<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Thank you so much for all your replies to my question regarding HIVES and my added question, HIVES 2, regarding laundry detergent.  I very much appreciated the personal anecdotes, histories and suggestions that were so benevolently offered.  Here is my summary:

*Possibly...shingles, a latent form of chicken pox. The virus lays dormant in your system from when you had it as a child. You should seek medical advice because it can get very serious especially if it is near your eyes.  See www.webmd.com

*Possibly FD&C dyes, sulfites.

*Possibly medications, new facial cream.

*Possibly acid foods--tomatoes, orange juice.  TO get rid of them go to a health food store and the homeopathic remedy RHUS TOX 30C and take 2 pills every 2 hours.

*Possibly nitrites, benzoates, and tartrazine (yellow food coloring #5).   See article www.pubmed.com PMID: 11251628 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]  Direct link-- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11251628   
*Possibly cantaloupe or some nuts.  Suggested homeopathic remedy for hives/poison ivy/itching...works wonders in minutes...apis melifica, urtica urens...stuff like that.  they make a good mixture for a multitude of causes.  works very well.s.  

*Possibly an accidental ingestion of gluten.

*Possibly too much chocolate or coffee.  They are
in the same plant family.  ...coconut  which is also in the same plant family.  Solution:  1 -25mg benadryl will get rid of it very quickly.

*Possibly major allergens, obvious ones wheat, soy, corn, dairy, BEEF, nuts not just peanuts.  Also hormones and pesticides, cross contamination, coal tar dyes these 
are food dyes approved by US for Foods and Drugs, not just red but yellow is 
horrid also and the blue.  

*Possibly food allergy such as nuts, seeds, gluten, dairy, cinnamon, sugar, oils and eggs.  See link http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2001/401_food.html

*Possibly stress, air conditioning, various skin irritants, ibuprofen/aspirin/NSAIDS.  My allergy
specialist explained to me that this reaction was anaphylactic(sp?) shock.

*Possibly facial swelling due to an oral product like 
mouthwash or toothpaste, aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), 
salicylates like the methyl salicylate that is in most mouthwashes, teeth 
whiteners, and in some toothpastes and some products my dentist uses.

*Suggested solution:   Keep a diary of what you eat, and when you eat it, kept every day, along with a 
record of untoward reactions, will let you backtrack and maybe find a 
pattern to your reactions.  Otherwise, an Allergy Elimination Diet is what 
you're looking for.  That, basically, is going to rice, jello, chicken,and 
maybe bananas for a week, unless you know you don't tolerate one of them.
Cut back to your most bland, and nonallergic diet you can think of for 1 
week, and see if your problem goes away.  If it does, add one new food to 
your diet each week (that's food, not food group), and spices are added one 
at a time, as well.
If you are still reacting, cut back to rice and jello (gf of course), and if 
that does not do the trick, it is not a food, but something else that is 
triggering your problems.  It could something in laundry detergent on your 
pillow, your fabric softener, a mouth product, hairspray, a cosmetic, a skin 
product...  Be a detective and read labels, because the culprit might be 
just one ingredient in whatever you are reacting to.

*Suggested solution:  
Doing the full Great Lakes IgE/IgG Food allergy panel, including spices; then eliminating all the identified allergens from the diet. It's an expensive test ($300-400),
but well worth it.

Also see three part Summary on Severe Itching (September wk 4)

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/celiac.html

**Regarding chemical sensitivity i.e. laundry detergent I received many informative tips.  Ten respondents were unable to tolerate Tide detergent and, six were unable to tolerate Cheer.

*Not all Free detergents are created equal.  Try All Free.

*I have a front-loader washer and I just use any liquid laundry
detergent--just limit the soap to much less than a top loader. I'm glad
you found a soap you could use. I only mention this because if you ever
want to change detergents, don't feel you need to be locked into a
specific front-loader soap variety. The others work just as well. 

*Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the CELIAC List*