Banish Hives: Battle Your Allergies! | Gnet Health and Fitness

If you have ever suffered from hives, you?ll know how infuriatingly uncomfortable they can be. They bring with them a range of stinging and itching, and often the allergic reactions that cause them are a real concern. Home treatment is possible though; Here we explore hives, their causes, and how you can make it more bearable when you suffer from them.

What are Hives?

Hives, or Urticaria to give them their medical name, are raised, itchy patches of skin that can be tiny in size, or cover huge areas of the body. They can look similar in appearance to a nettle sting, or a bee sting. They are caused when capillaries, tiny blood vessels, beneath the skin?s surface leak fluid; This is prompted by a trigger that causes the release of inflammatory factors like histamines into the bloodstream.

The hives subside when this fluid has been reabsorbed into the surrounding cells. The tricky thing about hives is that their triggers can be extremely wide ranging, from allergies, to sunlight, heat, and even in rare cases water. Often it?s very difficult to establish what exactly has happened in each case to make them appear.

Hives fall into two main categories: acute and chronic. Acute hives are fairly short-lived, and do not last more than about six weeks. This type of flair-up is usually caused by a direct allergy to something. Chronic hives, however, last longer than six weeks, and usually don?t have an allergic trigger. Instead, these long-lasting hives are thought to be an autoimmune response, where the body starts to attack its own cells as if they were foreign bodies.

So what can you do to deal with your hives? Here are some tips to help prevent hives, and relieve the suffering when flair-ups occur:

	1) Can You Identify Your Trigger? Obviously, knowing what you?re allergic to will be the best way of preventing future outbreaks of hives. Most commonly the allergic triggers are things you ingest; food, drink, or medication. But it isn?t always clear, and doctor allergy tests are often inconclusive. So the best way to help identify what causes your hives to flair up is to keep a diary of everything you eat or drink, and of your medication schedule. You may start to notice links between your diet and when your hives appear. Common allergens are nuts, seafood, dairy products and wheat.
	2) Try to Take Down the Inflammation: There are many over the counter antihistamines, which will help take down the swelling of the skin and ease the itching. These are the same medicines that you might use for hay-fever. For more severe outbreaks, you should visit your doctor as you may need a stronger treatment to take down the inflammation, in the form of a cortisone injection.
	3) Prefer to Treat Your Hives Naturally? Here at Gnet, we love a natural alternative, and for hives there are homeopathic treatments available, which claim to help the swelling and itching of hives without the use of strong chemicals or steroids. These are always worth a try if your case is not too serious as they are gentler on your body, and may be the only treatment you end up needing. We recommend oxyhives.org which you can buy easily from their website, or from sites like Amazon.
	4) Calm Your Skin Down: Use topical treatment, like calamine lotion or aloe vera gel, to cool your skin and act as a very gentle astringent. This will help calm the itch, and speed along the healing process. If you are really struggling to control the itching, try holding an ice cube against the hives for a few seconds- this will cool the skin down and numb it a little bit, making it less sensitive.
	5) Have a Warm Bath: Make sure it isn?t too hot though, as this will aggravate the skin further. There are bath creams available that have colloidal oatmeal in them. This is a treatment commonly used for eczema and psoriasis, since it is well known to take the itch out of these conditions. It works in the same way for hives.
	6) Drink Some Green Tea: Green tea seems to have antihistamine properties to it, which will help reduce the swelling of hives. Not only that, but while you are having a cup of tea, you are lowering your stress levels, which in turn can lower the histamine levels in your bloodstream. This means that you are less likely to suffer from further outbreaks.
	7) Dust a Little Baby Powder on Your Skin: This won?t help the hives directly, but it will absorb any excess moisture on the skin that can aggravate the itching. Keeping the skin dry, and at a comfortable over-all temperature will help you feel more relaxed.
	8) If You Are Worried, Call Your Doctor: Treating your hives yourself is possible, however in serious cases, you should always consult your doctor. This is particularly important if you suffer any of the following symptoms alongside your hives: shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, swelling of the face, lips or tongue, wheezing, or dizziness.

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It Cured My Chronic Hives !

I suffer from chronic hives that last for weeks. Whenever I start getting an outbreak, I use this product and the hives go away. Now I don?t have to use cortisone creams and benadryl for relief. Thanks!

? OxyHives User ?
(http://www.amazon.com/OxyHives-Hives-Hemeopathic-Relief-Bottle/product-reviews/B001V7555Q/
ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt_sr_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0) ?

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