What are "hives"?

What are "hives"?

Harold Kaiser (Practicing Allergist and Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School) gives expert video advice on: How are insect allergies treated?; What are "food allergies"?; What are "hives"? and more...

Hives are blotchy areas of the skin with about twenty-five percent of the population getting hives at one time or another. Hives can occur and they can be allergic or non-allergic. The allergic hives can be quickly detected. They know if they have penicillin, eat shrimp, or take aspirin then they will get hives. After about the second or third or fourth time that they've got hives, they tumble on the idea that there might be a relationship there. So the patients who know what causes the hives, they will try avoid these things. The problem is that about ninety percent or ninety-five percent of the patients who have chronic hives, the hives that don't go away after about six weeks, are unable to identify the cause. They're again, ideopathic. It's frustrating and we can usually treat the hives and clear them up, but the cause remains obscure. We come in contact with all sorts of stuff every day, from foods to environmental agents to chemicals to cosmetics and either one of those or a combination of those starts the hives, the body may start hiving.