Hives

TacoLifter420

TacoLifter420

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Until 2 months ago, I'd never dealt with hives at all. This has turned into a constant, maddening itch. Keeping up with my workouts has become really difficult. That's because pressure tends to set off both the hives and the angioadema in a big way.

A few days back I was doing dumbbell bench press, and when I kicked the weights up, the tops of my thighs swelled. My back swelled too, from pressing into the bench, and my hands swelled just from gripping the weights.

I've gone through urgent care, my primary, and a dermatologist, and now I'm seeing an allergy and immunology doctor. So far the plan is antihistamines. He wrote me a prescription for Singulair, but after reading the fda box warning I got nervous and decided not to start it yet.

Tomorrow I have bloodwork, and in 2 weeks there's a followup. Should the stronger antihistamines fail to work, there are a few biologics we can move on to.

Anyone else dealt with urticaria? Which treatments actually worked for you? Are there triggers I should watch for?

The one bright spot is that the hives are far milder than they were at the beginning, and luckily I've gone a month without any on my face.

Honestly, this is miserable, and all I want is to be able to train and enjoy life. I hope we can sort this out quickly.

Taco
 
I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. It sounds like the kind of condition that wears you down and gets you feeling low. Is there anything you're taking that could be triggering it? I do get hives from time to time, though never anything that went systemic. One time a single drop of medicine on the needle left me with a hive on my stomach that stuck around for 2 weeks. These days I flick the needle, and if there's any hint of liquid at the tip, I'll even dab it on an alcohol pad — I'd take the sting of alcohol over a mast cell reaction any day
 
Do you have any clue what's triggering the allergic reaction? For me, amoxicillin causes that. Figure out exactly what the allergy is and cut it out of your life.
 
About 3 weeks before the hives showed up, the only new item I introduced was HGH.

Once this began, I dropped it, just in case it was the trigger.

Seasonal allergies have always been something I deal with, and seafood muscles have always caused a reaction in me. No other foods gave me trouble until earlier this summer, when scallops left me feeling sick. On top of that, my mom has had bouts of hives over the years.

Glutathione and testosterone c are the only things I inject. Both come from a compounding pharmacy, and I've been on them for a couple years. Previously I ran tirzepatide, first compounded and afterward gray, plus retatrutide for a few months in the period before the hives appeared.

Alcohol wipes have always been used on the vial and the injection site.

It might be the HGH, or it might be genetics and plain bad luck.

I'll keep chipping away at this until we get an answer. This new doc has 20 years in the field and is well respected

T
 
Just wanted to mention that thymosin alpha 1 works as an immune regulator, and I came across a few studies showing it reduces the histamine response. My husband is currently running a cycle, and normally he needs antihistamines every day for seasonal allergies that bring on constant sneezing and a horrible cough, which makes his asthma worse. This summer, though, he took no antihistamines at all and barely coughed.

Might be something worth checking into. Really sorry you're dealing with this
 
Singulair is a pretty common medication prescribed for both asthma and allergies. When my asthma acted up, I used to take it, typically before bed. On top of asthma, I deal with allergies to many different things. The Box Warning stems from studies looking at adverse reactions in adolescents and pre adolescents. Those figures weren't very high, but clearly they raised enough concern that the FDA put the warning in place in 2020. As an adult, I've never had a bad reaction to it. Some people do report vivid dreams from it, and I've had that happen too after being on it for a while, but that's the worst I've dealt with. YMMV.
 
Chili777 said:

Singulair is a pretty common medication prescribed for both asthma and allergies. When my asthma acted up, I used to take it, typically before bed. On top of asthma, I deal with allergies to many different things. The Box Warning stems from studies looking at adverse reactions in adolescents and pre adolescents. Those figures weren't very high, but clearly they raised enough concern that the FDA put the warning in place in 2020. As an adult, I've never had a bad reaction to it. Some people do report vivid dreams from it, and I've had that happen too after being on it for a while, but that's the worst I've dealt with. YMMV.
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I'm hoping there's a way to fix this without needing that. That said, if nothing else works out, I'd have to give it another thought.

Appreciate you telling me about it,
 
CrimsonTaco47 said:

Just wanted to mention that thymosin alpha 1 works as an immune regulator, and I came across a few studies showing it reduces the histamine response. My husband is currently running a cycle, and normally he needs antihistamines every day for seasonal allergies that bring on constant sneezing and a horrible cough, which makes his asthma worse. This summer, though, he took no antihistamines at all and barely coughed.

Might be something worth checking into. Really sorry you're dealing with this
Click to expand...
Appreciate it, I'll check that out.
 
TacoLifter420 said:

I'm hoping there's a way to fix this without needing that. That said, if nothing else works out, I'd have to give it another thought.

Appreciate you telling me about it,
Click to expand...
Hives can be triggered by food allergies too. Has the allergy panel skin test been performed on you at this point? It might be some everyday item you're eating. At one stage, following my doctor's instruction, I kept a food log. Nothing came of it, though at least it let me cross that off the list.
 
Tomorrow I'm getting bloodwork done, and here's the list of what they're testing for.

Total IgE

A general indicator of allergic or atopic tendencies

Regional respiratory allergy panel

Things in the environment like pollens, molds, dust mites, animals, and so on

Food & tree-nut allergy panel

Potential food sensitivities that are IgE-mediated

ANA

A screen for autoimmune or connective-tissue disease

CBC with differential/platelets

Problems with blood cells, eosinophils, and similar

Comprehensive metabolic panel

The liver, kidneys, electrolytes, and metabolic issues

Total protein + electrophoresis with immunofixation

Checks for unusual immunoglobulin or protein patterns

ESR

A broad marker of inflammation throughout the body
 
A strange rash showed up on me 2 years back, mostly across my neck. I burned a ridiculous amount of time chasing down what it was (months spent reading, and I picked up 10 x the dermatology I ever got in med school), with a particular focus on whether drug reactions could explain it. A few dermatologist visits, 3 biopsies and blood work later, the specialists could not pin down anything more specific than I had managed on my own — some unusual rash, possibly a telangiectatic rosacea variant, though atypical since it is not on the face and so on. Nothing they offered helped either, and it is still there, so these days I am a redneck regardless of where my politics sit.

What you describe really does sound like a type 1 immediate allergic reaction driven by histamine — hives fit that picture well, and so does angioedema. Still, the best path is to have a dermatologist establish the morphology of the rash first; once that is nailed down, hunting for causes becomes somewhat easier. Even better would be getting them to hand you a firm diagnosis.

Have your doctors raised the possibility of a drug reaction? Do they even know what you are taking? Quite often it is genuinely very difficult to determine whether something is a drug reaction, unless it appears a few days after you begin some antibiotic or another drug known to cause rashes at high rates. I am not claiming a drug reaction is behind your problem — only that it belongs on the list of possible differential diagnoses. And the fact that you are posting about this here hints that you may already suspect that could be the case.

Usually drug reactions show up to drugs begun within days, weeks or a few months before the rash, though on rare occasions something started a year or more earlier can be responsible. My assumption is that you are on several peptides. The trouble there is that many peptides have never been studied in humans or lack wide clinical use, so the kinds and rates of allergic reactions may just be unknown, which is no help whatsoever when you are trying to figure it out. GLP peptides all have documented systemic allergies that produce rashes of various types. Given that context, a drug allergy would sit high on my list of possible causes.

To rule out drug-related causes in my own case, I stopped the medications I had not been on for decades, a few at a time, since I was on roughly 10 different ones, for a couple of months to see if the rash got better — for me it changed nothing. Even so, pausing the peptides or any other recently started medication for a while, to learn whether they are to blame, is reasonable; if the rash clears, then restarting them slowly one at a time with decent gaps of a month or 2 between each should reveal which one did it. Should any of the peptides trigger a localised reaction, I would be especially suspicious of that one and stop it first. And if HGH is something you started recently, stop it and see whether the rash goes away.

A further problem with this whole issue is that specialists experienced in managing drug allergies are genuinely scarce, and their attention mostly goes to the severe cases that make people ill or threaten their lives. Good luck — hopefully it does not cost you a year to end up without much of a real answer.
 
Have you considered trying the ALEX3 Allergy Explorer test? It uses a blood sample and covers 300 allergens. It might help you figure out what's triggering it.
 
Allergic reactions account for just about 10% of hives cases. When it comes to most cases — particularly ones lasting longer than 6 weeks — the cause is unknown, and allergies are not involved.

For 2 years I lived in Florida. Hives would show up on my chest and upper arms every afternoon. No Dr was ever able to determine the reason. Once I moved back to the West Coast, the chronic hives stopped. These days they still appear once every few years, though only briefly. Usually taking zyrtec twice a day clears it up.
 
CandyCap said:

Allergic reactions account for just about 10% of hives cases. When it comes to most cases — particularly ones lasting longer than 6 weeks — the cause is unknown, and allergies are not involved.

For 2 years I lived in Florida. Hives would show up on my chest and upper arms every afternoon. No Dr was ever able to determine the reason. Once I moved back to the West Coast, the chronic hives stopped. These days they still appear once every few years, though only briefly. Usually taking zyrtec twice a day clears it up.
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I've dealt with hives for years, so I can say from experience that stress aggravates them. Gluten was my biggest trigger. Since it's found in so many foods, keeping it under control was incredibly tough for me until I found Loratadin, which I had to take once a day.

Then I began taking Retatrutide, and the issue mostly went away.

It still shows up when I eat a lot of grain carbohydrates. Even though gluten was clearly the culprit before, the trigger now seems to have shifted to other grains…. For instance, plain rice sets it off quite badly these days. That said, if I do accidentally eat something that triggers it, a Zyrtec or Benadryl will knock it out within a couple hours.

For stress, I strongly suggest Selank.
 
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