Does Putting Oil On the Skin Help Cholinergic Urticaria Hives?
Post by: gottatry on November 11, 2009, 07:40:43 Am
I’ve been suffering from this condition for over 30 years and have just heard the term Cholinergic Urticaria for the first time a couple of weeks ago. i’ve tried it all…or so i thought…until i read the blogs here. i do know that my emotions play a big part. i can relate to many of the stories here. i did find that in the midst of an outbreak…applying extra virgin olive oil to the inflamed area cools it down instantly….for me. however, this is so not practical outside of your home not to mention for your clothing. i found this out in a very odd way. i spoke to a spiritual advisor many years ago out of desperation and that’s what came to her. i was like…”yeah right”. but, hey…why not? it worked like ice on fire. i was really shocked. i tried taking olive oil internally before hand but it didn’t work.
i do find the Vitamin D deficiency theory of great interest because i was just prescribed a very high dosage of Vit D due to an extreme deficiency. the doctor told me that African-Americans (which i am) tend to have lower levels of Vit D because the melatonin blocks some of it. but, i am still an extreme case. so, this is news to me. the stories i have read here about Vit D deficiency brought to my remembrance the fact that when i a very young (younger than 10 yrs old) i couldn’t go outside and play with other kids in the middle of the day because i would break out in a sun rash. now, i grew up in TX so it was intense. i’d have to wait ’til later in the day to go out. now the earliest incident i can recall with this Cholinergic Urticaria condition was around age 11. it probably started before that. and now that i think about it, the heat rashes stopped. so, perhaps Cholinergic Urticaria replaced it. maybe the vitamin D deficiency played a huge part. for many, many years (i’m now 40) i was inactive because it was too painful. i attended a Performing Arts high school where there was no gym so i got by. (or so i thought) combined with the fact that i didn’t stay in the sun much is the fact that i hated vegetables, so i was missing vitamins all over the place. so i didn’t sweat for years….even when i was active (on good days).
i went to an elder Chinese Dr. in houston this past. year. he was the first person to give me relief (through an herbal tea combination). and although my symptoms are back, i do sweat now. even while the herbs seemed to work, one day it was suddenly set off while i was in Turkey walking. it was like someone instantly threw a torch my way. the only thing around me were trees. many, many trees. i’d visited Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Greece,etc., climbed hills and everything. i thought that i was cured. NOT!! something in this short, flat-leveled path set it off!!
there was also something written about the Liver. and my doctor believes that i am highly toxic and my liver can’t handle it all.
as an adult, i eat pretty healthily and have been on a mission to figure this thing out. recent blood tests revealed that my CK level was very high. this indicates that there is a very high level of inflammation in my muscles. i have an appointment with a Naturopath this morning. i’m going to share the info. i’ve read here with her and see what we come up with. i am blessed to not have to take medication on a daily basis.
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Title: Smells great, but itches like hell!
Post by: mozartthekat on February 16, 2011, 10:42:35 PM
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Do you break out when you wear perfume?
>:( I sometimes do.
Last Month
I sprayed Chance by Chanel on my chest. Itchy hives and asthma! I switched scents and bought Marc Jacobs’ Daisy perfume. It smells amazing, yet sometimes I break out. Rarely, but just in case I’ll put it on top of my clothes or in back of my ears.
Valentine’s Day
I sprayed Victoria Secret’s Romance body spray on my skin. It was only about a minute later that my skin started to….yes you called it, itch! And what else did it do? Oh yeah, turn red and blotchy. ::Sigh::
Maybe it has to do with when I spray them on. For example, I noticed that my skin was more sensitive to these scents after I dried up from a shower. If I use them after waiting awhile, I’m a bit better. Also, if I feel kinda gross from being out all day and want to put some on I might then get itchy as well.
More importantly, my trouble lies in the color change in my skin. It is only if I’m exercising that my skin will swell up. It seems as though it likes to just flush and say “I’m herrreeeee!” :-
I bought this one soy fragrance from Whole Foods. It’s made out of soy and I thought, “Natural, go with natural.” Well, although I love the Gardenia fragrance, my skin despises it! Itchy and…red, blotchy, and even puffy!!! No soy for me. But, then again I always was a bit itchy after eating food with soy sauce…even before the hives.
What I have decided to use instead
Coconut oil works the best for me. I love the smell of coconut. :-* It reminds me of growing up in the Polynesian dance studio watching my family dance and of course…dancing myself. π It absorbs nicely in my skin and it’s great for my eczema. In addition, if I put it on my face and it get’s in my mouth…guess what? No icky taste! Yayyyyy!!!!
What do you guys think? π
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Title: Re: Smells great, but itches like hell!
Post by: HivesGuy on February 17, 2011, 07:22:54 AM
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I can’t recall cologne making me break out in hives, but I can see how it could.
As far as coconut, if you like it, go for it!
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Title: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: bluesky on May 02, 2011, 05:49:16 AM
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My name is Valerie and i have been suffering from hives for 8 months now. I live in the province of Quebec in Canada. I am french so please, bare with me sometimes my english can be far from perfect!!!
I can say i had 3 extreme reaction, wich i had to go to the hospital(not knowing what i had). During these episodes, you coudn’t see the color of my skin anywhere. My body was FULLY cover with hives. Even the doctors and nurses were taking turns to come and see me in my room. It was like a was in a freak show!!! The other rashes i had were less extreme, mostly on my forearms, around the eyes, neck and inside the knees. I finally understood it was cholinergic hives when i went on a cruise and i had an hot oil massage. My body was cover with hives within minutes. And i caught the flu during my cruise and i got the hives again during that night. Before i thought it was the sun. Now i know better.
I am a person who needs to understand and know everything. That means i will try to find what triggers this, till the end of my life or till it is gone! Try to follow me:
I saw an allergist and he prescribed me antihistamine. Now this gets tricky. EVERYTIME i was taking any kind of medication(including antihistamine) i had the worst case of hives. Everytime i pup a pill in my mouth i am having a rash.
I notice that 2 of my 3 extreme cases of hives( the ones i went to the hospital at the beginning) i took a cold medicine that morning. the 3rd one i can’t remember if i took something. when i take the pills, my hives are always worse when i am warm.
I am a social smoker. When i smoke a cigar or cigarette, i will have hives for 2 days, at night( when it’s warm). Now i think, i might have a reaction with some chemical, like preservatives. something that you can find in cigarettes, pills, and maybe in some food. I just don’t know anymore.
I started working out again this week, because i can’t stop living because of this. i have to learn to live with it. When i went to the gym i had hives on my forearms and it took a good 6-8 hours for them to fade away.
And one thing i notice also: when it is very hot outside i will get hives faster(when exercising). If i exercise inside with the a/c my hives won’t be as bad. It’s like if my skin is cool, it’s not too bad. like the oil massage. the oil was hot and i had a reaction immediately.
i don’t know what you all think about this!
sorry for the long post. but it is the 1st time i can really talk about it!
valerie
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: HivesGuy on May 02, 2011, 06:50:03 AM
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Hey Valerie,
Excellent post and welcome to the forum. I am really sorry to hear about all of your frustrating experiences with hives. Just know that you aren’t alone, and we are all suffering right along with you.
That is very interesting that your hives got worse when you take the pills. I am not sure what could be happening there. I haven’t experienced that so far, but you may want to back off of those meds if your doctor says its okay, or maybe try switching to others.
I also like to exercise in front of an AC or large fan. It helps me stay cooler longer, and avoid the hives for a bit longer.
There are a lot of tips on this forum, and I hope you can read over some of them and hopefully find something that makes your hives a little better. Thanks again for your post, and welcome to the forum.
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: bluesky on May 02, 2011, 06:57:08 AM
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Quote from: HivesGuy on May 02, 2011, 06:50:03 AM
but you may want to back off of those meds if your doctor says its okay, or maybe try switching to others.
I already stopped all kind of medications, because it was unbearable. Now i’ve been medications free for a good3 months but still have heat hives(but not as bad as with medication). that means it can be in the food also(preservatives?)
thank you for your welcome note π
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: HivesGuy on May 02, 2011, 07:14:04 AM
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Hey again,
Quote
I already stopped all kind of medications, because it was unbearable. Now i’ve been medications free for a good3 months but still have heat hives(but not as bad as with medication). that means it can be in the food also(preservatives?)
thank you for your welcome note π
I am not sure if food really causes Cholinergic Urticaria or not. At this point, I am inclined to think it does not cause it. Food can definitely cause Cholinergic Urticaria to come out (in terms of eating spicy or allergic foods), but I don’t think it is the direct cause in my opinion. We still don’t really know for sure.
Some research studies have indicated there may be different subtypes of Cholinergic Urticaria. Some people’s Cholinergic Urticaria may be a direct sweat allergy, some may have some type of antigen/protein in their sweat, others may have hyperkeritization (causing poral occlusion) or something like that.
I think mine is most likely the result of a sweat allergy.
I am a lot like you in the sense that I like to see the “big picture” in life, and I have to know how things work on a macro level. I like to know why and how things work. So it has driven me crazy the past 4 years trying to hypothesize what could be causing this. At this point, I have toned it down and just realize that it is probably a sweat allergy (or at least an allergy to something in the sweating process). I try not to “solve” it so much anymore, because I have tried nearly everything, and I have realized that without some type of testing/studies, I am not going to find out more.
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: bluesky on May 02, 2011, 06:20:01 PM
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I understand, at one point you have to let it go.
But you seem to know a lot about it, if you don’t mind i will ask you a few questions.
1. If i had a sweat allergy, i would have my hives everywhere on my body when i have a reaction. But mostly, lately, it is on my
forearms and around my eyes only.
2. And if food was a trigger, i would have hives even if i was not warm. Why only when i am warm?
thanks for keeping up with me!!!
val
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: HivesGuy on May 02, 2011, 06:53:29 PM
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Hey again,
To answer your questions:
1. Some studies have shown that there may be an actual allergy to the sweat alone in some patients. This may not be true for everyone though. How they often test this is they take your sweat, and re-inject it into your body. If it forms a wheal/lesion, then they consider you are allergic to it. Here is an example of a study similar to what I am talking about.
So in other words, the sweat can cause a reaction inside your body (with the allergy cells in a certain layer of your skin), but not necessarily cause problems on the skins outer layer.
Again, we really don’t know conclusively why people get Cholinergic Urticaria, and not all people with Cholinergic Urticaria will necessarily have a sweat allergy per se (but the symptoms will be the same).
2. Food can trigger Cholinergic Urticaria in the sense that food can raise your body temperature. Example: Go eat a lot of pepper, and you will find yourself most likely having an attack. I cannot eat spicy foods for this very reason. This is what is meant by this. But there is no direct evidence that food alone can actually cause Cholinergic Urticaria to develop in the first place. We don’t know why it develops, or what triggers it. It could be stress, or it could just happen for some other unknown reason. But food can trigger an attack, by raising the body temperature (which causes a Cholinergic Urticaria attack).
If you go to the home page (cholinergicurticaria.net), I have a few articles that list some frequently asked questions, and so forth that you may find interesting.
I hope that helps!
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: nowash on May 03, 2011, 02:59:23 AM
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Hey Valerie, welcome to the forums.
I’m not sure if your symptoms are exactly cholinergic urticaria; it could be that you might have heat urticaria, which is different. Cholinergic urticaria seems to be a reaction to something to do with the mechanism of sweating; heat urticaria seems to have something to do directly with heat. To make sure you can ask yourselves these questions:
1. Do you get hives from emotions (embarassment, anxiety, arousal, nervousness)?
Emotions can stimulate nervous sweating with which ChU patients have a reaction to.
2. If you let only one part of your body get hot, say your arm, do other parts of your body break out, or is the reaction generally localized to the place you heated?
Since sweat is generally stimulated all over the body, heating one part of the body would cause break outs in other parts of the body with ChU. If only the heated part of the body reacts, I would suspect heat urticaria.
3. How well do you sweat?
Most people with ChU have some form of hypohidrosis, although normal sweating doesn’t exclude them from a ChU diagnosis.
4. What do your hives look like?
This is not really that specific of an indicator. I think typically ChU have small, red hives 1-2 mm in diameter that look sort of like toad skin, but can coalesce into bigger wheals. Either that or they get bumps localized with hair follicles, like goosebumps, or just red discoloration with no raised wheal. I think Heat urticaria on the other hand typically has huge wheals to begin with.
I suppose you could also have miliaria, which is an infection, although it is mostly found in hot humid climates and would appear with sweating. Maybe some form of keratosis pilaris, which I think can localize around eyebrows. By around your eyes, what do you mean? Is there a ring of hives around your eyes?
However, the key factor to determine is whether sweat is the trigger.
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Title: Re: I want to introduce myself and tell you about my own story.
Post by: bluesky on May 03, 2011, 05:24:44 AM
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Quote from: nowash on May 03, 2011, 02:59:23 AM
I’m not sure if your symptoms are exactly cholinergic urticaria; it could be that you might have heat urticaria, which is different.
once i had hives after a strong emotion, but it was localize on my neck only. But the only time 3 times it was all over my body, i had to go to the hospital, it was extremely scary.
I researched a little bit the heat urticaria, after your post, and they say that we will have localize urticaria if we are expose to a temperature over 109 degres farheneit(43 celcius). Because i know when i exercise i can sweat a little bit and i don’t have necessary have a reaction where i sweat.
And to answer your question for the eyes, i get hives on the upper half of the eye. starting at he corner and going around my eyelid. And they are hives(they start as little red dots and get larger sometimes touching each other wich makes them bigger and all swollen).
But i will try the test for heat urticaria. try to put a warm(hot) tube on my forearms and see if i have hives within 3 minutes.(wich is how it is tested at the dermatologist)
thanks a lot for your post.
val
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Title: Does Putting Oil On the Skin Help Cholinergic Urticaria Hives?
Post by: Claudia on April 22, 2012, 09:17:09 PM
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I’ve used baby oil.
I was surprised that it had any effect on my hives since it’s a petroleum-based product (e.g., Vaseline), which is supposed to trap heat on the skin. Perhaps it’s because its viscosity is more similar to water than cream, making it evaporate; and thus, cool off the skin. At least that’s how I make sense of it lol π
For me, when I put it on, the itchy feeling dies down a bit, and pretty quickly (within minutes). Unfortunately, the soothing effect is temporary — especially if I am in a hot area of the house — so I have to re-apply throughout the day.
So, have you tried baby oil to help soothe your skin when you felt an attack coming on?
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Title: Does Putting Oil On the Skin Help Cholinergic Urticaria Hives?
Post by: FroggyHorn76 on April 23, 2012, 03:26:53 PM
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Has anyone tried bathing with 2 teaspoons of tea tree oil mixed in bath water to treat hives? I have a friend that swears by using tea tree oil for any rash or infection, so I thought I’d try it.
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Title: After 11 years, I think I’m cured!!!!!
Post by: mrniceguys04 on May 06, 2012, 04:24:31 PM
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Greetings fellow red spotted friends. I found this forum a few months back and wanted to share the treatment I just went through that I feel may be the end all cure for the past 11 years of torment. Now 28, I have spent almost every day of my 20’s with hives small and large. This entry is lengthy, but it really may be worth it for ya to read!!!
Back story, I worked in a kitchen as 1 of my first jobs. I ate cheesecake for the first time while working and broke out head to toe for the first time in my life. This was around 2001. Ever since, they would come and go as they pleased (im still afraid to eat cheesecake). I literally tried every single kind of allergy med known to man claritin, allegra, zyrtec, prednisone and other steroids, everything!!!!. After hundreds of doc visits, thousands spent on meds, creams, shots, etc. I gave up. I just decided to live with it.
I was and still am considered one of the rarest cases they have ever seen here in Philadelphia. This year, I’m getting married. The one thing i promised myself was that i would figure out something to make sure i am not hivey on my big day. I decided to go back to a new doctor (1 of the best allergists in the city) and she agreed with the other doc, I was a mystery. The good news is, I know what causes them. Stress, hangovers, and 100% from heat ( if im in the least bit hot while i sleep, the sweat mixed with pressure from laying down immediately causes them and I would have them the full next day)
Spots where they are most prevalent – Neck (under ears) Shoulders, wrists, hands, sides of stomach, lower back.
1 thing i’ve learned that may be worth mentioning, if i drink beer or liquor, they disappear once I start getting drunk. (stress reduced) But if I’m really hungover, they come out the next day again. Weird but an awesome excuse to drink. And i’m very serious about this.
I also play soccer as a goalie and when i wear my goalie gloves without question my hands would be covered completely by the end of the game from the heat and pressure of the straps. I play 4 times a week. 4 times a week x 11 years, thats pretty much my entire 20’s suffering from this.
My new doctor said she learned of a treatment a doctor friend has been testing on patients out in Cali. She said it has had a 50% success rate out of about 30-40 people. I said let’s do it, nothing to lose.
PLEASE CONSULT YOUR DOC ABOUT THIS TREATMENT!!!!
She put me on Cell Cept ( Mycophenolate 250mg capsules 2x per day) for 4 months
Disclosure: The most you can take this drug is for 4 months, I just finished the last dose last week. The drug is primarily used for organ transplant patients, this is just 1/4 the normal dose but it’s purpose is to change the blood around to accept a new organ. In this case, it’s to change the blood around to subdue hives.You will have to get your blood checked once a month while on it to make sure nothing funny happens.
It didn’t work 100% but I would say it is more like 95%. They came on less and less and for shorter periods of time as the months went on. But, it’s what I just started using that has made it 100% in my eyes.
She gave me a rx for Derma Smoothe (baby oil, with mineral oil) last week. After showering I will rub the oil on all of my problem spots. Today was the true test for it as it was my first soccer game back from being off for 2 weeks.
I used the oil before my soccer game this afternoon and for the first time in 10 years, NO HIVES ON MY HANDS!!!!!!!
So there it is, the cell cept treatment + derma smoothe oil and for the first time in years, I’m not worried to wake up tomorrow. I hope this works for you as it has for me, it’s been the most annoying battle ever but I think it’s finally over!!!!! Ask your doctor about the treatment and try out derma smoothe for less severe cases. These combined have been a life changer!!!!!
Any questions, please feel free to ask!