I have chased this illness around for 14 yrs. The first major symptom was a profuse rash as I got out of a hot bath. Went to visit 2 friends of mine, both doctors who described the rash as Cholinergic Urticaria.
14 yrs later, doctors have focused on a separate set of symptoms, the body wide muscular and joint pain I suffer. The Urticaria symptoms continue, the rash triggered by sunlight, physical exertion in particular. HOWEVER (I don’t mean to shout, but …) I sweat profusely from my head. All the other symptoms are those of Cholinergic Urticaria to the letter, but I sweat p-r-o-f-u-s-e-l-y !!
What please tell me can this be?
Thanks for your help,
Roz
Ashley says
Hi Roz,
I am the wife of a CU ‘prisoner’, and he is also a very heavy sweater whenever he gets warm/hot, or frustrated, or stressed/emotional, etc…which makes his prickly itching worse. But, it seems that is a ‘good’ thing, as the hives have not reached a severity that shuts down his ability to sweat & therefore cool down! 🙂 We have been thinking he must be allergic to water/sweat or something, but he just got the “official” diagnosis of CU this last week, as opposed to the Physical Urticaria that his last doc said could be the culprit a few years ago…we knew there had to be a deeper issue going on, SOMETHING is causing this…label it what you will.
We just discovered this site this week and have found A LOT of hope in what we have been reading! He also has made the correlation between his symptoms and food, as all his symptoms of prickly itching and hives usually clears up by 90% when we fast, periodically, between 10-21 days at a time, basically doing a liquefied version of the Daniel Fast, but with very small amounts of dairy (yogurt/milk/cheese – which I think is also a big offender for him). This battle with CU over the last 5 years has been really cramping all of our lifestyles, as he gets severe attacks with all forms of water, sweat, humidity, moisture, etc., and the emotional/stress aspect has also been becoming a high offender as of late. We have 2 small children, and this condition controls everything that we are able to do as a family. I thank God for the revelation concerning the food connection on this site!!!
He just changed doctors, and again we heard the same ole routine….we do not know what causes this condition, but, it doesn’t appear to be related to food at all…are you kidding me?!?!? So frustrating to hear them say this, it is as if they do not want to even explore that option at all. Our food sources here in the US are so polluted and processed and altered, we cannot expect that they aren’t somehow involved in this crazy inflammatory response that so many people are dealing with, whether they have CU or not. (please forgive my venting!)
I hope that you are able to find some light at the end of your CU tunnel!! We are planning to start the elimination diet this week after a bit more research/planning is done. Drastic times call for drastic measures. We are going to try and do it with him, as I know support will help keep him motivated to stick with the program! 🙂
-Ashley