Alcohol consumption may cause hives
.jpg?w=728)
By Lee Seung-hun
Recently, a female patient in her early 30’s visited my clinic to treat urticaria, commonly known as hives.
She had been busy with work and preparing for studying abroad in the U.S. in the near future.
She experienced a sudden outbreak of hives around her body, arms and legs, and prescriptions from a dermatologist didn’t prove effective.
As any other female patients would agree, skin conditions that show up on arms that are usually exposed to others’ plain view is very stressful.
Hives, one of the most common dermatological illnesses, occur when blood leaks out of small blood vessels in the skin to nearby tissue resulting in a flare on the affected area.
It is reported that about 20 percent of the population have experienced hives at one time or another during their lifetime.
According to a domestic medical report, six percent of outpatients at dermatologists are hives patients, and as the condition is more common among younger people, patients aged from their 20s to 40’s make up almost half of such patients.
Hives usually cause itching but may also cause burning or stinging pains.
They may occur in any part of the body including the face, lips, tongue, throat, and around the ears as well.
Once they appear, they may last from a few hours to a whole day.
Hives appear in various non-typical shapes, and they are sometimes difficult to diagnose based on their shape.
Some patients can miss the symptoms and leave them untreated until it is very late.
As the severity of the symptoms can fluctuate between almost non-existent to sever outbreaks, patients can feel that they don’t really need to treat them and miss the treatment window and allow them to become chronic.
According to past research, patients of chronic urticaria can suffer severe loss quality-of-life equivalent to a heart surgery patient.
Hives are generally classified as acute, lasting six weeks or less, while chronic hives last over six weeks.
Acute urticaria is more common among children, and common causes are believed to be food, drug or infection related.
Food that can cause hives include chocolate, tomatoes, eggs, strawberries, milk, peanuts, etc., and uncooked foods are more likely to cause hives.
Drugs that can cause hives include aspirin, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen, and vitamins.
Chronic urticaria is more common among adults and about 60-70 percent of the patients suffer chronic idiopathic urticaria, meaning that the cause is non-specific.
Physical stimulation can also induce hives. The most common condition would be dermatographism. Some patients complain that they can write on their skin, and dermatographism is just that.
Slight scratching or abrasion can cause hives within minutes of the stimulation.
There is also cold urticaria that is caused when the skin is exposed to cold air or water, and the hives appear when the skin exposed to the cold elements is warmed back up.
Also there is cholinergic urticaria where hives appear when the core temperature rises due to over-exhaustion, mental stress or even from a hot bath.
This appears mainly among males in their 20’s, and patients experience stinging pain rather than itching.
In severe cases, patients can suffer headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty in breathing. Other types of hives include solar urticaria which is caused by exposure to sunlight or other light sources, and an extremely rare one called water urticaria, which is caused by contact with water.
Oriental medicine views hives as a dermatological manifestation of issues in the internal organs, especially in the digestive system.
When the digestive system suffers functional loss for some reason, the internal filtering system becomes weak and the toxins ordinarily secreted out of the body circulate in the blood vessels and eventually break through the skin, appearing as hives. In other words, hives are viewed as internal ailment rather than purely dermatological condition in Oriental medicine.
When you consider the fact that many patients also suffer from some type of digestive tract symptom such as stomach aces, indigestion, reflux esophagitis, diarrhea, or constipation, one can certainly draw correlation between urticaria and digestive system issues.
Therefore, treating the underlying causes for hives means that patients are treated to strengthen their digestive organs such as the stomach and intestines while enhancing their natural immune systems.
In general, alcohol and overly stimulating and spicy foods need to be avoided to prevent hives, and if you know for certain that a specific type of food can cause allergic reactions, it is best to avoid that food. Stress can also aggravate hives, and is best to reduce it, if it cannot be avoided.
The writer practices oriental medicine at the UN Oriental Medical Clinic in Hannam-dong, Seoul.