Should you moisturize hives

Chronic Hives Care: Knowing When and How to Soothe the Skin

Chronic hives, known medically as urticaria, are a skin reaction that causes red or white itchy welts. These vary in size and can appear and fade repeatedly.

Chronic hives last at least six weeks, or recur over months or years. Much of their treatment involves finding ways to reduce symptoms and find relief, and while medications can be of some assistance, basic lifestyle changes are often a big part of successful hives management. Here are several areas you can look at to help with the treatment of chronic hives.

Keeping Moisture In

In some cases, new hives can result from people scratching their skin. A common cause of itchiness is dryness, which means that finding ways to keep moisture in the skin is important. Here are some basic tips:

• Use mild soap thats fragrance-freemany soaps can contribute heavily to dryness
• Avoid hot water
• Limit baths and showers to 10 minutes
• Moisturize directly after bathing
• Use a humidifier

Soothing Skin

During hive breakouts, cool compression is a great tactic to help shrink blood vessels and ease swelling. Most creams wont have a huge effect, as hives come from a reaction inside the body, but certain anti-itch products like 1-percent menthol in aqueous cream can help with relief in some cases.

Watching Triggers

Many hive outbreaks are caused by triggers in our everyday lives. Keeping an eye out for these can help reduce outbreaks. Here are some common triggers:

• Alcohol: Alcohol may aggravate hives and may not mix well with medications.
• Aspirin and NSAIDs: Pain relievers such as ibuprofen or naproxen can trigger or cause hives, and you should look to acetaminophen if you require an over-the-counter pain reliever.
• Heat: Try to work or sleep in a cool room, and avoid activities that can increase your temperature. Look for ways to cool affected areas, including a cool shower, fan, cooling cloth or soothing lotion.
• Tight clothing: Clothes rubbing against hives or putting pressure on them can aggravate them. Look for loose-fitting, lightweight clothes, and stay away from wool and other itchy fabrics.

Diary

Keeping a diary of breakouts can help. Include information on what you were doing and eating before a breakout took placethis can help identify your triggers and avoid them in the future.

Know When Help is Needed

In certain cases, hives can be a sign of an allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. If any of the following signs appear during a hives outbreak, seek immediate medical attention:

• Trouble breathing
• Tightness in the throat or hoarse voice
• Lip swelling
• Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain or diarrhea
• Dizziness or fainting
• Rapid heartbeat
• Feeling of doom
• Chest pain

If youre dealing with chronic hives, your doctor can offer specific suggestions for treatment and managing your symptoms.

As Utah Countys leading dermatology practice, Revere Health Dermatology provides the best in skin care for our patients.

Sources:

Chronic Hives: What You Can Do at Home. WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/chronic-hives-17/hives-home-remedies

Chronic hives (urticaria). The Mayo Clinic. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-hives/basics/definition/con-20031634

When to Go to Urgent Care or an Emergency Room for Hives

Hives usually arent a sign of a serious medical condition. But their sudden appearance may merit a trip to urgent care or the emergency room if they show up along with other symptoms.

Hives are itchy, raised patches, bumps, or blotchy areas of skin that can show up anywhere on your body. They usually appear red or pink on light colored skin, but the color will be less evident if you have Brown or Black skin.

Hives develop when your body releases a substance called histamine in response to a perceived threat, like a toxin or infection. But the body also sometimes releases histamine even though there isnt a real threat. An allergic reaction to a bug bite, medication, or food can trigger this. Stress, sunlight, and changes in temperature can also trigger hives.

If hives are accompanied by symptoms like trouble breathing, you may need to get urgent care.

Here, we cover when to get medical attention for hives at an emergency room or urgent care center.

An ER is the right choice for any life threatening illness or injury. Along with hives, if you also have any shortness of breath, swelling in the throat, or wheezing, call emergency medical services or go to an ER immediately. This could be a sign of a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis.

Other symptoms that can occur with hives and signal an emergency include:

If a doctor prescribed you an epinephrine auto-injector (EpiPen) in the past for an allergy and you think youre having a severe allergic reaction, you should use it to prevent anaphylaxis. Its still important to go to the ER for an evaluation after using an EpiPen.

For mild cases of hives, you may get relief with first aid, such as:

If you know the underlying cause of hives, try to avoid that substance or trigger. Also, avoid scratching as much as possible. A pharmacist can give you advice about which OTC treatment can help with hives.

Most mild skin rashes arent a medical emergency and are manageable at home. Hives usually go away on their own in a few hours or days without leaving any marks or bruising.

You dont usually have to get emergency treatment for a mild case of hives. However, you may still need medical attention from a primary care doctor, a dermatologist, or an allergist, especially if you dont know whats causing your hives.

An allergist may want to perform a skin prick test to identify triggers. You may want to see a dermatologist if youre not sure what you have really is hives.

Schedule an appointment with an allergist or dermatologist if you have:

• hives that occur almost daily for at least 6 weeks
• hives that keep going away and coming back without an identifiable cause
• a rash that is painful or leaves a bruise
• a rash thats interfering with daily life
• a rash that is spreading

Hives arent usually a medical emergency. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about when to seek medical treatment for hives.

When should I go to urgent care for an allergic reaction?

Though you can treat most cases of hives at home, here are some reasons why visiting an urgent care center might be a good choice:

• the hives cover your whole body
• you also have a fever
• you also have swelling under your skin
• the rash is spreading
• youre worried about your or your childs rash

You may also want to visit an urgent care center if this is the first time youve experienced hives.

Any allergic reaction accompanied by trouble breathing or throat swelling is a medical emergency. Call emergency medical services or go to an ER immediately.

Should I go to the doctor if I break out in hives?

Hives are typically harmless and you can manage them at home. But you may need to see a doctor if they cover your entire body, they dont go away, or they keep coming back. You may have an allergy or underlying condition that requires additional diagnosis and treatment.

Should I go to urgent care if I have hives all over my body?

You should visit an urgent care center if you have hives all over your body that are itchy or painful and dont respond to first-aid measures like an antihistamine.

You may also want to visit an urgent care center if youre concerned about hives or this is the first time youve ever experienced them.

Hives are typically harmless and you can manage them at home. But you may need to see a doctor if they cover your entire body, dont go away, or keep coming back. Hives accompanied by trouble breathing or throat swelling are a medical emergency and could mean youre having a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Call emergency medical services or visit an ER immediately since anaphylaxis can be life threatening if not treated right away.

Hives: Self-care

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Moisture Control in The Hives: A Four-Season Approach

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Temperature and moisture regulation in the honey bee hive is a collaboration between the honey bees and their beekeeper. We work with the seasons and the bees own incredible ability to self-regulate to keep heat, cold, and moisture in check. While it is useful to look at how bees live in the wild to understand their natural preferences, its good to remember that honey bees are adaptable and live all over the world, in all climates. They live in straw skeps, in clay pots, in stone walls, or wooden boxes. They live in caves or hollow trees. They thrive in the desert, overwinter in the frigid north, or live on rainy coasts. In the US, many bees are moved across the country following blooms: they are able to adjust to multiple climates and locations per year.

Most of us in North America use standard Langstroth hive equipment. For this reason, Ill talk about managing moisture in Langstroth hives. There are countless opinions on moisture control in beehives, and countless equipment modifications to be experimented with by experienced beekeepers. Im writing from the perspective of a Minnesota beekeeper, which I am. We usually experience warm, humid summers and long, cold winters, followed by wet springs. Your local climate (and your beekeeping equipment) will greatly affect how you manage your bees, but the basics of how bees regulate temperature and moisture should be relevant anywhere. Lets talk about summer first.

Summer

Bees use a few techniques to keep the temperature of the brood nest consistentabout 95 degrees Fahrenheit. If things get too hot in there, bees will fan their wings to circulate air and lower the temperature. Foragers will collect water droplets and place them just inside the hive entrance or on the combs; then workers will fan their wings to evaporate the water droplets into cool air that circulates through the colony. On especially hot days, when fanning and evaporating water isnt enough, older bees will leave the colony and beard on the outer walls of the hive boxes, decongesting the hive so that the younger bees can more easily regulate temperature and keep the sensitive brood from overheating.

Our job as beekeepers in hot, humid conditions is to make sure bees have proper entrances for their large summer populations both for foraging and for ventilation. An upper and bottom entrance allows for good airflow. Some people use screened bottom boards or screened inner covers for additional hive ventilation in summer.

Fall

When fall comes along, populations diminish, and robbing behavior increases, an entrance reducer can be added to diminish the area bees need to guard. Upper entrances can also be plugged or diminished. If the robbing season (August and September in Minnesota) corresponds with very hot weather, you can use robbing screens instead of entrance reducers to maintain good ventilation.

Winter

Now to prepare for winter. When temperatures are at approximately 55 degrees or lower, the bees will cluster on the honeycombs, shivering their flight muscles to stay warm. They do not heat the hive structures in which they live. The inside temperature of the Langstroth hive boxes is essentially the same as the outside temperature, though the walls provide protection from the elements. The bees only heat their own cluster of selves. The thick, outer layer of bees is tightly compressed; essentially, the bees make themselves into their own insulated coat each bee, a stitch. The center of the cluster is about 85 degrees; it reaches approximately 95 degrees in late winter when the queen starts laying eggs again. While we think the bees rotate from the outer layer to the inner part of the cluster (taking turns being warm and being almost-comatose), we know the queen is always near the center; always warm. Once brood is being raised, the bees ability to regulate the hive temperature is of the utmost importance: chilled brood, just like overheated brood, will die.

All winter long, the cluster expands and contracts, adjusting its density and temperature as the air temperature around it shifts. On warm days, the bees break their cluster formation, take cleansing flights, and move to new areas of honeycomb. Clustered again, wet air rises off the of respiring, metabolizing bees and, hitting the cold air, produces condensation.

That condensation gathers on the hive walls and inner cover, and can drip down on the bees, and kill them. While honey bees can withstand frigid temperatures (provided they are healthy, have low mite levels, and have enough food), being cold and wet can kill them. Beekeepers in cold climates can add a piece of particle board or other absorbent material over the inner cover to wick condensation out of the colony and avoid death by wetness (some beekeepers use wood chips or newspaper instead of particle board). A small upper entrance either a notched inner cover or a hole in an upper box will allow for ventilation and cleansing flights when hives are half-buried in snow.

While it doesnt provide heat, a black, waxed cardboard winter-cover, Styrofoam siding, or plastic bee cozy can provide some insulation to make the bees job keeping themselves warm a bit easier. Insulation becomes especially helpful when the bees begin rearing brood in late winter and early spring, as they will ramp up the cluster temperature significantly.

Spring

In very early spring, when temperatures begin to inch up, things can get pretty wet for us in Minnesota. That moisture board (or moisture quilt) above the inner cover remains essential for our bees. Early spring nectars are yet another wet element that is introduced by foragers into the colonies. Too much moisture encourages mold and the fungal disease chalkbrood. Its partly a matter of waiting until the weather dries out (bees can handle mold, and chalkbrood often clears up by late spring or summer). But variable spring weather means that bees will still be clustering on and off; no need to remove moisture boards until the warm weatherseems here to stay.

Its incredible to witness how honey bees live in climate extremes. How they shiver all winter long in the cold. How they hang lazily outside the hives in the heat summer, in order to keep the brood from overheating. How in spring some seasonal impulse or slant of light provokes them to begin their brood rearing again but honey bees do need us. They need us to study their biology their natural ways of living in order to help them thrive in our human-designed environments. Once you understand the basics of moisture and climate control in your hive, theres endless equipment, hive set-ups, and insulation choices to experiment with.

Will you tinker with your hives equipment this season, and how?