What’s Itching You?

Itching is one of the most unpleasant sensations a human can feel – can we all agree on that? Not the light itching that is easily dismissed with a single scratch; the really bad kind. The kind of itching where it feels like something has crawled under your skin, torturing you with its every movement. The kind that no scratch can dismiss unless you’re willing to accidentally peel back layers of your skin.

If you have an itch with no known cause, it’s aggravating. You can take over the counter antihistamines, but they won’t always solve the problem. If you suspect there’s an allergy doing you harm, then you can go for allergy testing.

The Problem With Allergy Testing

Allergy testing is a sound way of looking for any allergy issues, but it’s not infallible. For a start, the basic tests are very limited. They look for the most common allergens, such as pollen, cat hair, and dust mites. There’s no possible way to allergy test for everything on a broad spectrum, without anything to go on. People are allergic to strange things, such as lavender or even water in some medical cases.

So it’s perfectly conceivable that you could have a standard allergy test, have it come back all clear, and your itching still being caused by an allergic reaction.

What Next?

You have to examine the items you come into contact with most often.

Your home is the best place to begin. Have you changed suppliers of any major food or cosmetics in recent months? Laundry products should also be immediately under suspicion.

If all of the above comes up clean, then it’s time to examine your home itself. You might have a white mold problem, hidden from view behind a bathroom panel where it can’t be easily seen. Have a scout around, peering into every nook and cranny, to see if there’s anything you need to remove.

If your house comes back with a clean bill of health, then it’s time to move on to the next step.

Keep A Food Diary

A food diary should be fairly basic; no need for pouring out your innermost thoughts here! 

Write down everything that you eat (and it does have to be everything, or it’s not going to work the way it should). At the end of each day, also write down how the itching has been. Soon, if there is a correlation between the foods you eat and the itching, it should become apparent as you build up the data in your diary.

If That Doesn’t Work…

It’s time to talk to a doctor. Pruritis (the medical term for itching) can be idiopathic; i.e. for no specific cause. It can also be an indicator of a health problem. You may just need to drink more water to help flush your system, or it may be an indicator of lung or kidney problems in extremely rare cases. No need for panic, just get things checked out if none of the above reveals the culprit.