Am I Allergic to Exercise?
If a workout brings on hives, it’s less likely the perspiration and more likely your own body heat that’s to blame.
On a frigid winter’s night, Lise Kavanagh doesn’t bury herself under blankets. When she wakes up to a chilly morning, she doesn’t take a hot shower. Nor will she dress in super warm clothes to head out for the day.
Is this 39-year-old superwoman immune to cold? Nope.
Instead, she’s hyper-sensitive to heat. In fact, when her body temperature rises, she develops an itchy rash all over her body. Kavanagh has what’s known as cholinergic urticaria or hives. Her body reacts with hives to the physical stimulus of heat.
Sometimes at the gym, you’ll hear dubious tales of a runner who’s “allergic to their own sweat”. Chances are, it’s not the perspiration – it’s the heating up of the body through exercise that’s causing the person to break out in a rash.
Cholinergic urticaria can be triggered by several heat-raising activities: jogging or aerobic workouts are obvious, but also hot baths or showers, eating spicy foods, and even emotional stress can bring on the hives.
For Kavanagh, “some of my worst attacks happen when I’m sleeping. Even if I have no blankets at all, when I stir in the night and end up on my back, the heat accumulates between the mattress and my skin, and I’ll wake up with a rash all over my back.”
While a relatively rare condition, experts say that 5 per cent of people who have chronic urticaria also experience the cholinergic symptoms. In the United States, it’s estimated that one in five people will experience chronic urticaria in their lifetime.
Spotting the Condition
With cholinergic urticaria or CU, the hives are tiny, about the size of a ball point pen tip. The rash comes on rapidly, usually within a few minutes of perspiring, and can last from 30 minutes to an hour or more before receding once the body returns to normal temperature.
The hives or “wheals” are very itchy, and can be preceded by a burning, tingling and/or warm sensation.
The wheals may join to form a large mass of swelling, and some people also experience headaches, salivation, palpitations, fainting, shortness of breath, abdominal cramps and diarrhea.
“CU appears when the affected individual’s body is heated by exertion or a situation that raises the core temperature of the body 2.7 degrees F or more,” says Dr. Martin Ostro, staff physician with the division of allergy and immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Technically, it’s not an actual allergy since cholingeric urticaria has no specific IgE, the allergic antibody, created to respond to a particular substance. But the mechanism of the reaction is similar to allergy.
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tardis_blue
“Contact dermatitis doesn’t develop immediately, “but takes 48 hours after contact with the inciting substance before skin lesions develop.””
My son reacts anywhere from instantly to within minutes of exposure to his contact allergens.
I am glad to have found this article. This has been an issue with my son for years. He doesn’t get the same symptoms, but he has eczema, so all that happens for him is that his eczema flares up. We had finally come to the conclusion that it was heat that was doing it, but we were hesitant about it because we’d never heard of any such thing, so it’s nice to know we aren’t crazy. We did think it was his sweat, and that was mentioned in the article, too, so I’m still not sure exactly what is going on. I don’t _think_ he usually goes around with stuff all over his skin that only causes him to break out when he sweats, but he doesn’t get rashy if he’s just too warm–it doesn’t happen till he sweats, usually copiously.
Hmmm…now I think about it, he doesn’t have a problem with hot baths or hot tubs, so maybe it is the sweat/contact dermitis thing. That’s distressing, because it happens often. I don’t know of a more gentle laundry detergent than All Free and Clear, and I don’t know what else would be bothering him.
rainbowpromise
I did not equate my exercise hives to my fever hives – because they don’t match.
When I go to the gym to work out and break out in hives, it is on my hands and face. I started watching the habits of other gym people and discovered that most of them liked to snack on my allergen. So I started wearing thin golf gloves, or batting gloves to work out in. I also started wearing an extremely unfashionable headband to keep the sweat from running on my face requiring the need to wipe my face with a towel that has been contaminated with nut residue. The workout hives ended.
When it came to my fever induced hives, I kept track of when they occurred. It was not actually at the height of the fever, but as the viral infection was at an end. I thought it was just my body fighting off the infection. I don’t get it every time, but most of the time.
Otherwise, I do know that with long-term daily records, my body temp is lower than normal.