Hives are a painful condition which creates welts on the skin that itch and burn. These welts are usually the size of a quarter and can appear suddenly and anywhere on the body, even on your face, lips, tongue, throat and ears.
There are basically two types of hives: acute and chronic.
The acute hives or regular hives as they are also called usually last a few hours to a few days, although they can occasionally linger for weeks. Usual triggers for acute hives would be specific foods, animal dander, insect bites, detergent, latex, pollen, certain medications, and even could come from heat, stress, exercise, chemical exposure and viral infections.
Let’s focus more on the hives which can become chronic, usually appearing without warning with no known cause and can last for weeks, months or even years. The breakouts occur in 24-hour cycles of hives appearing on the skin, fading as the day goes on and then returning the next morning. This pattern usually lasts for 6 weeks or more. The majority of the 500,000 people in the US who experience hives are women 40-59 years of age.
Most of the cases of hives that I’ve seen in my practice are of the chronic type, because the acute hives usually go away on their own within a day or so. The chronic hives are more problematic because in order to effectively treat any condition you have to treat the underlying cause of it. The problem with chronic hives is that in 70% of the cases the underlying cause is a complete mystery — the hives usually appear without any known trigger.
But here is what I can tell you from having sat with my Ayurvedic mentor and teacher, Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra, whose specialty was dermatology. He hailed from a family lineage dating back over 5,000 years whose ancestors were all dermatologists. His family was famous for not only treating the royalty of India, but they also treated Lord Krishna’s son for leprosy.
Here is his family lineage, known as Shaka Vansya Ayurveda’s take on hives:
They stated that hives come from an overactive immune system. The immune system has the intelligence to attack viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, but it knows better than to attack foods or your own body, which is known as autoimmune. When it detects that harm is being done it sets off a series of chain reactions in your body designed to dismantle the offending invaders.
Here’s how it works: First, you’re exposed to an allergen (which your immune system registers as a foreign invader). The immune system responds by sending a chemical signal to allergy mast cells that are found in your skin, mouth, lungs, nose, gut and blood. Histamines are stored in the allergy mast cells. At this point what is happening is that your immune system is saying: “SOS! Release histamines! There’s a foreign invader!”
Now, the histamines that are released create inflammation because they increase blood flow to the affected area of your body.
Think of the times as a young child you fell and scraped your knee. It immediately swelled up as the immune system was called in to heal the injured area. Then over time the swelling went down. That’s a normal immune system response.
But what happens with chronic hives, the immune system is overactive — it’s raging out of control — creating a chronic release of histamine from the allergy mast cells, which could last for months or even years without calming down like it normally should. This is exactly what we mean by an unintelligent reaction of the immune system.
So what kinds of things would cause the immune system to mount such a huge response out of proportion to what is called for? And what can be done about it?
Doctors treat chronic hives using a shot in the dark approach. Since they usually don’t know the underlying cause of the hives, they first start out by using antihistamines. Next they might try histamine blockers if that approach doesn’t work. They might even throw in some anti-inflammatories such as steroids to slow down your immune system. But they can’t be used for too long because of their serious side effects.
Sometimes when nothing else works they might try monoclonal antibodies which unbind the allergy antibodies from the allergy mast cells in the body which then stop releasing as much histamine.
But the problem is that with all these approaches the hives usually return once the therapies are discontinued. This is what happens when the underlying root cause isn’t identified and addressed properly.
So let’s start at the very beginning: The immune system has 3 basic parts which need to be in good working order to mount a normal response and not rage out of control for weeks and months on end.
These 3 parts are: the friendly bacteria in the gut, the liver and the bone marrow. Let’s take a look at what might disturb these 3 areas resulting in a hyper-reactive immune system and too much histamine release from mast cells creating hives.
The friendly bacteria in the gut become depleted through the use of antibiotics, steroids, birth control pills, immunizations, and acid reflux medicines. Whenever you take any of these types of medications you must spend the next several weeks or months regrowing these delicate bacteria as they stabilize the immune system function, preventing it from spiraling out of control.
The problem is that most of the probiotic cultures are fairly inactive and the same is true of the yogurt on the supermarket shelves. So even though you might buy some yogurt or take some probiotics after a round of antibiotics, chances are very high that you definitely did not regrow your friendly bacteria with these very weak probiotic and yogurt cultures. Please check out my other two YouTube videos on the friendly bacteria in the gut and the one on how to make your own home-made yogurt, to insure you get good quality regrowth of your gut microbiome.
Next is the liver. The liver is a large part of the immune system, but can also upset the immune system it gets hot and angry as it holds onto too many pharmaceuticals combined with the toxins in the poor quality foods we eat. This is because the liver has to process all the chemicals that we dump into and on the body and it also has to digest the food we eat. The liver is already a very hot organ because it has 5 digestive fires which have to extract the 5 elements (space, air, fire, water and earth) out of the foods we eat. So if this very hot organ holds onto very hot environmental toxins it starts to become agitated and have temper tantrums, as Vaidya Mishra would say. And when it gets hot and angry it pushes the immune system to rage out of control as well.
The final part of the immune system is the bone marrow. We definitely don’t want any toxins to enter this very important tissue, since this is where the immune system cells are born — the red and white blood cells and the platelets. And you guessed it: the mast cells — those cells which produce the histamine — are born in the bone marrow. You definitely don’t want to push the mast cells too hard.
Fortunately for us the bone marrow is considered a very deep tissue in Ayurveda. It’s kind of hidden away, deep within the bony structure, far from those nasty environmental toxins. Or is it?
The unfortunate thing is that the environmental toxins can in fact pierce through and make a beeline directly into the bone marrow, upsetting its normal function. Toxins like the nasty chemical toxins we put on the skin in the form of skin care products which get absorbed immediately into the deeper tissues. Vaidya used to tell me: think of your skin as having little mouths. Anything you put on your skin goes immediately into the bloodstream, faster than if you had swallowed it.
Toxins like many pharmaceuticals including acne medicines, immunizations and many others make their way deeply into our bone marrow as these chemicals are hot like an arrow and can pierce through all the bodily tissues.
Toxins like air pollution upset the smooth functioning of the immune system — every day when you step outside and take a deep breath filled with chemicals (like here in NJ where I live), those toxins go directly into the bone marrow, which is why NJ has more cancer than any other state in the country.
Now, like almost every patient I see — we have destabilized the gut, the liver and the bone marrow, which is why most every autoimmune disease known to mankind is at epidemic levels right now, while in the past they were pretty much unheard of.
And it is this autoimmune reaction that is triggering hives in susceptible people. The trick to treating hives is to fix the friendly bacteria in the gut, cool down the heat in the liver, and since the liver makes the blood you then have to cool down the heat in the blood. In fact, whenever you see any skin condition, such as psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, acne and including hives: the skin is showing you how hot and toxic the liver and the blood are, and how reactive the bone marrow is.
You also have to clean the bone marrow. And you have to do all of the above while keeping the liver cool, which is the artful way of treating hives that my teacher taught me. He even developed oils to rub on the skin containing a natural antihistamine herb called daruharidra. You can imagine the relief you get by rubbing every pore in your body with this oil (which also contains turmeric, also noted for its anti-inflammatory effects).
He then proceeded to make soaps and lotions to cool down the various layers of the skin, and teas to direct the toxins away from the skin and into the urine. He got me herbs from India to stop the reactivity of the toxins coming through the skin which also settle down the hives.
And he developed various ways to get the herbs into the body so as not to heat the liver in the process. You see, many herbs are heating in nature, and since everything you swallow has to go through the liver, in cases such as hives, you must give the herbs in a way which won’t heat it up more than it already is. Which is why he developed the homeopathic versions of the herbs which are basically the intelligence of the herb captured in glycerine made out of yellow organic squash syrup. These drops are then placed in water to be sipped throughout the day so that they go into the gaps in between the cells and don’t have to bother the liver to have to digest them since they are only vibrational.
He also developed transdermal creams which is another ingenious way of delivering the herbs which also bypasses the liver. By rubbing the creams on the skin the herbs go directly into the blood stream and don’t have to be digested by the liver, which will avoid the overheating that occurs from taking too many herbs orally.
So by now you can see how difficult it is to treat hives by just giving antihistamine or anti-inflammatory medicines. As soon as you stop these medications the hives come right back since the immune system is still hyper-reacting and producing histamine in all the mast cells.
But now you can see, thanks to the proper guidance of Dr. Mishra, we have a way out for those suffering with hives, by getting to the root of the problem which involves more than just identifying and avoiding the food or substance that person is allergic to. The real answer lies in going beyond that outmoded way of thinking into a more holistic approach which involves addressing the immune system at its deepest levels: the gut, liver and bone marrow, which gives lasting results. And while yes, stress can heat up the blood, causing a tendency to hives, we can’t realistically tell someone to avoid stress, because stressors will always come and go throughout a lifetime.
But by balancing out the rest of the immune system and by keeping the liver and blood cool at all times, when and if stress does come up, you at least have some leeway so you can prevent hives from occurring with each new stressor you encounter.
I hope you learned a better way to address hives using natural treatments which get to the root of the problem which lies in the gut, liver and bone marrow.