Why I built UrtiMap

It started long before the hives

I was born in Saratov in 1994. The first years of my life were already medically complicated: a C-section delivery, an infection in the maternity hospital, a severe reaction after cow's milk at seven months, frequent tonsillitis, digestive and bowel problems, dermatitis, and other inflammatory symptoms.

My tonsils were removed when I was six because of recurring infections. Around the same time, seasonal allergies began. Later testing showed reactions to birch, alder, mugwort, and other plants.

By age twelve, I had pronounced dermatographism: pressure or scratching left red raised lines on my skin. Migraines, seasonal allergies, and digestive problems continued alongside it.

I cannot prove which, if any, of those events mattered most. What I eventually understood was that focusing only on the latest symptom meant ignoring most of the history.

When the hives themselves began

By my teenage years I was getting fewer routine infections, but the allergic symptoms were gradually becoming more intense. Spring pollen seasons became harder, while the digestive problems became less painful but never disappeared completely.

I had evaluations, ultrasounds, and a colonoscopy. Nothing clearly explained what I was experiencing.

At 28, I developed chronic hives. Without an antihistamine, the itching would begin and scratching would produce welts. Half a cetirizine tablet would usually control it for about two days.

At that point, looking for answers was no longer a general interest in health. I wanted to understand why a body that had appeared to cope for years had started producing a daily symptom.

Looking for connections instead of another pill

I had previously worked in science. Any complicated process had to be separated into parts, possible relationships tested, and observations kept distinct from assumptions.

I began applying the same approach to my own health history.

I read research and compared diet, seasonality, infections, medications, test results, and symptom changes. One of my first major personal experiments was removing gluten completely.

Within several days, I noticed that my pollen-allergy symptoms felt milder. Bloating and digestive rumbling decreased, headaches became less frequent, and fatigue and sleepiness gradually improved.

The hives did not disappear.

That distinction mattered: improvement in one part of my health did not mean I had found the main cause of everything.

Later came treatment for Helicobacter pylori, dietary changes, a lower-histamine diet, attempts to address possible infections, and other experiments. Some appeared to affect individual symptoms; others produced no noticeable result.

Early results and new questions

Later I began reading about microbial communities and biofilms and undertook a self-directed course intended to change my gastrointestinal symptoms.

Afterward, I was able to stop taking cetirizine regularly. The itching gradually decreased, and the dermatographism faded faster and stopped producing the familiar welts.

I cannot reliably say what mechanism, if any, produced that result. Diet, gastrointestinal symptoms, medications, and other factors were changing at the same time. This experience is not a treatment protocol and should not be copied without appropriate clinical guidance.

But for the first time in years, I saw the value of assembling the entire history and changing one element at a time instead of making random attempts.

Further evaluation added another layer: signs consistent with autoimmune thyroiditis. Once again, it showed me that skin symptoms can coexist with other processes that are not visible if the record contains only photographs of a rash.

Why UrtiMap exists

As I read other people's stories, I kept seeing the same problem.

During an appointment, someone tries to compress years of illness into a few minutes. Dates are forgotten. It is unclear which details matter. Symptoms are not linked to medication changes, and basic features—such as how long one welt lasts or what happened before the onset—may never be explained.

Test results, prescriptions, photographs, and specialist notes sit in separate places. Each new clinician sees only a fragment.

That is where the idea for UrtiMap came from.

The service first asks detailed questions about onset, the behavior of the welts, swelling, possible triggers, treatments, and accompanying symptoms. It then turns those answers into a preliminary structured review.

The goal is not to announce one universal cause of hives.

The goal is to help a person:

• reconstruct the timeline;
• notice recurring patterns;
• identify contradictions;
• see what information is missing;
• prepare more precise questions;
• bring a clinician an organized case instead of a scattered account.

I continue to study my own health, read other people's experiences, and test new hypotheses. UrtiMap will keep changing as more patterns emerge and it becomes clearer which questions make a case review genuinely useful.