Hmm, interesting. I used to get hives from the water in my old home town. Could you be allergic to mosquito bites? That causes that bug bite/hive combination. I'm a scratcher too, made worse by stress. The mindful meditation course helped me learn to just sit with it and eventually my compulsive itching/scratching cycle went away.

I'd had hives a couple times from stress. Both times I completely broke out in red welts in the matter of minutes.

I just read that
"hives caused by allergies are red or skin-colored, raised and often itchy bumps which may occur in clusters, similar to insect bites."

Maybe take some BENADRYL the red liquid medicine.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/523945-can-an-allergic-reaction-look-like-bites/

Hard to believe I could fail to notice this many mosquitoes, ticks, fleas or bedbugs. Chiggers can get past me sometimes but these don't look like chigger bites.

Given my feral tendency to crawl around in places where the brave dare not go, there's nothing real unusual about me being covered in bug bites nobody else is being bitten by, but I frequently find myself covered with this particular sort of *bite* when I've been staying to the civil spots.

Civil bites?

I.F.
It be the absence of clustering which brings on the question. The welt-style hives were the ones the doctors were confident on.

I just finished a mustard bath which helped. Been using mustard oil instead of scratching them into craters. It helps but I might end up taping oven mitts to my hands to keep me from scratching in my sleep.

OTC benadryl didn't make a dent.

Even insect bites will cluster, simply because various insects prefer different strategies. Mosquitoes love sweaty areas (feet, armpits, faces), for example, as their first go-to-bite. Fleas tend to (in my experience) love areas where they can hide well, such as socks (for me). Ticks get anwhere and I loathe them. Chiggers ... well, you know.

There's also the possibility of an allergic reaction to something entirely different, environmental, particulate, etc.


All that nerdiness aside, yep. Clean oven mitts, and what about calomine (sp) lotion? On th eoff chance you got downwind of poison oak/ivy/sumac smoke or something?

Oh, and what about termites/ants? (Bedbugs I don't know, but I do know to check around electrical outlets. They love those.) Formic acid and other substances put off by crawlers might affect your skin? Particularly if stress is in the mix already? Like, this is multi-factor causation, not just a single factor?

You have puzzled and confused and intrigued me. If anything pops up into this old farm kid's head, I'll shout it out. (Relevant ot itchy spots. Oh, yeah, and there's also mold, fungus, etc... Which might be why benadryl didn't do much.)

Do they appear Where you're clothed only or unclothed only? Both? Equal distribution?

Dang, Arfie, I hope you feel better soon. I'm recovering from cellulitis and itch from that had me awake far more than safe or sane.

Puma healing to you.

Any chance it could be a dust mite allergy Arfie?

There is no question I have a dust mite allergy, but those are definitely cluster bugs whose bites look more like a rash than a bite from a bigger bug.

This particular type of *bite* shows up semi-randomly at least once or twice a year, typically during the summer/fall months. This is my second round this summer.

Just thought I'd rattle a few more trees before I shrug it off as *just* another non-lethal irritation. It always seems to go away on its own. Bet it does this time too. I might die *with* it, but it's not likely to be what kills me.

Scratch, scratch.

Any recent changes in the last 2 weeks to soaps, medications, environment, etc? I am allergic to everything and stress hives also. I would do a Google image search with a description of what yours appears to look like, when you find one similar click on it and see if it makes sense?

Knowing Arfie's love of information I bet she's done that already ShyRebel. She's a walking encyclopedia.

Hi arfie no i dont have any knowledge but triple hugs of support while you seek the info and the itch relief~

Yes, Looney, I've googled, goggled and regoogled, and still googling new goggles.

Funny thing about research is that ya never can tell which tree the nut you need is gonna fall out of. My most valued sources are mano a mano.

They look like pretty standard bug bites. The kind I'd expect from any given day in the field. The diff being they don't fit the business as usual exposure. They crop up as randomly as stress hives but look like bites.

Shrug-a-lug. I bet this round will pass, too.

You could catch bugs, find clear patches of skin allow them to bite you circle it and wait for a reaction. Which ever matches is your culprit.

I get hives from anxiety. Mainly on my chest.. but they can creep up your neck and onto your face as well.

https://www.coeliac.org.au/uploads/65701/ufiles/Fact_sheets/DermatitisHerpetiformis.pdf

There are a lot of odd little reactions among us. Are we sure these are clusters and not not potential mini-hives around an actual bug bite? That sounds weird, I know, but my mom can get bitten by a bug and then have it look like she has a dozen bites around it in terms of red little bumps and such. I've literally seen it happen --- one mosquito could land on her arm, bite, and be the *only* bite. Then she'd wake up next day and it'd look like the mosquito had brought a dozen friends to the same patch of skin. So... maybe your skin has sympathy itchies?