Hives.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.herbs
Subject: Re: Need HELP with HIVES, SOS!!
From: ntlor.primenet.com (Sharon Rust)
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 1995 18:11:45 -0700

Sophia Lansky wrote:
> I've been struggling (suffering would be a better word) with HIVES. It burns and hurts, sometimes my feet swell so much I can't walk.
> I'm on a huge dose of antihistamines (300 mg. Atarax a day - it's 14 pills a day!) and Zantac, and still can't shake it off or control it completely.
> The doctor doesn't think that it's a food allergy, because of how long it's been lasting. Also the hives are often accompanied or preceded by a lot of pain in my chest. I don't know if that's what heartburn is, but whatever it is, it's very painful and somehow connected.
> Any suggestions?

Still it could be a food allergy, The top one to cause hives is RED DYE, then other colors. Look at anything that you eat often, at least 1 or more times every 4 days, these are the things that could be causing the problem.
Have you gotten any shots or used any flea or bug spray, bought a new kind of detergent or soap or dryer sheets? With the indigestion I would still have to say you need to investigate your diet. Once I ate some childrens chewable vitamins and got hives for 4 weeks, and I had quit taking the vitamins after I broke out, but they still persisted for weeks. Topically I used Dock (Rumex) leaves ground up in a food processor with a little vinegar added, it stopped the hives temporarly for about 3-4 hours sometimes longer ( DON'T EAT THIS STUFF APPLY IT TO YOUR SKIN ONLY), they worked better than the benadryl which left me feeling numb and hot and sick. Good luck.

From: vandy.simpson.ambassador.com (Vandy Simpson)

> I'm on a huge dose of antihistamines (300 mg. Atarax a day - it's 14 pills a day!)

You poor thing, I went through an inexplicable nine months or so of hives. Saw dermatologists, had allergy tests, got no suggestions at all. They had me on Atarax as well. It helped some, but also made me extremely groggy, and as I commute five hours a day, I just couldn't risk it. I was restricting myself to only taking the medication at home in the evening or after I got to work, but it didn't seem to be clearing out of the system in time for the drive home.

A casual discussion with a pharmacist pointed out that many people who use Atarax are down for the count, and just end up sleeping while taking it. So that was the end of that.

Since I've suffered from varying degrees of excema since a child, I've gotten into the habit, [20 years and it hasn't had ill effects yet] of using Solarcaine lotion. It's a mild topical anaesthetic. And while no-one recommends the continual use of over the counter medications, I wouldn't have lasted till now without it!

So I was using that, but after trying every other similar product I could find; calamine, caladryl; lanacaine, I finally resorted to a solution of baking soda and water. After some experimentation, I came up with a percentage that didn't leave any white residue on my skin, which meant I could dab it on as frequently as I liked and not look like a "B" horror flick. That helped immensely.

I found that the symptoms tapered off in the summer, [they'd started in about November] and didn't start to come back until fall.

Oddly enough, in my case, it seemed like one of my cats was also suffering from a similar problem, even though the dermatologist said there was no chance at all that it was related to animals or animal parasites. However, after the death of my old siamese in the second fall, the other cat's skin cleared up, and my hives went away. They've not been seen again. [the hives. The other cat is still with us, and still has a beautiful pelt!]

So I can make guess that there was a relationship here between the cats and me and the hives, but don't know for sure. I do know though that the baking soda got me through a phenomenally bad stretch. The hives had been so bad on my neck and arms and chest that I was literally scratching myself till I bled. With the baking soda solution, I could ignore the sensation.