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Can Stress Cause Hives?

Many people question, can stress cause hives? They are not surprised that the answer is yes.

What is less understood is how chronic stress can cause them.

It is important to have a basic understanding of how the stress response works.

For each of us, it is the “fight or flight” response. This is the automatic alert system of our brain and its main function is to help us survive…to protect us. How ironic.

The stress response is a response to a stressor. And, it is the body’s way of adapting to something that has happened...a way to adapt to life’s stressors.

So what about hives?

This is worth repeating:

The stress response is a response to a stressor.

Hives are usually experienced as:
  • red or white bumps on top of the skin
  • itchy
  • sting
What is known about hives is that they usually appear suddenly, but how long they last is less certain. Some hives disappear just as quickly as they appeared, and some may last for weeks.

Skin as an organ?

When you think about stress, it is important to think understand the basics of physiological stress .

Why can stress cause hives?

Just as with many conditions that are brought on by chronic stress , most people don’t realize that our skin is an organ. And, it’s basic job is to protect us from environmental stressors like bacteria and infection. For many, hives are an allergic reaction to something experienced in the environment.

The “fight or flight” response is the automatic alert system of our brain and its main function is to help us survive.

One reason skin sweats is to eliminate toxins…through perspiration…from the skin.

Can stress cause hives?

Yes. Aside from environmental influences that may trigger the stress response, hives have also been linked as a reaction to emotional stress.

When stressed, the body naturally releases a cascade of hormones to prepare the body for fight or flight. Each hormone has its own function on that survival mission. For reasons less unknown, in some people, there are too many stress chemicals and hormones released and it creates a hormone imbalance.

It is that hormone imbalance that can create stress hives.

When the cascade of hormones subsides…or, the body comes back into balance…the hives disappear.

Help for hives

There are many unknowns as to why emotional stress can cause hives. There is usually some mystery for each of us in coping with stress.

But, it is theorized that hives from emotional stress are linked to the negative effects that stress has on the immune system of the body.

Often the specific cause of hives cannot be identified, and the remedies can vary from person to person. Talk to your physician if your symptoms can't be managed with topical creams, or if you think you are having an allergic reaction.


Regardless of the stressor that has triggered your hives, a good suggestion to help reduce the excess chemicals and hormones in your body is to practice whatever stress relaxation techniques work best for you. Bringing the body back into balance can also facilitate healing.

To become more aware of the ways your stress response may be impacting your life, please take the following FREE coping with stress self awareness survey.

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Stress Tip Of The Day!

Throughout each day, the primary cause of stress is because of threats of uncertainty.

It is thoughts of fear and worry that are triggering the stress response.

Staying focused on maintaining a positive attitude is an important stress technique.



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She has lived with daily headaches that have not responded to any of the several drugs which have benefited many such suffering patients. She has needed chronic opiate treatment of her chronic pain syndrome.

In the few weeks that Cathi has worked with her, C.L. has begun to experience days without pain, periods of happiness, and a reduction in her opiate dosage requirements that represent a breakthrough in her stalled-out life as a single mom raising a teen-age daughter with only social security income resources.
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M.S., a woman in her late forties with progressively more and more disabling rheumatoid arthritis since childhood, whose most recent problems have arisen over the last two to three years as complications of immunosuppressive therapy for her disease. The complications have been associated with the severely disabling chronic pain of recurrent herpes neuralgia for more than three years, and for the past 15 months, recurrent osteomyelitis in her right lower mandible.

The second, more alarming (even life-threatening) problem has caused months of diagnostic and therapy confusion among her many consultants, three successive resections of the bone over the last six to eight months, and the still ongoing threat of more relapses of the smoldering bone infection and chronic pain only made bearable by chronic, massive doses of opiates.

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She has relied on many of the methods for maintaining hope and getting through overwhelming discouragement by using the inner resources she has learned with Cathi.

My hope as her primary physician, is that Cathi and M. will be able to continue to work together to maintain that inner strength and hope as she faces yet more months of pain, and further repeated surgery.

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S. has improved! Cathi established a trusting relationship with her, and helped her to effectively break through her wall of silence and grief about her son's mental illness, and taught her how to "change her thinking".

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