What Do Hives Feel Like?
Key takeaways:
Hives are itchy bumps on the skin caused by histamine release.
Hives can be warm to the touch, itchy, and uncomfortable.
Here’s how three people describe what it’s like to have hives and what brought them relief.
If you’ve ever broken out in itchy, red welts after being exposed to allergens or other triggers, chances are that you’ve had hives.
Hives can result from an allergy or another underlying cause. And the symptoms include pink or salmon-colored ovals that are slightly raised to appear on the skin. The treatment can involve dietary changes or incorporating new daily medication.
Hives can be uncomfortable, often triggering intense itching or a sensation of burning and stinging on the skin. Here’s how three people describe what having hives feels like.
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An unpleasant feeling
Chris Blondell, a 34-year-old writer from Philadelphia, first encountered hives as a child. He didn’t know what the trigger was at the time, but he remembers his mild alarm at seeing the welts on his skin.
“What’s this? Why are these mosquito bites growing?” he remembers thinking. Chris took Benadryl, and his hives went away.
Over time, Chris learned he’s allergic to dust, pollen, and an assortment of animals. Because of this, he gets hives often.
He makes sure to pay attention to his symptoms, because sometimes he has an allergic reaction that bleeds over into a minor asthma attack. When he gets hives, they usually start on his arms or torso. His skin gets warm to the touch, and then the itchiness starts to spread.
“For me, because the hives are connected to my asthma, sometimes I’ll feel a tightening in my chest,” he says.
To address his symptoms, Chris keeps Benadryl and his rescue inhaler handy. Sometimes, he uses the nasal spray Flonase as a precaution. But even with the Benadryl and Flonase for prevention, he still gets hives.
“It’ll pop up because your immune system is having a freakout,” he says of the condition.
He remembers one awful experience on a backpacking trip gone wrong. It was 2008, and he went horseback riding without knowing that he was allergic to horses.
“I was covered in hives,” he says. “My face was swollen, so we ended the ride, and I took a Benadryl and my inhaler. And then, I was fine very quickly after that.”
After that, he took allergy tests to determine his triggers. Even though he still breaks out in hives a couple of times a month, he says his fear of getting hives has worn off.
“It’s not the worst feeling in the world,” he says of the warm, itchy bumps. “But it’s unpleasant.”
It’s common for kids to get hives. Here’s what the condition looks like and how to treat it.
For some people, hives keep coming back. Find out more about chronic hives.
In some cases, antihistamines can bring relief. Learn about what antihistamines are used to address symptoms of hives.
Paying attention to what you put in your body
Danette Deichmann is a 38-year-old health optimization coach from Bend, Oregon. She uses her personal experience with hives to help others feel empowered.
She started getting hives in 2010. When she’d break out, they’d appear all up and down her legs, stomach, and back. The bumps would stay for a few weeks and then go away.
Danette did food allergy testing as her doctor suggested, but it didn’t give her any answers.
“It was just a lot of dead ends as to what was causing it or what would make it flare up,” she says. The mystery continued for years.
The hives felt itchy and hot to the touch. And it wasn’t pretty, she says, describing them as “an eyesore.”
“You don’t want patches of redness all over your skin,” she says, explaining that she tried aloe vera and cortisone creams, but the itchiness persisted. “A spray-on version of calamine lotion seemed to be the only thing that gave me any relief.”
In 2016, she started doing research about strategies to improve her health and wellness. She tried different elimination diets and started looking more into her nutrition.
When she started working with a holistic doctor, she chose to cut histamines from her diet. “I had to eat a lot of fresh things that weren’t going to prompt a histamine response,” she says.
Danette now has only a couple of flare-ups a year, but she still pays close attention to how her body is functioning.
“The more worn down my immune system gets, the more susceptible I become to another flare-up of hives,” she says.
Antihistamines and mast cell activation syndrome
Jennifer Simmons, a 39-year-old therapist in Durham, Connecticut, had an experience with hives in May 2020.
She went to the emergency room because she had a stomach bug that wasn’t going away. At the hospital, her care team gave her morphine for pain. And it triggered her first-ever massive allergic reaction.
“The stomach issues persisted, and now I had a body full of hives,” she recalls.
Jannifer’s primary care physician referred her to an allergist. They did an endoscopy and blood work to figure out what the cause was.
“They did find I had elevated enzymes that are also flags of mast cell activation syndrome, which is basically like a histamine response that has gone haywire in your body,” she says.
Suddenly, foods that Jennifer once had no problem eating started causing her to break out in hives.
“My skin felt like it was very tender and sensitive to any type of touch,” she says, explaining that her symptoms made it hard to sleep.
“Any type of clothing felt painful to have it touching it,” she says of her sensitive skin, which seemed to only be relieved by a cool shower. “Two months in, I had those hives every day. They didn’t go away.”
Eventually, her gastrointestinal doctor and her allergist came up with a daily medication regimen to help treat her symptoms. They recommended that she take the antihistamine Zyrtec (cetirizine) and Pepcid AC, a histamine-2 (H2) antagonist that treats stomach issues. After about a month, the medications brought her hives under control.
“I’m thankful that I’ve figured out a medication that keeps me from having to deal with the hives, which were definitely some of the more challenging symptoms of mast cell activation,” Jennifer says.
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