PART THREE: MORE DETAIL ABOUT HEAT-INDUCED URTICARIA

 PART THREE:  More detail about heat-induced urticaria.



My findings about urticaria has become more technical. As a non-medical-educated person, it took me thrice to fully understand the term and the logic behind each situation.
Going through medical dictionary was an uphill task for me, but slowly I began to understand the whole scenario....just because I experienced it.
I began to experiment with myself....try to skip some food to see its allergy reaction. A doctor told me that rashes would appear just less than one hour eating food that produce allergy to a person.
It was also hard....so I just skip eating all those common allergy-infested food.
I understand that almost all urticaria are caused by an elevated histamine release by the body's mast cells.
With cholinergic urticaria, the exact triggering mechanism for this response is unknown, but it is assumed to be related to the body's thermoregulated response.
The name cholinergic urticaria comes from studies where the disorder produce a rash when injected with the neurochemcial acetylecholine.
However, it is not clear how acetycholine is involved in the reaction. Some patients with cholinergic urticaria have IgE mediated allergy to their own sweat.
Acetylcholine is a chemical used in the parasympathetic nervous system. It acts as neurotransmitter.
When acetycholine is released at the nerve endings in the skin, this can initiate a hives response.
Oh my god! So complicated and so science ...that was I thought...but I try to go deeper into the subject.
I also found out that when histamine is released, it produces a very prickly and itchy feeling in the skin.
Allergy involves an exaggerated response of the immune system. Th immune system is the body's organised defence mechanism against foreign invaders, particularly infections.
Allergens are substance that are foreign to the body and can cause an allergic reaction. IgE is the allergy antibody.
If there is a foreign substance coming into our body such as seafood or pollen, these substances will be seen as harmful to allergic person.
Allergic people's bodies recognise this as foreign substance and one part of the immune system is turned on.
In non-allergic individual, immune cells responding to an attack would be IgM, IgG, IgA and IgD.
However, IgE immune cell would be overproduced in response to food and other harmful allergens to allergic individual.
IgE is an antibody that we have in small amounts. But allergic person produces IgE in large quantities. It produces histamine which causes fluid to leak from the local blood vessels, leading to the swelling in the skin.
The skin is scratched or where belts or others tight clothing rub against the skin, causing mast cells to leak histamine.... and you get urticaria.
This is where calamine lotion works wonderfully for me. Just pour a little bit on the affected and wait for it to dry.
It really calms me down as the itchiness just gone in just a few minutes!
See you in the next post on urticaria....