pruritus Archives - Dr. Hannah Sivak, PhD

Itch, scratch, repeat. Or try our nourishing skin serum.

December 6th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak

It’s winter and the skin is dry and itchy. It’s summer and a mosquito bites your ankle and it’s itchy. It’s allergy season and the skin itches. Your new medications make your skin itchy. It’s any time and your scalp itches. You scratch the itch, the broken cells have released histamine and amplified the itch. Now the skin is scratched, red and swollen, and even broken. And, worse, it still itches. What to do? Scratch again. Understanding itch It seems that the itch (a.k.a. pruritus) mechanism evolved so that animals could rid of disease-causing insects and irritating or poisonous plant matter. In our domesticated life, chronic itch caused by dry…