Hives. My new normal
 

25 days into my diet. I've lost 15 lbs, which is actually pretty good. It's slowed down a bit, but it's going down. I figure I'm losing 2.5-3 lbs per week.

For the most part, I feel pretty good. I've done low carb before, so I know how it works and how effective it can be. The reason I don't just stay on it is because I am a picky eater...I can't stand most of the vegetables that are staples of the low carb diets. Literally...I'll gag and choke if I eat asparagus, or spinach. I like lettuce. I like a few of the starchy vegetables, but of course, they're off limits! In addition, I'm severely allergic to nuts of all kinds, especially coconut. So I can't eat anything that is made from or contains nuts. That limits me to meat, cheese, fish, eggs, and lettuce. It gets boring.

But, that's not my real problem! My real problem is that this time, I'm getting hives. I get them during the night, and they appear mostly around my mid section, especially the belt line, and on top of my feet. I get a few in other places, but that's where they're concentrated.

If I take an antihistamine (like Claritin D) in the evening, I wake up hive-free. But I hate taking medicine every day. In fact, the thing that spurred me to get back on a diet was that my doctor indicated that if I lose the extra tonnage, I can probably stop taking blood pressure medication!

I've read a ton online. This is a common issue, it seems. I've tried many things...I've eliminated everything I'm currently eating for a few days to see if the hives went away. I eliminated Sodium Nitrates, and limited Nitrites. I cut out anything with Splenda (sucralose). I'm taking a multivitamin every day. And I'm not under any significant stress! The hives come on every night regardless. The only thing that seems to stop them is the Claritin D.

I feel good otherwise. I've been keeping a detailed log every day that includes everything I've eaten, calories per meal and per day. I also monitor blood pressure and blood sugar several times a day (I'd read that this diet, along with the blood pressure meds, might cause blood pressure to drop too low, so I've been keeping track. That has not been an issue for me).

It seems that most people have eliminated the hives with re-introduction of some carbs into the diet. What puzzles me is why I've never had to do that before! Perhaps it's a side effect of my BP meds? I wasn't on those during previous low-carb diets! At any rate, I'm a little hesitant to start adding carbs...I don't want to knock myself out of ketosis. Plus, like I said, adding 'small amounts' of carbs is very hard when you don't like, or can't eat, the foods that aren't super-high in carbohydrates!

Has anyone else had this hive problem, and what did you do to make it go away?

Thanks!!

Hi Bohica, Congrats on your weight loss!!
My thought after reading that anti-histamines work is to eliminate foods that are high in histamines or are histamine producing.
Although it could be your meds.

Low-Histamine Diet
https://www.healthline.com/health/l...t#pros-and-cons

ps when I eat eggs, I only eat the yolk

A reaction to a ketogenic diet can be a "keto rash"...it doesn't sound like that is what you have, but check this article if it might be similar: https://www.dietdoctor.com/keto-ras...e-itch-low-carb and If only when in bed...think new detergent?, softener? change in mattress pad or other bedding?, reasons not at all food related? etc.

You can create a new allergy with most any food if you overeat them enough. A friend of mine was eating too many eggs for her, and ended up with a weird tightness in her chest. She eliminated them for a month and then re-introduced 1-2 week, then see how you do.

Don’t eat anything you don't like! (thanks to Dr. Sarah Hallberg for that line). If lettuce is all you like, so be it...but have you tried roasting vegetables in bacon fat or olive oil? Good fats and Roasting make them sweet. Or Look for new recipes with the foods you DO like. Filter by carb level and what you like: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes If you really like meat, check out our Zero Carb thread. https://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=471960 The Carnivore Diet is very popular right now and that might be an easy elimination diet for you to try to figure out the reason for the hives.
https://justmeat.co
https://meatheals.com/about/

I had allergy testing to about 200 foods, they co-test IgG and IgE. Might be beneficial to you.

While I cant address the rash, i can suggest finding new salad dressing recipes to make the same lettuces more tasty.

And eat what you do like for vegies. When I tire of lettuce or box needs using up asap , just saute in butter .

Hope that rash is resolved asap.

Thanks to all. Comments as appropriate.

Bed linens/different laundry detergent. I'd though of this. We use the same laundry detergent and cleaning process we always have. I've started laundering the bed linens more frequently since this started, and it's had no effect. My wife, who is on a low carb (Paleo) diet, has not had any rash or hives, and of course, she sleeps in the same bed.

Allergies to the food itself; Well, I thought of that, too. The only thing I'm eating more of is eggs. Not per day or per serving, but because I'm eating them every day, usually, for breakfast. That's different...I normally don't eat breakfast every day. So, my egg intake is up only because they've been eaten every day! But I haven't eaten breakfast (so no eggs) for the last two days, and got the hives again last night. What I didn't do yesterday was take a claritin-D.

High Histamine foods? I believe that this is part of the issue, and I've suspected it all along! I realize that meats are histamine sources (or is it that meat causes the body to produce histamines? I don't know the specifics...) But it's still puzzling, because overall I'm eating LESS meat than before. My calorie average for the last 10 days is 1271/day. That's with almost no carbs (less than 10g day). I'm not really starving, either...without the swings in blood sugar, I'm just not as hungry, and I'm eating smaller portions! So the meat intake is actually lower than before...but the proportions of meat to my total calorie intake is much higher! I suspect that the carbohydrates suppress this, when eating enough of them. I also suspect that over time, it would probably go away...so I'll probably continue with the Claritin D for a while longer, and then see what happens. I might also see what happens if I go up to say, 35 net carbs or so...at 1300 calories a day, I'll still be losing weight anyway.

Thanks to all of you that offered ideas. I see my doctor on the 20th. I'm going to run all this by him as well.

Wow, You are really low calories compared to many I've seen here. Many men consume well over 2000+ cal per day when they check more than just the carbs.

If you click on the link above you will see the types of food high in histamines. It is not the fresh meat, but aged and fermented foods in general.

Two summers ago I got a rash which started around the edges of my lips and spread. I was in ER twice and Urgent Care once, saw many different doctors and all gave different diagnoses. My face and neck were horribly swollen, itchy, and every part scaled off like dandruff, even my eyelids. This lasted months. I had to wear a mask when I went out from embarrassment.

I tested for everything, use nothing with fragrance. My IGe was high. Last Fall I even had a scratch test. Nothing. I'm allergic to nothing, but doctors say I have "allergic dermatitis." It comes and goes at will.

BTW, I've been eating to ketosis since 1972 and had never had the allergies (hives) before. Guess you're not alone.

I don't get chronic hives but I have food allergies and I meet a lot of people with chronic hives at the allergist's. It sounds like the Claritin helps. At the least you should eliminate the "D" part because that is a decongestant not an antihistamine and it's not good for you to take it all the time. No real advice because hives triggers are horribly difficult to nail down.

Wow...I guess a few (well, more than a few) hives ain't so bad! ;-)

We had some Zyrtec (sp?) that I tried, but it didn't prevent the hives. My wife picked up some "non-D" claritin while she was out today, I think, so I'm going to try that.

One of my doctors had me on 3 different histamine blockers twice a day. I think the one which helped me the most was Ranitidine, which is a stomach medication but also a H2 histamine blocker.

Yeah, that's a pretty low number. I never do anything half-throttle! But although it's a low number, I'm not particularly hungry. I've lost this same weight a couple times before...it was always on a low-fat, low calorie diet. What's different this time is that because I'm not eating carbs, my blood sugar stays constant, and I don't feel like my stomach is eating itself.

That's sort of the key, I think...if you limit your calories as much as I'm currently doing, I think you'll lose weight no matter what you're eating. But the difference is how you feel doing it, and whether or not it makes you so miserable that you just can't stand to continue!

I will check that link. I think I may have read it before, because your statement sound familiar. Thanks!

Good luck. Let me know if it works.

Bohica, I wish you success in getting the hives to fade away.

I managed to get hives, too. I went on the strict version of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) Elimination Diet. Some call it the FailSafe diet.

It is low in amines, salicylates and other naturally occurring chemicals. I keep other categories low, too, such as: gallates, phenols, and oxalates.

As long as I stay on the strict version of the diet, the hives do not flare up.

Too much stress, or tea, or trigger foods mean flare-ups, for me. Staying on the strict version of the diet seems to reduce the overall stress load in my body. Everything feels calmer. I like it.

I read one description of hives feeling like mosquito bites on sunburn, which I think is an apt description. Also, the tiredness and sometimes swelling and heat build-up are high stress factors.

I take diphenhydramine at night, and sometimes the "second generation" anti-histamines in the day, mostly loratadine. Quercetin and vitamin C help me. I use a Vitamin C made from tapioca.

Here is a link to Emma Davies' blog about the FailSafe/RPAH diet.

It is much more of a challenge to keep my LC food plan now, as I cannot tolerate canned fish, or red meat, due to amines. I might try chicken livers as an amine test soon.

Reducing amine content of my diet takes work. Salicylates is just avoidance. Amines build up on the surface of meat and fish, so rinsing those off before cooking helps. There area various posts about how amines are formed at Sue Dengate's website, and how to reduce the amount of amine formation in cooking.

No more crockpot cooking these days. That's what triggered hives in the first place, for me. Canned fish, cooked way too long in the crock pot.

Egg yolks, fish, and fresh cheeses (queso fresco, yoghurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese) seem ok for now.

If I read of a way to detox the amines and salicylates quickly, I'll post about that.

There is a lot to read about hives, mast cells, and the stressors of city life.

Maybe the laundry detergent company changed their formula and you are allergic to a new additive. I am allergic to the whitener added in some.

An update...

I struggled with the hives and my diet...I tried, in turn, eliminating everything I was eating for a few days. Nothing made a difference. I did give thought to things like laundry detergent and soaps. But it's just my wife and I, and when we buy that stuff, we try to buy it at Costco, in big boxes. We haven't opened a new box of laundry detergent or dryer sheets or anything like that since before I started getting the hives!

It was getting worse, not better...finally, after looking at not only what I was eating, but the total calories I was eating, I saw that at such a low calorie amount, I'd lose weight no matter what diet I was on. To see if the hives went away, I switched to a more traditional diet, higher in carbs. I still kept the calories low. I continued to lose weight...but the hives didn't seem to change much...some days they were less...some days not. And I could still find no pattern that matched the hives. I didn't go anywhere different, wasn't more or less stressed out.

At my last doctor's appointment, which was about 6 weeks ago, he gave me a steroid injection. That cured them completely for two weeks, then they returned. He prescribed an oral steroid medication, which I took over the next 6 days. Except for one day since then, I've been hive free...and that one day was after an 18 hour non-stop drive from Las Vegas to Dallas. I had hives in places where my shoes rubbed, or clothing was bunched...top of the foot, around the beltline, etc. Been OK since then. So, I'm not sure about the hives...I don't feel they're 'gone'...but they're not currently bothering me. I'm hopeful that they've run their course...I'm not happy about trading one medication for another.

But that brings me to what I'm most happy about. The doc told me, after looking at my BP, and looking at the logs I'd kept, that after I lost a little more weight, it would be OK to stop taking the BP medicine and see what happened. I stopped taking it when I lost 25 pounds. That was about a month ago, and my BP this morning was 123/80.

My total weight loss so far is 33 lbs...but the BP meds are diuretics...I gained about 4 lbs of what I assume was water when I stopped taking them, and had to lose that all over again.

I'm still on the (relatively) high-carb diet. I've increased my calories to about 1600/day, but I'm also exercising a lot. I walk 4.2 miles every night at a brisk (just under 4mph) pace. That takes me about 66 minutes, and my heart rate usually averages about 112-115. On alternate days, I also use our step climber for 45 minutes, which is a much more intense workout...my HR usually averages about 135 during those workouts. With the weather getting nice, I'm also out working on the yard, out in my kayak, etc.

I plan to continue on as I'm doing now. I'm not paying much attention to carbs/fat/protein, and I know I'm not anywhere near a keto-based diet...but I'm counting every calorie. I'm not eating anything that's causing wild spikes in blood sugar, my BP is down, I'm still losing weight and I feel pretty good overall.

Thanks everyone for the ideas on getting rid of the hives. Hopefully, they're gone now...but if they return, I will have to look somewhere else for the answer other than blaming it on the no-carb diet.

Just throwing this out there, with it happening at night could it be bed bugs or some other critter? My daughter started waking up with hives/rash, come to find out it was spider bites that was causing a reaction! After we figured it out we sprayed and got rid of them, the hives went away.

Do you happen to have a latex mattress? Around the beltline and in shoes there is often latex.

Sorry they didn't resolve!

This happened to me as well but differently, when I got to 220 I started to break out into hives whenever I exercised. All over my neck and chest. Taking quetiapine before going out seemed to mitigate it so I'm thinking it was a cholinergic thing. No idea why that happened but couldn't afford to test for anything.

Good to hear your hives have improved/gone and you’re health is improving.
I’ve been through allergies with my baby, now toddler who is allergic to loads and loads of foods.
It’s tricky eliminating everything to work out what’s causing the problem. For example, He was also allergic to ingredients in toothpaste, shampoo, hand soap, etc. Hives have a tendency to show up more when we’re hot. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something to do with your bed or end of the day, but on warmer nights you may wake with more (and then associate with some food or practice from previous evening or day?)

Cutting out all traces of refined vegetable oils has helped my inflammatory arthritis. Olive, coconut, still ok.
For a while I ate really simply, like just rice, chicken, olive oil and lettuce, no chemicals; deodorant, soap, etc, till I got to a place where baby wasn’t reacting before gradually reintroducing everything one by one to find out what caused the problems. For a while I couldn’t understand it but then discovered how many frequently used chemicals, preservatives, etc, are made from his allergens like corn, soya, gluten, etc, it made more sense.