CHRONIC HIVES

(Caution: while I believe mineral (baby) oil to be 100% safe, I am only telling you what I did….how I used it to treat my hives…and what a person might expect if they tried this.  I am not suggesting that you use it.  I am not giving you medical advice.  I am only telling you what I did.  You will have to decide for yourself if trying to duplicate what I did is in your best interest.  It seems that a peanut can be dangerous.  So use your best judgment for what you decide to do.) 

Again, I remind you that if your symptoms are different from mine, then there is the good possibility that this is not useful information for you.  Also, your results could be discouraging to others.  

My symptoms were as follows:  daily outbreaks of raised, reddish, welts that could be as small as a mosquito bite, or they might coalesce into solid patches that covered as much as two square feet of skin. The vast majority of time they were symmetrically arranged.  Their location on my body would vary, but whatever was happening on the left side would be generally matched by the right side. They were incredibly itchy.  Sometimes I wanted to claw my skin off and it was hard to keep from scratching to the point of drawing blood or creating a bruise.  A typical breakout for me would begin in the afternoon or early evening.  The individual welts would typically last an hour or less, but as they faded new ones would take their place.  It was impossible to determine the "life" of an individual welt once they grew together.  I could only measure the overall outbreak.  The typical breakout period could last 90 minutes.  Sometimes it was 3 or 4 hours. There was a lot of "randomness" in how long or how severely they would attack.  (This created a sense of fear because you didn't know how bad it was going to get.)  There could be lots of "strays"--small individual "mosquito bite" welts that could be coming and going at all hours with no rhyme or reason.  During every day I would usually be hives-free for several hours.  No one seeing me then would have any idea that there was anything wrong with me. But even during those times there was a "creepy" feeling to my skin; I could tell the hives were lingering in wait.  In a typical month there would be a small handful of days where I would be hives-free.  And there would also be a small sprinkling of days that would be non-stop 24-hour torture...it could even last for two or three days!  Then it was like being bitten by one-thousand or more mosquitoes all at the same time!  On those days I might even get some hives on my scalp, face and neck....places where I didn't usually get them.  I hardly ever got them on my palms or soles of feet, but it wasn't an impossibility….when there, the itch was ferocious.  They were on my mid section, especially around my hips/belt line more than any other place.  When they extended beyond my mid-section they would usually remain between my neck and knees.  Only two individual times in all the years were my lips affected.  It took seconds for them to swell up and more than 24 hours for them to return to normal.  Oddly, they did not itch.  When suffering from hives I also experienced occasional nightmares.  This was not normal for me.  I also experienced tiny, "needle prick" sensations when I had hives.  It was occasional, intermittent and random.  I could never correlate my hives to particular foods, stress, medicines, substances or anything like that. 

Baby oil is scented mineral oil; it does not matter which you use. (The only difference is in how you smell afterward!)  I applied it to my entire body except for scalp and face.  I did this after showering and lightly drying off.  It's easier to spread the oil around when you are a little damp.  I think the oil also feels better to apply then, as opposed to when your skin is completely dry.  I started at my neck and worked my way down.  To apply it to my back, I put it on the backs of my hands and then I could reach it.  After doing it for a while, it only took about 2 or 3 minutes to do it completely.   I never had a problem with the oil staining my clothes, but it might stain undergarments.  It seems that within about 20 minutes or so most of it is absorbed into your skin and is not much noticeable.  One does not feel "greasy" throughout the day.

If you are hiving, you would notice the baby oil making a difference in just two or three days.  But it will not achieve total control yet.  At first, it felt to me like the baby oil "pushed" the hives "deeper" into my skin.  But the deeper they went, the less welts and itching there was.  It only takes one week's time of daily applications of oil to get total control.  But it is important to do it daily and completely.  After one week it was not necessary to use any other medication to control the hives.  At this point it is controlled completely by the oil.  Even though I still had hives, I did not have any welts, redness, or itching.  I still had that occasional light "creepy" skin feeling, but it didn't amount to anything compared to the hives and was easy to tolerate.  It eventually dissipated, too, after a while.  After a couple of weeks of applying oil, it's no big deal if you miss a day here and there.  If you stop applying the oil it will take a few days for the hives to return and it will be gradual.  After two or three months, it might take as much as 2-3 weeks for the hives to return. 

During one of my bouts of hives, I learned that I could control the disease by applying a thin film of baby oil over my entire body, except for face and scalp.  I used it then, and for each later bout.  Since I learned early on that when I stopped using the oil that the hives still existed and the symptoms would return, I did not think of it, at all, as a cure.  During all those earlier bouts of hives, as I mentioned, I used another substance to perform the actual cures.  I believed, during those times, I should not be using baby oil and the other substance at the same time.  To prepare for those cures, I always withheld using baby oil until the hives were fully returned.  Like everyone else, during those times, I had to rely on a variety of antihistamine medications to mask the symptoms.   Also, I had some apprehension about what I was using for a cure so in some ways was not thrilled about starting it.  When I was doing reasonably well on the combination of meds and/or baby oil, I was reluctant to begin the cure.  (I'm explaining my thinking at the time, not what I think about it now.)  In all but the last bout (sixth) of having hives, I was not motivated enough to try baby oil for a long period of time to see what results could be achieved.  Over the years, I would say that my level of belief and confidence in the original method of cure compounded 20% with each accomplishment.  By the time I had done it 5 times, I had complete confidence that I was onto something significant. 

At my sixth bout of hives, with the baby oil, I knew I had an easy way to live with the disease.  Honestly, I'm certain I could have lived the rest of my life using that method had it been necessary; one gets very used to it.  But I ran into a small snag in obtaining the medicine I'd used to cure myself previous times.  As I had gained 100% confidence in the method, I had also been wondering for a long time if there were good possibilities for using the baby oil as a cure, if used long term.  I wanted a cure that seemed less risky than the other substance that I had used.  My curiosity was peaked.  I started out thinking I might use baby oil for two or three years, if necessary.  My plan was to stop every 6 months to check for progress and see if I was cured.  As I already stated, when I stopped after the first 6 months, the hives began to return 2-4 weeks later.  (I'm not exactly sure how long it took as this was almost 5 years ago.) I began using baby oil again and checked at the one-year mark.  No hives returned then or since.  So I conclude that curing Chronic Hives with mineral oil takes somewhere between six months and one year.  The exact time is unknown.  While the baby oil had been tremendously useful to me over the years--as a total control--for hives, I had been unable to elevate it to the status of a cure.  But with my 6th bout of hives, that changed. 

As you can imagine, after having the experiences with Chronic Hives that I've had, I am intensely interested in finding out if my method of using baby oil work for others.  If you are considering trying it (at your own risk, of course) please feel free to ask me any questions and for sure, let me know how it goes.  The best way to communicate with me about this is by joining the Hives Discussion List (link at the bottom of each page.)  Or you may email me; click on the "Contact me" tab in the navigation bar. 

If you're thinking about trying baby oil as a "spot" treatment for an existing hives outbreak or applying intermittently (not every day) or diluting it in some way (like with water in the shower) don't expect it to be effective for you.  It will not. 

Good luck whatever you decide to do!

Even if you are reluctant to try using baby oil as a remedy or cure, I urge you to consider joining the discussion list anyway. Wait and watch.  It is not necessary that you commit to anything.  Eventually, you will be able to see the results of others see what you think about it.  If you've never been part of a discussion list before, you should know that it is perfectly ok to sit and "lurk" on the list and observe what other people say.  There is nothing required of you.  Good luck!