by Andy Shackcloth

Created on: March 05, 2009

No false promise and no miracle cure, but at least for my wife the temporary relief stopped her from scratching herself raw.

What we have found is not really new' and amongst those of us who suffer because of our skin, the knowledge is common, but impractical and hidden in other forms. All we have done is relooked at something many sufferers know and out of necessity stood the thinking on its head and approached it differently.

My wife suffers badly from her skin, if it gets too dry it itches, if water sits on it more than a few moments it itches, if is dried it with soft stokes it itches and if you do nothing at all it itches. So she would tear at her skin until it was so damaged that it hurt and the pain she caused subdued the crazing itch, only now a lesser itch, somewhere else, would strengthen and demand her attention. The previous sentence contains the answer we found, the mechanics of it I can only guess at, but the result is temporary relief. Pain subdues itching!

If you or I have a small itch we simply brush or lightly scratch and it generates a signal which runs up the nerves and the itch goes away, a larger itch and we scratch a bit harder, it generates a larger signal giving the same result, but for a sufferer the itch is so large that normal scratching is not enough to overcome it, and the heavy scratching required gives relief but causes heavy damage which then triggers yet more itching. Many sufferers know that a hot shower will give temporary relief and many proponents of a hot shower write about the cleansing, the opening of the skin's pores and the like. They may be right; I will not deny them, for me though a hot shower is painful. Yes painful as in "full of pain", and it is nerve stimulating pain over most of the body, all at once, no nook or cranny for an itch to hide in. Unfortunately for my wife, not only would the water set her off, but so would the drying with a towel afterwards, hot showers were out!

Have you ever had an itch that didn't respond to scratching, so in the end you gave it hard slap, often making the skin go really red in the process? I know I have but I didn't know the importance of the slap until recently.

Now this is not a proposal for people to slap their loved ones silly, we found a simpler, safer, controllable way to over stimulate the nerves and surprisingly at no additional cost, we already had the necessary equipment in a drawer. We found out that a hairdryer will do the job brilliantly, you can use one to heat the skin up to the painful point where it overtakes' the itch, without causing damage to the skin.

IMPORTANT: Different causes, different conditions; different reactions, don't, don't, don't! Burn yourself whilst trying to make this work, your skin condition may be totally different and react another way. If a hot shower or a hard slap works for you, then this should as well, but be sensible and be cautious at first.

Simply, bring your dryer slowly in closer and closer to the skin, whilst constantly moving it over the surface and heating up an area that is itching. If the itch is really bad you might have to let that particular area cool down and then come back to it, this multipass approach seems necessary on the biggies, no idea why.

Hopefully this will work as well for you as it has for us, even if it doesn't, please pass it on.

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