My name is Luis Monteiro. I´m Portuguese., and a pro musician. Bass and double player i earned my life exclusivelly playing since 1989 to 2010. I played mostly Jazz and Brazilian music in the professional scene, and played in countries like Portugal, Spain, United States, and Cuba. Although electric bass had been my first instrument and the one i think i play better, doublebass was the instrument i played more in the pro jazz scene.
Music and Martial arts
I also started to practice karate in 1978. When i was 16 i started the Yoseikan Budo. The art of the samurais. I also trained Okinawa Goju Ryu Karate. Nowadays i train both. I also was a roller hockey player for 20 years and during this 20 years i trained both hockey and martial arts. I love going to the beach with my friends and some times alone, ( laughs ), and i usually swim in the ocean every lunch time since 15th may to the 5th of October. Below i will speak in detail about my urticaria.
In September 2012 everything changed suddenly.
In a morning of September 2012 i was walking to the café to have breakfast before going to the beach. It was about 11am. I started by having an itch on my ankle. I scratched and kept walking. In seconds it was in the ankle and the arm. I thought some product could have been changed on the laundry process. I kept walking to the café but i could not make more than 20mts. The itch, the red stains and red papules were all over my body. I runned home and put my clothes off. I put cold water in my chest, legs and arms and it was a good relief. 3 days after being itching all the time i went to a dermathologist. They asked for all kinds of blood samples but EVERYTHING WAS OK, NORMAL. Anyway i was diagnosed as having CHOLINERGIC URTICARIA. The doctor prescribed me antihistamines with no ending date.
Karate and martial arts, playing in my hockey veterans team, going to the beach, playing jazz live to earn my money, as well as everything that could make me get warm, like meetings, getting in hot spaces even in winter, many types foods, all kinds of social situations, a dog barking at me, someone speaking loud to me, or criticizing me, or making a compliment, and even sex, started a urticaria/hives attack.
My life was stopped, finished !!!! I simply could not do everything that compose my life and personality.
I refused to accept that condition, as well as the sentence of being forced to take antihistamines forever. Many people go to Chorticoids and Steroids after this first step. I started to research on the internet and found an hospital in China that had an urticaria/hives treatment program but, it was too expensive for me. It would cost around 25k in 2 months. I was stopped and could not afford going there. My mother had an herb store at that time and an acupuncture worked there 3 days a week. I went to see him and told him everything. He never had an urticaria case before, but he started to find my inner hidden umbalances and started to treat them with acupuncture and chinese phytoterapy. At the same time we both started to study urticaria/hives. He studied only the chinese medicine part, but i studied everything that exist on this planet about urticaria/hives both in the traditional chinese medicine and the conventional medicine. This doctor did not cure me but he DID PUT ME OUT OF THE ANTIHISTAMINES because the crisis were more soft and shorter. Then he moved away to another town. I got another chinese medicine doctor. Apparentelly at that time i thought i was cured because i had cholinergic urticaria and could not stand heat but he nulled the urticaria in spring and i was able to go to the beach in that summer. Unfortunatelly in autumn it returned. The crisis were smoother and shorter than the level i was in with the first doctor but it was still there; i still could not work. Then i looked for my third chinese medicine doctor on the internet and found one. I told him on the phone that he would be the third doctor and i could not be spending more money if he could not guarantee the 100% cure; in fact i had already sold my doublebass to pay the treatments and pay home bills. HE SAID YES. MY GOD HE SAID YES !!!! He evaluated my tongue and wrist in a very detailed way. Asked lots of things about my emotional life, about my career as a musician, and made a whole picture of myself since the moment i was born to that moment i was with him. Then he made a test with three acupuncture needles. One of them would give me an urticaria attack and depending on wich one of them would start it he would know what was wrong and what to do. I had the attack as well as an arrithmia. He stopped both symptoms on that precise moment. We started the treatment and i was considered cured in the end of june 2014.
Why am i here ?
Since the day of my cure i decided i would study more and more about this matter. The reason was: during the time i had no solution for my life and for urticaria/hives i entered in facebook urticaria groups. I COULD NOT LEAVE THOSE MATES BEHIND. They were thousands but i decided to help everybody i could. My goal was to avoid them to suffer what i suffered and make this world a better place. I could not guide thousands to the cure but i could guide hundreds. I created my own group in 2015 but i was forced to close it up in 2017 because i already had no life on my own and could not get back to my work. My messenger was ringing all the time. I did that for 3 years but i was in need to work and i never got a dime from anybody i guided. I never asked for a dime. Some people wanted to give me money but i never accepted because i didn´t do it for money, and i´m not a doctor and cannot charge money to people. What i can do is giving my opinion to people about the reasons they have urticaria because i already had it too and i studied a lot about the matter. Summarizing: people come to me, ask my opinion as a mate, and i give them my opinion. Even having the group closed, the groups have lots of opinions of mine and guidings i gave to people so, during the years urticaria/hives sufferers kept coming to me so i decided to start this blog. This is something i also can do. Starting a blog to teach every visitor suffering with urticaria/hives:
1 – What is urticaria.
2 – What urticaria is not.3 – Everything they need to learn to get cured.
Read carefully, patiently, and ENJOY LIFE.