Blog/2025-01-14/Hives 2.0
Shreyas and Karen had their final wedding on Jan 13. I was there, and apparently so was some fateful dish that I would consume. Interestingly, the last time I got hives was exactly 6 months ago to the day, and on that occasion it was the week before my wedding.
In any case, since this time I don't have any strict constraints on my life, I decided to experiment a little with what would cause what effect. This is the third time in my life that I have had hives. The possible circumstances that could trigger this have been:
- Stress, modafinil, armodafinil
- Stress, shellfish, coconut, spicy food
- Stress, shellfish, peanuts
The truth of the matter is that I don't think it's stress. I have been stressed at various times in my life and while it is true that I just discovered that my baby's delivery date has been moved up 3 weeks, I don't feel particularly stressed out about that.
The modafinil result is common among many people, and I have stayed far away from that safely. It is possible that this was the initial trigger for mast cell sensitization, though, and maybe having done this I will have to live with occasional outbreaks forever. The timing seems strange, however, since that was 4 years before the next episode.
The shellfish is my personal belief. But I do consume shellfish of all varieties all the time, so it's clearly not universal. In this case, I specifically think it's prawns of some specific variety. Six months ago I ate prawns and some very spicy (accidentally too much chili powder) bitter melon. This time, I also had some shellfish and a few peanuts. But I eat peanuts and tree nuts all the time and have always felt fine.
This makes it likely that it's the shellfish, in my opinion. I looked up my genome but didn't find anything notable. Lots of known variants related to the immune system but nothing that is known to be obviously pathogenic to shrimp.
One thing that I did do was do my hot shower thing. Apparently, it is common to substitute pain or sensitivity to itching, and people sometimes scratch till they bleed. I don't have it that bad, and I think I can control myself if it does get to that point, but a hot shower is incredibly pleasing. The degree of sensation one gets across one's body when under the shower is unmatched.
A fear that Julie had, looking up online, was that doing this would result in mast cell sensitization. I didn't keep my notes on the search I did, but it seemed like most hot-shower related cases of mast cell sensitization was around people who have heat urticaria. It makes sense in those cases since the heat is the cause of the thing. I doubt that is what is going to happen to me since it's unlikely that heat caused the response in me.
Regardless, we shall find out in time. For the moment, I think I'm going to try to resist taking the Prednisone I did last time to get out of this. We shall see if the hives subside by themselves. If they do not after a week, I shall proceed with it.
And I'm going to try to find an allergist on Zocdoc and sort this thing out. It's somewhat amusing to me that I've spent most of my life thinking I have no allergies and then landing myself into this situation.
