rep so I could share my health story and help others with similar or even different health problems. I've also, cut back on my thyroid medicine.

Which btw, I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis (another auto immune disease) which is commonly linked to CIU. I also have 4 other auto immune diseases

If you would like to read about kyani products I strongly encourage you to do so! We also have a 30 day money back guarantee! Check out the science behind the products at www.kyaniscuence.com and to purchase products go to www.ericamarie.kyani.com

I came back on here to share my story because I was once desperate and absolutely miserable! I tried everything (not even kidding 🙄), even juicing myself which is extremely costly, messy, and time consuming! Please do your research and be your own advocate!

Oh also, I had angeodema (swelling) weird places my fingers, bottom of my feet, my lips (often) and on my forehead- Almost like a lump! At first they came with the hives but later it would be by itself sometimes even.

I hope this helps someone! Don't give up, there's hope! Our bodies are all different! What I will tell you is our bodies are meant to be healed with food not chemicals and medicine! That's why I love that kyani products are all natural food based products!

heres my story, I hope I can help people that struggled with this. I was so depressed that I couldn't figure out what was happening to me and there wasn't much information about the condition. But after spending hours every day for a long time researching this condition, experimenting with everything and anything I could, I finally found something that worked for me. First of, I'll explain what happened. I played sports my whole life but when I was 19, I was playing ice hockey and I started to get rashes during and after play. I wasn't sweating at all. It happened on a just a normal random day, I play hockey twice a week and had done for years. It came out of nowhere. A few months later, I moved to Australia and basically couldn't live because the weather was so warm and I couldn't sweat. I was anxious and depressed because every time I was supposed to sweat I broke out in rashes. I spoke to numerous doctors and specialists, spent hours on forums, all of this to seek a solution. Finally I looked into a website that claimed to have a cure. I forget the name however, essentially the solution was a lifestyle change. I realised I ate junk my whole life, I also had a blood test and realised I was intolerant to wheat, milk and eggs even tho I had been consuming these intolerances my whole life but perhaps my gut had enough and was acting up. So I had an allergy free diet, ate organic, natural and healthy foods. I juiced daily. All this for an entire year, I gradually saw improvement over the year and finally I was cured. No more rashes. I couldn't believe it, I could finally live without anxiety. I'm completely normal now and I'm so happy. I'm sorry I can't find the name of this website but it's out there. But I would suggest to everyone that's suffering to have a blood test, see if your intolerant to anything, look at your diet, figure out if your eating crap. Lead a healthy lifestyle, juice daily, eat clean and give it time, give your gut a rest, time to reset it self, the gut can do this. I hope you all find this helpful, it worked for me. I wish you all the best, I too once was on these forums looking for answers and can now say I'm cured.

Just a suggestion & maybe someone has already posted this. But , consider dust mites may be a possible cause. Launder all your bed linens in unscented detergent, & double rinse. Do this fairly often. Same with clothing, pajamas, bath linens, etc. Vacuum & dust more frequently too