I have hives for 3 months.I am on predinsone. No hives but I have gained 15 pounds. Anyone else havethisprob?

I have had hives for 3 months now. I am on predinsone and zyrtec. No hives when I'm on the steriod but I have gained 15 pounds. (NO FUN!!) They said my body is fighting itself. Apparently it is not an environmental or food allergy. They say that the hives are in response to a sinus infection that I had several months ago. Every time I go off the steroids my lips swell and my throat swells shut. I have been to the ER 3 times, my family doctor 3 times, an allergist and a dermatologist. I would love to hear that someone else had a similar problem and had success somehow getting rid of them. Please share your story. The allergist said this could last for years!!!!

I've had bouts of hives my entire life, but it's from stress, not allergies. My histamine is triggered from the smallest things--I can be sewing and accidentally stick myself with a needle and have increased histamine levels. Spontaneous activity can trigger higher histamine for me.

Doctors really don't understand hives and it's a long-term effort to identify what's going on. If you want to get to the bottom of it, you need to keep a journal of your daily activities, feelings, foods, products, etc., and track when you have hives.

I don't use any medications for my hives at all--I'd rather have hives than the side effects, like weight gain, drowsiness, etc.

Go to an endocrinologist and find out if your histamine levels are triggered easily. If so, it could just be a matter of avoiding the things that trigger your histamine.

I went off steriods this week. I immediately started taking nettle leaves, B5 and one other natural medicine that I can't remember the name of off hand. So far no hives! Yeah! Knock on wood. :) Thanks again for all the advice. Report It

Tikva has some really good advice! I had hives, spontaneous--lasted for almost a year and a half and just took Claritin to keep them under control. But I also have a gazillion allergies and the rip off allergist I had been going to said and this was backed up by my Pulmonologist too--sometimes they never can tell where the hives are coming from. That didn't help me! The weight gain is from the, as my sister calls it "The Big P" (Predisone) it makes you retain water. The breakthrough seemed to have come from when I ditched the allergist, went to an ENT and during skin testing they wanted to wait till the doctor took a look at the hives since they didn't want anything serious happening during testing. He came and looked and said.."It looks definitely like contact dermatitis". Just by coincidence a few months into allergy shots--I think I know what it could of been. I had stopped and used allergy free detergent, softener, free this, free that...but I do believe it was a reaction to an antibacterial handwash I had been using for a time.

Don't know if this matters but I too was suffering from chronic sinusitis and sinus infections. I feel for you, it must be miserable to need to take Prednisone on a daily basis...I hope you find an answer. Try the Endocrinologist, keep trying till you get an answer!

I had hives for over 5 years and found that serevent or advair controlled them. Other people have had similar results on different asthma medicines. I finally quit having hives when I found out I had celiac disease and went on a gluten free diet(no wheat, rye or barley products). The hives were gone within a month and I have been medicine free for 5 years now.
You can get blood tests for celiac possibly followed by an endoscopy. Don't start a gluten free diet before the testing as it could mess up the results. Then after the tests, if they are negative, you might try the gluten free diet anyway to see if you are just gluten intolerant without testing + for celiac disease.