Chronic Hives-negative blood work

Hello Asbrown07,

Happy New Year. Chronic hives is a bummer no doubt. I look at it like any other autoimmune disorder that would affect my life. I feel fortunate that it's not worse symptoms than itching. If they could find a cure for all auto-immune diseases, someone would be a billionaire. As it is, billions are spent on all the anti-inflammatory and anti-histamines agents. My hives is tolerable with daily prednisone, which I've been trying to wean of off since Feb 2017. I pretty much am popping pills every 6hr but it's what I've got to do. Just had some repeat labs: HbA1C and fasting glucose and both were normal so, yeah, I'm not pre-diabetic from the steroids anymore. If I don't accept the situation and can't appreciate that it could be worse, I'm sure I'd be miserable. Hang in there.

Hi Asbrown. I've had chronic hives for three years. I've only seen a doctor once (white coat syndrome) and expectantly he basically said he could give me Prednisone (wouldn't go near it - I watched my mother blow up like a balloon on it and also had a terrible time trying to wean herself off it - for asthma though). He said Allegra would do it as a antihistamine. Yes they do work but I'm basically immune to them now and don't like fake chemicals in my body so have tried all sorts of natural remedies. IHerb is a good place to go for those. But some work, some don't. And you can burn a lot of money experimenting.

Like any one with chronic hives, I've given up, singularly, everything for a few weeks at least to try and isolate it. Two things have had a major effect. A few months ago I gave up anything with grain in it. So that's obviously any bread related food but also rice pasta etc. That,over a few weeks dramatically took the heat out of them. But then I gave up ginger. This was hard for me as for the last ten to twelve years I've started the day with a hot cup of grated ginger root made into a tea. I've become fairly addicted to it but it's also had a side benefit in that i haven't had a day in bed in all that time - in fact I've never even had a single cold. Anyway, I found that it was related to the deadly nightshade family - ah forgot to say that I've given up everything in that family too - potatoes are top of that followed by tomatoes. 

Now I should say here that I haven't completely given up these things. If I'm in town and hungry well down goes a pizza but instead of all those things being part of my daily diet, they're now maybe once a week at most. Instead it's vegetables, salads and meat. So it's helped the hives for sure (still there daily but not nearly as intense and I believe I'll see the back of them within a couple of months at most). But also I feel miles healthier.

In the meantime I discovered the best and cheapest remedy of all. I bought a couple of cold packs that I keep in the freezer. So, when I get a hive outbreak I just hold a cold pack hard down on them for about 30 to 60 seconds. After that. They've gone! When I go out I wrap a pack in newspaper and keep it in the car with me. Doesn't last that long - maybe a couple of hours before it's lost its effectiveness because it's started to thaw but it's truly a great way to get rid of them.

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Just had a 2nd set of tests done. This time they did like 20 blood tests and a urinalysis. All my blood work came back normal, except the C Reactive Protein. The first time I got it done in November it was 19.9 and now it's 21.4. I've started eating better and taking vitamins and even lost some weight (YAY!!) . My hives have gone from big ones once a week to small ones every day. They come and go in about a half hour.....sooo frustrating. Just wish I knew what this was.