Not looking for medical advice exactly, but wondering if anyone else experiences this. It has only started happening to me in the last couple of years.
Sometimes I’ll develop a lump or thickening on my upper or lower lip over a matter of minutes… say, 15-30 minutes. It may be on one side or on both sides. When it happens on my top lip on both sides, it can give me a very Angelina Jolie look. I’m aware when it’s coming on… I’ll feel a subtle change in the way the tissue feels to my tongue and sure enough, the swelling will come up in a matter of minutes. It may last all day, or it may go away within a few minutes to a couple of hours.
I’ve not been able to link this phenomenon with ANYTHING. Not with food or anything ingested (like medication, vitamins, ibuprofen), and not with anxiety or mood. Once I thought I linked it to artificial sweetener (not Splenda, but the pink stuff), but that has not proved to be consistent. Sometimes I’ll wake up with it. Sometimes it will come on right after eating, sometimes after many hours of eating nothing.
Benadryl does not make it go away. I’ve not been able to identify anything that makes it go away, but it always has gone away on its own within ~36 hours. My tongue does not swell up, nor does my throat close. The lumps/swellings do not appear anywhere else on my face… EXCEPT ONCE: I woke up in the morning and my chin was swollen and hard. It wasn’t terribly noticeable visually from the outside, but to me it felt seriously weird. That went away by itself.
I’m not aware of any food allergies. Tylenol does make my eyelids swell up within minutes of taking it, so I don’t take it. I’m prone to anxiety attacks and a friend has pointed out that my skin is pretty sensitive (if you’re following along, I had another thread about a transitory case of cat mange I caught from a kitten that has since moved on-- the mange, not the kitten: she’s doing fine)
No, I haven’t gone for allergy testing, as this is merely inconvenient and not a big problem. I’ve googled the holy crap out of it, and the most helpful info I can find on various message boards is that lots of people experience anomalous and strange swellings that come and go.
Yep! I have a long history of unexplained rashes, hives and swellings. This has been better in the last few years with lifestyle changes, but I still get the lip thing. Often, it’s very itchy. It’s never been directly after eating, that I have noticed. It’s usually gone in 5-10 hours.
I get something similar. It happens every once in a while (a few times a year). I’ll get a bump on my lip (we’re talking about the visible part, other people can see it). As for the size, I’d say it’s about the size of an M&M. Well, an M&M cut sliced in half and laid on your lip.
The only thing I’ve ever been able to correlate it with is eating something salty and having some way for the salt to get into my lips. Either they’re a bit chapped or cracked from winter or I bit one of them by accident or something along those lines. But it’s not any kind of allergic reaction when it happens with me.
As for how long it takes to go away, like you, anything from 10 minutes to a couple of hours.
ETA, I have no idea what THIS is or anything about the website, I just wanted to show an example. When I get it, it more or less looks like this. Not too big, not broken, not ‘infected’, doesn’t come to a point (like a zit would), not in my mouth or half on my lip/half on my skin (like a cold sore). Just an random bump that goes a way in a little while.
Yeah, I’ve read all about angioedema in my google searches.
Joey, what you’re describing is pretty close to what I’m talking about. This link does not lead to an image. If you can re-link, I’d like to see the picture.
When the upper lip thing is in full swing on both sides, my upper lip looks a *little *like the nurse in the Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder,"which traumatized me as a child. Except the nurse’s lip is crooked and mine is symmetrical.
Can’t believe I forgot to mention this: Sometimes the swelling will happen on my inner wrists. And sometimes I’ll get lumps on my inner thighs and the backs of my thighs… not high up, but ~ midway between my crotch and knees. They can be a couple of lumps or a whole host of them. These also go away in about the same time frame as the lip lumps.
Once when I was in high school during a VERY stressful period (just moved, starting a new school, parents fighting a lot) I got a similar “rash” or series of swellings all down the back of my body. We went to the ER at the Army Base-- didn’t have a civilian family doc-- and I don’t know what they did for me. Maybe gave me antihistamines. I don’t remember the cure, only the problem.
I get a small lump just left of center on my upper lip. I can feel the tightness when it starts but when I tried photographing it to ask someone, it wasn’t very noticeable.
Like you, Thelmalou, there doesn’t seem to be a connection to anything I eat or any other exposure. It does often to appear right after I’ve mowed the lawn, but not every time and not only then.
ETA, it looks like the people commenting on that picture and possibly the person in that picture are talking about cysts. That’s clearly not what I (or the OP) had since they showed up and disappeared in minutes. It’s just an example of what it looked like and the approximate place where it was showing up.
Yeah, those pics are close. My lip lumps aren’t quite as pronounced, but very close. BTW, when I started this thread, I had a lump in/on my bottom lip. It has since disappeared…
Reading more… not so sure about the hereditary part.
This is a better definitionof angioedema. {THIS IS A NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE AND MAY PUSH YOU OVER YOUR MONTHLY LIMIT}
I have had similar experiences. Once was when I ate some Hungarian hot wax peppers raw, which I thought were regular banana peppers. Other times, when eating shellfish. Shrimp, crab, or crawfish. If I happened to pick my lip with the shell, it would swell up like that or worse. I always thought I was allergic to it.
Hi,
I have also been researching about these lip lumps because they have been annoying me terribly:mad:
My lip lumps are sort of a white colour at first and then after a few hours they turn to the same colour as the inside of my lip:dubious: they are about the size of a pea (well my first one was) and the second one was about the size of half a pea. They make me look like I have terribly Large lips too! Mine are always on the bottom of my lip and on the I inside not actually sitting on my lip:confused: After a matter of time maybe about 2 hours they shrink down to a very small size and it forms a big scab like thing on my actual lip and the bump starts bleeding:eek: I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO!!!
From the link, the very top SAYS
“It is very similar to urticaria, but urticaria, commonly known as hives, occurs in the upper dermis.[1]”
Therefore it is NOT ANGIOEDEMA or anything serious.
A very very minor stuff up where the unwarranted histamine response occurs.
Probably this is just urticaria (or something very similar to urticaria, if it falls outside)… A reaction to cold, or bruise or scratch or chemical… OR maybe TWO or THREE irritations have to work together. That is, when cold AND scratched, or when exposed to some chemical AND bruised.
Is this link working for others? (I *told *you I was special.)
