Lip Swelling

[Mandarra]

I have a dog, have had him for 12 years and never had lip swelling until three months ago. I first develop hives, then I get lip, eye and face swelling always in the middle of the night, I take an antihistamine every day and have not had a breakout when I'm on them. In my case I believe that they are hives deep in the skin. It terrifies me that it could effect my throat, it hasn't so far and I hope it never will, but I fear this very much. I guess I've developed an allergy out of the blue and I don't know to what.
Mary

[pacosta]

How about mangoes? have you eaten one recently? Or Fish? I get those symptoms when I eat either of those foods!

[nezumi]

Hi,
I recently developed lip swellings too (lower lip). I had them before, but they went away by themselves.

Now they just would not disappear and I tried taking Zyrtec. Taking this one time a day lets the swelling disappear completely, so I gathered it is some kind of allergy, am I right?

If I stop taking it, It returns. I have started recently using a mouth wash that contains Sodium Benzoate, but I have not used it yesterday and the swelling still returned.

I will stop using that anyway though. I was due for an allergy test, but I have to stop my anti-histamines three days prior to the test... Which is not really an option at this point.

I am allergic to apples, peers, mango, citrusfruits, kiwi, cucumber peels, various nuts, tree pollen, yellow food dyes, sulfite, some artificial sweeteners and maybe some preservatives I do not know of...

I keep a few hamsters as pets, but have never experienced any allergies towards them. I do kiss my hamsters a lot, but have not done so in the last few days.

Any ideas on what else it might be?

[putter1975]

I woke up this morning with painful, swollen lips. This happened once before, about 2 years ago. I went to the doctor and he put me on Valtrex and assumed I had herpes. It didn't help. However, during this time I was constantly applying Carmex. As soon as I stopped, the swelling and pain went away. Three days ago I purchased Chapstick Moisturizer and now I'm back in the same state as I was 2 years ago. So, I'm assuming there is something in Carmex and Chapstick Moisturizer that is causing this problem. I will take a Benedryl and cross my fingers. Any recommendations? Thank you in advance.