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Hi everybody, Chuck here.
It's May 9th, 2017 and podcast time.
I know it's really 2025, but we're going all the way back to May of 2017 to talk about itching.
Oh boy, just seeing that title probably makes you itch.
And that's one of the deals with itching, if I remember correctly.
So, I hope you dig it, and I hope you're not too itchy right now.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland.
So, this is Stuff You Should Know, scratching edition.
Yeah, this is one of many.
You remember when we did yawning?
Yeah. Well, that's the only one I can think of, where just researching something makes you do the thing you're researching.
This definitely happened with this one.
Yeah, well, we ran across that in poison ivy and scabies for sure.
Oh, yeah. And talked about some of this stuff, but I think itch.
We had an itch we needed to scratch with this particular topic.
Well, I'm glad. I've been wanting to do this one for a while.
Yeah, you did a video about this, right?
Yes. A short video?
No, it was three, four hours long.
Okay. If I remember correctly.
Does that mean we have to do this?
Do I have to be here for the next four hours?
Yeah, we have to just play the whole thing, and then we'll talk about it for an hour after.
That sounds good. Okay.
I think it was a Brain Stuff video, wasn't it?
Yeah, I watched it.
Did it scratch your itch?
Yeah, I watched it yesterday.
Oh, okay. Nice work.
Thank you very much.
You're just like...
Now we finally arrive at what I was after.
Compliment? Yeah. No, it was great.
Thanks, man. So I guess the point of all that is to say you guys are going, you're going, my videos are the best, that you're going to scratch.
You're going to feel an itch, which is one of the great mysteries of itches.
It turns out we only very, very recently have started to get a handle on what itches are.
Yeah. And there's still plenty of mysteries left to it.
Like, for example, it's bizarre and there's really no evolutionary reason, as far as anyone can tell, why just hearing about itches or seeing someone else scratch can make you itch.
Right. That's odd. That's weird.
Or seeing a video of an ant crawling up an arm will make you itch.
It will. But, I mean, think about it.
If somebody is sitting there, you see a video of some schmo who's got his hand near an oven and he pulls it away really quick.
It doesn't hurt your hand.
It doesn't make you feel like your hand is burned.
No. That doesn't happen.
I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like a leg break would.
No. You're just like, what a stupid idiot.
That's what it excites, you know?
I hope that guy's hand just burns clean off.
That's what I think, right?
Right. Yeah. You sourced a couple of, well, we had our own article on howstuffworks .com.
Yeah. But you also sent this great New Yorker article written by Dr.
Atul Gawande. One of the best names in writing today.
Yeah, that may be my new hotel name.
Well, you may be thronged by science fans because that guy's pretty well known.
Actually, I've never used to alias at a hotel.
That's dumb. And I don't even know if you can, can you?
I guess if you're a big shot, you can.
Yeah, but you have to be like, I'm not Brad Pitt.
I'm Atul Gawande. Right.
But we'll get to some of the more interesting aspects of that article later specifically a very specific patient that's quite distressing so calm down for now atul's mom but um get to it eventually he did include a couple of neat historical tidbits uh like in 1660 there was a and germans are all over
this thing for some reason yeah you know researchers that they're they're all german they had the itch to explain the itch i guess so yeah the itch right uh but there was a physician in 1660 named uh samuel hoffenreffer actually that's my new hotel name yeah that's a good one uh he kind of well he defined
it um by saying an itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch pretty simple yeah but right on the money it is and actually it's so it's so on the money that anywhere you look in the medical literature whenever they define itch word for word that's the the definition they use
the hoffenreffer yeah although poor hoffenreffer doesn't get credit for it all the time but that's the one the only expansion of that that i've seen is that can occur anywhere on the body which apparently is true i think hoffenreffer he felt that was implied right you know it's like it goes without
saying yeah uh and then i'm scratching right now by the way I don't know if I just noticed more because as I was doing it, I was thinking, well, now I'm scratching then I thought, do I always scratch this much or itch this much?
Oh, I hadn't thought about that.
I'm pretty sure that I was I don't think I scratch as much as I don't know.
You raise a really good question.
Maybe we can get an intern to follow us around and just record our scratching.
I'm surprised that that's not already a TV show, frankly.
Josh and Chuck scratch just being followed around yeah oh you know no one wants to see that well that's probably why it's not you're scratching see that's what i'm saying i don't think i scratch this much uh i don't notice it all right moving on um to dante's inferno uh it was in dante's inferno the burning
rage of fierce itching that nothing could relieve is how falsifiers were punished Yeah, do you know what a falsifier is?
Us? No, really, isn't that somebody who bears false witness or somebody who falsifies a document?
I don't know, is it just a fancy name for liar?
Maybe. Oh, I thought you were going to tell me.
You were just wondering.
Yeah, I don't know.
All right. Well, I don't know what Dante meant, but they're bad people.
Sure, apparently. There's a special place in health for him, literally.
Well, I guess actually not literally.
Figuratively. Sure.
Literarily. Oh, very nice.
So itching scientifically is known as pruritis, P -R -U -R -I -T -I -S.
It's one of those tough to pronounce things, for me at least.
And for, well actually they still believe that the evolution of the itch was to help humans survive, basically, because so many things that can kill you in nature are things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or fleas that can have malaria or the plague or any number of diseases attached to their tiny
little insect bodies.
So, hey, human, you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill you.
You might want to slap it or scratch.
Yeah, and that's still, as far as I know, the evolutionary hypothesis for why we experience itching.
Yeah. And it's not just us either.
Well, you're scratching like crazy now.
It's found throughout the animal kingdom from us to apparently fish have shown scratching behavior.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Fruit flies. How does the fish scratch, you might ask?
It rubs up against rocks.
Yeah. It's kind of cute.
It is a little cute.
It's like, I remember my dad did like the, who was the bear in jungle book?
Was that Baloo? Yes.
He would do the Baloo where he would get up against a tree or a wall.
Oh, yeah, yeah. And then I did it probably because of that.
I'm sure that's where I got it and realized that it works, and I still do it every now and then.
Oh, yeah? Yeah, it looked kind of silly.
Do you sing while you do it?
Yeah, bare necessities.
That's still my favorite.
What else are you going to sing?
Like Mambo No. 5? I'm going to start doing that, actually.
You'd be like, think something's wrong with Chuck.
So like you said, though, it was up until almost, what was it, 1987, the mid to late 80s, that another German, H .O.
Handwerker, and his gang, of Tufts, they started to do actual, like, research about it.
They were puzzled and wanted to solve it.
right because up to this point up to actually 1987 everyone thought that an itch was just a low -grade pain stimulus yeah i guess they were pain sensation happy with that that's just what they thought it was yeah and hanverker said you know what let's let's find out if this is actually true i'm tired
of sitting around just assuming this is fine i'm a hanverker and he got to verk er with his hands uh testing this right so what he i know it's like jonathan strickland level yeah um what he did was this is just awful yeah he introduced using like um electrical stimulation i guess he introduced histamine
to skin cells right and histamine is a natural i don't know if it's a protein but it's it's a natural compound natural chemical right yeah that the body releases in response to certain stimuli, say, for example, like a mosquito bite or something.
And it triggers the inflammation and immune response in that area, right?
So histamine is associated with itch, and it had been for a very long time.
So this guy was using electrical stimulation to introduce histamine in increasing amounts in these poor study participants.
And it went from barely noticeable to, this is a quote, the maximum imaginable itch.
And they never felt pain.
Yeah, like even though they ramped it up to 11, no one ever said like, holy crap, that hurts.
They said, please, please, for the love of God, stop, let me out of this.
And Handwerker just cackled and cackled.
Right. And these men with like black leather gloves were holding the participants down.
Yeah, they said this is not worth the five Deutschmarks that I'm getting for this lousy study.
yeah that's nice man that's this would have been pre -euro i think oh yeah even though the eu was around i don't think the euro was around in 87 right no no because i 90s i traveled uh i traveled to europe in 1997 and there was i was still on all that weird money oh okay yeah so it was a while after that.
So now scientists, I think this sort of introduced an itch to the scientific community because after hundreds and hundreds of years, Handvoke sort of disrupted the thought process of the itch and the scratch.
And all of a sudden scientists were like, oh, well, maybe we should start looking into this.
Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this thing out.
Yeah, because if it's not just a low -level pain sensation, then that means it's its own thing.
And if it's its own thing, it probably has its own system and we need to know more about it.
So they got to study in it.
Yeah, I wonder if all of this was under the notion that they were trying to cure itching.
I don't know because from what I was reading, and all of this was pretty recent stuff, there is a real unmet medical need in dealing and addressing like chronic itch.
Sure. Because, you know, most people who go through life just experiencing itch under normal circumstances, right?
Like say you or me, we're like an itch, yeah, they suck for a second and then it goes away.
Imagine it not going away ever, whether you're asleep or awake or swimming or in outer space or doing whatever.
You're itching constantly.
Supposedly, it has as much of a pronounced effect on a patient's life as chronic pain does.
It's constant, persistent, and agonizing.
And it's not being met or treated because it's not understood.
So they're just now starting to get into itch research.
I saw somebody put it where pain research was about 20 years ago.
So it's starting to really heat up, but we're still just starting to understand it.
So I would think that they weren't looking to cure it.
I think it was just pointed out that there was this whole branch of neuroscience that was totally not understood.
So get to work neurologists.
I wonder, I never really thought about it until just now, but I wonder what happens when a performer or somebody like that is in the public eye or on TV or on stage or like the president giving a address, What do they do if they have poison ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis?
Have you ever thought about that?
What if Lin -Manuel Miranda has a really bad case of poison?
I guess they can get an understudy in that case.
Sure. But you can't have an understudy as president, which is too bad.
You just go out there with your hands bandaged up, just holding them up.
How do you fight that on camera?
Or like a news anchor when they're just like, oh, my God, I'm dying.
i don't know i guess a news anchor can tape things but i'm talking about live what does tom petty do for god's sakes tom petty grins and bears it he had a hard scribble childhood he sort of did prepared him for that i'm going to see him tomorrow night oh yeah nice we're meeting for coffee he's not performing
um anyway i was just curious about that um well it's a good question thanks do you remember when costas had red eye at the olympics And he was so dedicated to being the commentator, the anchor for the Olympics.
They finally were like, you have to stop.
No one can look at you anymore.
People are writing in.
You're disgusting, man.
It was gross. One thing that made me think of that is I had recently, you can still kind of see it on my forearm, the scars, but I did a cement job.
I was building this fence, putting in a gate at my house.
And Scotty, you know Scotty.
Sure. Huh? Pippin. not Scottie Pippen.
Uh, he and I built this, uh, thing together and we sank these huge posts for this gate.
And I didn't know that cement, uh, could cause contact dermatitis or even burns.
Never knew this. And we were, it was kind of a tight spot and we couldn't get shovels in there in the hole.
So we were literally mixing this stuff like up to our elbows with our arms.
And I was like, this kind of feels good.
I even said like, you know, like oatmeal or something.
And then two days later, my right arm was just covered in the nastiest dermatitis I've ever seen.
Wow. And then he got it.
Yeah, it's still like kind of hanging around.
So I went and got a prescription for steroids, which made me a little crazy for a week and a half.
Okay. Did you trash the gate and have to start over?
No. In a droid rage?
I think I was probably not the best husband though.
I see. Over that time period.
Yeah. Judging from Emily saying, hey, you're a real a -hole.
get off the steroids gotcha um get off the juice and i was like shut up watch this watch me hit this homer so long story short i experienced this recently and it was awful and i can't imagine like shooting a tv show or something or like doing anything on or performing live yeah like i would have to
address it because i would scratch and smack it was what i usually do that's what you're supposed to do not scratch i guess we'll just cut to the chase here this is why everyone's listening how do you scratch a niche correctly you rub it yeah i didn't do i did you know what really did it was the uh
we have a uh handheld uh implement in the shower along with the regular shower head okay yeah and put that sucker on the the tightest hardest most penetrating flow right and just put that hot water on it man and that was like i think i spent half my days in the shower yeah over that week and a half
were you biting down like a broomstick while you're doing that no it felt so good man i was just like i couldn't get enough of it huh and then the cortisone and all that junk too so well actually well we'll talk about this because this you're raising some great points here well i just kind of did it
ruin the spoiler no no this is good stuff we're going to analyze what was going on with your arm after this break how about that?
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Ready to celebrate the magic of live music?
South by Southwest Music Festival returns to Austin, Texas this March 10th through the 15th with a fresh lineup of legendary and rising talent.
Join a global community of music lovers, artists, industry professionals, and creatives at the 2025 South by Southwest Music Festival.
With hundreds of showcasing artists performing across six days in over 50 venues, Discovery is right around the corner at South by Southwest.
Explore the lineup at SXSW .com.
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so chuck you had contact dermatitis right i thought it was poison ivy because that area has some poison ivy but each of us scotty and i had it just on the arm right we sunk in cement And then we researched and found out that could happen.
Yeah. So lesson learned on that.
Yeah. So what happened was you like something in the cement and I'm not sure what it was reacted chemically with the mast cells in your skin.
Yeah. And histamine was released, right?
Apparently. And so the histamine sent a signal through specialized nerve cells called C fibers.
Yeah, which c -fibers aren't just limited to itching i think only about five percent handle that and right most of the rest are for pain right right so they use the same type of neural pathway as pain but for itch it's it's basically it's just like no these these are just for itches only yeah and it sent
a signal through your spinal column and in your spinal column it released a neurotransmitter called gastrin -releasing peptide receptor.
And so at the skin, the histamine would have released a neurotransmitter called what?
Natriuretic polypeptide B.
Okay, so that says itch signal coming your way along those C fibers.
Yes. Okay? It makes it to the spinal column.
And I guess in about 2007, they found that there's another neurotransmitter in the spine that I guess accepts the NPPB.
The invitation. And says, I'm going to transfer this along up to the brain.
That's gastrin -releasing peptide receptor.
That shoots up to the brain and it starts this cascade of activity, right?
Yeah. Because when they, like after Handwerker said, hey, you know, itching's its own thing.
These other researchers went to town and traced and figured out that there were specific types of itch receptors that were dedicated just to itches, right?
Yeah, more Germans.
More Germans. And Swedes in this case.
A couple of Swedes, but mostly Germans.
Just for good measure.
Yeah. Yeah. And what they found eventually from tracing this pathway, they were able to follow it into the wonder machine.
And apparently they made some people itch and would not let them scratch it.
And then they had them lay down in an MRI and they took a brain scan and they found that there's this whole galaxy of stuff going on in your brain that combined is the itch sensation yeah it was pretty interesting too there's there's a signature pattern in the brain when you get an itch and uh a few
specific areas light up one is a cortex and it all makes sense when you put it together right uh the cortex uh in this case just sort of geolocates where on your body you're getting that sensation right so that helps it's like uh left elbow yeah or in my case from right elbow to wrist right and then
a little bit in other places but not too bad that that was the main area is this your cortex still saying this yeah it's very complex conversation going on uh and then the region i thought this was interesting the region that governments uh governments that governs emotional response um so basically
this is your brain saying like i don't like this this makes me feel bad yeah it's the worst thing ever do something and then finally the limbic and motor areas and i thought this was the most interesting um those areas process irresistible urges the same ones that say i want to smoke crack or i want
to eat too much cake right says you have an itch that is unbearable and you need to scratch it right and maybe go smoke some crack and eat some cake while you're at it because that'll help so i just i don't know i thought that was all very super interesting when you combine that pattern yeah that's
the that's an itch and then then followed by the irresistible urge to scratch it which apparently research has shown those two do not happen in independently they're they're part of a cycle yes there's something called the itch scratch cycle right and so you have an irresistible urge to scratch the itch
it's it's weird if you think about it like on the one hand it makes sense where you you sense that there's a really hot heat source that your hand is really close to so you have an irresistible urge to pull it back but it doesn't feel like an urge it almost feels like an involuntary reflex yeah I think
it's a scratch is almost like I'm gonna kill this itch I can't wait to scratch it like you're almost exacting revenge on the itch for itching you right so a scratch is it's an irresistible urge where it's like pulling your hand back from a a hot a hot source or something is like an involuntary reflex
it just feels different like a scratch is its own thing well it is you know they kind of found that out and and Gawande Dr.
Gawande pointed out something interesting too that I never thought about is that you can have like that short collar rubs against your neck all day and you might never notice it.
But if there's like one little string that's just poking one little area, that might trigger an itch.
Right. And so you would think that, you know, itch receptors are super finely tuned and they cover just this one tiny like...
That's what it would seem like.
...micron of skin. As a matter of fact, no.
Apparently an itch receptor can sense itch stimuli like three inches away from it on the skin.
That's crazy. Yeah.
So they're really sensitive.
Yeah. Whereas pain receptors are that specific.
right uh down to like you know millimeters yeah um and the other thing they found out too is that not only can they sense it from a few inches away but it's a very slow acting thing right which um as opposed to like heat on the hand a candle on your hand almost a candle in the wind uh that's super fast
but um that that explains why an itch like is kind of slow to come and then slow to resolve by scratching yeah it's not like you scratch it you're like oh it's all better now yeah it helps a little bit so so the itching is a it's a good strategy if you think about um say you're you're there's a mosquito
on you and that's what's making you itch when you go to scratch it you're getting rid of the mosquito maybe even smushed it or something like that the the problem is taken care of the issue is is that that itch scratch cycle eventually becomes a vicious cycle because when you scratch this is what they
think is going on this is another mystery with itches we don't understand how scratching alleviates an itch right or why we scratch really right what they think the current hypothesis is that when you scratch an itch um you're stimulating other receptors in the area that aren't itch receptors yeah so i
i got that but what does that do to sort of like say hey body don't worry about that for a minute i think so a pain receptor is now active right exactly it's it's sending feedback to the brain saying it's being taken care of you can settle down with the itch gotcha right i think the problem is is that neurologically
or neurochemically when you scratch an itch you're activating those pain receptors in the area pain pressure that kind of thing you're causing um serotonin to be released natural pain reliever right or at least mood enhancer and what they found is that serotonin among other neurochemicals actually exacerbates
the itch sensation so your itch not only comes back it gets worse so you go to scratch it again and then same thing happens over and over again that's the itch scratch cycle which is not the best cycle around you can think of better cycles not a bad band name yeah a little too cute maybe prog folk prog
well they'd have to be german probably german folk prog okay another interesting thing they learned too is that um i guess we're kind of jumping around but who cares right if you scratch you don't have to scratch the point of the itch to relieve it apparently right like if you have i had that itch on my
right uh forearm and i could scratch maybe it doesn't have to be the left forearm so it's not like you have to mirror it um but i could scratch like my neck and apparently that might help relieve it yeah i tried it it didn't work for me no no but i think the reason why there's that's it's possible that it
could have that effect is supposedly scratching also um activates like your pleasure center yeah you bet it does but there's different different places where you're scratching on your body um have different amounts of pleasure associated with them did you know that i mean i guess i guess so but yeah
interesting yeah but i mean think about it it's like if you scratch your scratch your like your clavicle who cares it's nothing right but then you scratch like your head right above and behind your ear it's great well and they i think they did find that like uh your back and your ankles supposedly are some
of the most rewarding places to scratch exactly and I I don't know I've never really thought about the ankles but um my mom would give me back scratches when I was a kid that's nice and it was always like one of my favorite things ever sure and so I don't get those anymore now that I'm a grown -up because that's
gross. Mom, scratch my back.
All right. I'm 46 years old.
Lay down. But yeah, it was like, I think I prefer to back scratch to a back rub even.
Oh, yeah. When I was younger, but now, you know, a massage is probably way better.
Sure. But if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there, get ready for a huge tip for me.
Yeah, I guess so. Or does that, what, is that sexual?
I think it crosses a line once they're potentially clawing away skin cells.
I think that's no longer in the masseuse range or masseur range.
Yeah, I get that. Once skin cells are involved under the nails, then you're a murder suspect.
Right, exactly. All right, well, should we take another break and talk a little bit about one of the most distressing articles I've ever read?
Stephanie with a fresh lineup of legendary and rising talent.
Join a global community of music lovers, artists, industry professionals and creatives at the 2025 South by Southwest Music Festival with hundreds of showcasing artists performing Coming across six days in over 50 venues, Discovery is right around the corner at South by Southwest.
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You know, these days it feels like everyone is talking about how the American dream of owning a home is dying.
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All right, so we've referenced this article from The New Yorker, from Dr.
Atul Gawande. And he talked a lot about itching and just had good information on the science.
of it all well that's what he does but most of the article was focused on uh a patient a woman in massachusetts uh that they named m for the article just m the letter m right in other words you know she's anonymous uh and i think she was anonymous because she kind of had a rough go uh after her divorce
um she ended up getting uh hiv from uh getting on heroin uh kind of spun out it seems like but then got her life back uh by all accounts but ended up getting shingles as a result of hiv complications right and the shingles went away but the itching did not to say the least yeah i think the itching came
after the shingles even and at first her her physicians were like Like, well, I mean, you must have damaged some nerves in there, so TS for you, I guess.
And then, eventually, after treating it all these different ways and it's still being scratching, they said, okay, you're crazy.
How about that? And she said, well, whatever.
I still have this itch.
Do whatever you need to to treat it because I'm literally scratching this itch in my sleep.
It was on her scalp, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was on her head.
And she kind of managed to control it during the day.
But like you said, at night she couldn't control it.
Right. To the point where I think she was, like, restrained in her sleep.
That came after. Oh, okay.
After they realized it's a problem because your brain is oozing out of your head.
Yeah. Can you believe that?
She scratched her scalp so much that she scratched through her skull.
And she went into her doctor one day and said, they've got, like, this green fluid coming down.
and apparently the doctor didn't even say anything she or she was like excuse me went and called an ambulance and came back and said please lay down and don't talk or move or do anything else they finally told her after she was at the ER you scratch through to your brain that's your brain you're touching
right now the doctor was like very interesting just give me a second here oh my god well they gathered up all the other doctors and nurses you got to come see this she said also in this article she said that she had a what do they call them?
a roommate a roommate so she had a roommate while she was they treated it gave her a skin graft and then she itched she scratched away the skin graft and then they finally were like you're going to an asylum and she's like do they even call it that anymore and they're like just shut up yeah and they
put her in this asylum and restrained her like you said while she was sleeping and she had a roommate in there she said in the article she heard didn't survive he had scratched through his carotid artery and died blood death yeah um so they never really got to the bottom of this she finally got a doctor like
the doctors were like it's something that had to do with the shingles this is what we think happens at her doctors that the the nerve endings around the area where she had shingles were so devastated by the shingles yeah that there were just a couple of nerve endings left and it just so happened that they
were itch receptors itch itch um yeah itch receptors bad luck and that those were like really exacerbated by the fact that there was no other competing sensations oh ipso facto there's your problem right so they said well let's we'll just cut the main nerve to the to your face and that should solve
the problem they cut the main nerve to her face and um she said thanks a lot yeah and then the itch came back and she's like you have to be kidding me so finally she met a doctor who said i don't think it's your uh your receptors or the nerve transmission i think it's your brain yeah not psychologically
i don't think it's a psychosis i think there's that the actual itch signal in your brain is being set off without any stimulation or transmission going on yeah and um apparently she was right but then they were like good luck treating that right you know i didn't see much follow -up on this i did read
one article that um a follow -up with dr gawande because there were a lot of skeptics after that article came out that said it's impossible with your fingernail because she said she didn't use an implement it's not like she got out a metal file right to scratch through your skull right and he said that his theory
was that bacteria that became infected had eaten it away such that the skull became soft turned it to mush yeah yuck uh and then people also said you know you don't have men and women in the same room in hospitals or asylums that's that's false and he said uh that it was like the the room next door um
and quit being pedantic yeah really man i think people just didn't believe it so all these folks wrote into the new yorker so so coastal elites right said no way they said a tool a tool come on so the the idea though that even if this woman was hypothetical i think tool guande is pretty upstanding cat and didn't
make this up but even if say she was hypothetical her problem at what the doctors initially thought it was was that she had a neuropathic itch, a type of chronic itch.
But then the doctor who apparently figured it all out said, no, no, no, it's a neurogenic itch, another type of chronic itch.
And it has to do with whether it's the brain going off or the nerve transmissions going off.
Either way, you don't actually have an itch, although you're experiencing the itch sensation.
Well, and they also then said at some point she had a psychogenic itch.
Right. So they basically covered three out of the four kinds of itches, the last one being, man, I have such a hard time, pre -receptive, and that's what you get from like a mosquito bite or if you have a skin disorder like eczema or something.
Sure. So they basically ruled out the most common one and at various stages said, nah, you've got this other one for the other three.
Right, finally. And then again, they said there's really nothing we can do to treat it.
The one that they've got down pretty well is pre -receptive.
We've got all sorts of stuff to treat that because basically histamine is being released and your skin is itching.
So you can treat histamines with antihistamines.
You can reduce that response and then your itch will go away.
Well, I took Benadryl at night and they also make this Benadryl spray, a topical spray that really helps.
So between that and cortisone and then the Benadryl at night, I did okay in those awesome showers.
So the, like, the pro -receptivage, we've got treatment for, basically.
Yeah. The other three, you're in trouble, it turns out, as far as it stands right now.
Maybe five or ten years from now, there'll be something.
Apparently, there is a lot of movement right now on treating this stuff, but it's like they're having to figure out how to block some really otherwise important chemicals in the body, like that NPPB, right?
yeah that one what is it can help can regulate your blood pressure as well right so they can't switch that off right yeah just turn off the gene that produces that you won't itch but you might die early right not worth it right the one that really i mean they're all sad but the psychogenic when you
have a mental illness where you feel like you have parasites and bugs on your skin you remember our morgulons disease yeah how did you said it more gallons right and i said morgulons I can't remember.
I know that I said it the way everyone else says it, though.
That's all I remember.
Morgulons. That's right.
That's how I said it.
Man, but all this stuff, it just had so much empathy for Em.
Yeah. And wanted a follow -up so bad to see how she was doing, you know?
Yeah. And if she kept scratching holes in her skull.
Yeah, I don't know.
Jeez. so there's i read another article called accidental therapists uh -huh it's by a guy named eric broodman and it was published on a website called stat and it's all about delusional parasitosis but how it's treated sometimes by um entomologists you know like those um extension services at universities
yeah here in the u .s like state universities have what called extension services where like a scientist will basically be there for the public to come talk to about whatever usually it's like household stuff or farm stuff something like that and apparently entomologists frequently are approached with people
who are like i've got these bugs like crawling all over me here's a sample of them and it turns out it's like carpet fiber or something like that and these people just can't stop itching or whatever but it turns out they have a delusion they don't actually have parasites my question is is that our understanding
of it now and in five or ten years we're gonna know that they had neurogenic itches and we just treated them like they were crazy even though they weren't yeah and it's gonna be like a real blemish on the history of neuroscience maybe or will this idea of psychogenic itches you know hold up yeah i wonder
did you ever see the todd haynes movie safe with julianne more no it was one of his first movies after the karen carpenter thing he did uh that wasn't like i mean it was a real movie but it wasn't released um but safe was very disturbing it was about a woman who kind of slowly drifted into madness from uh
believing that the world was poisoning her wow and like household chemicals and everything and it kind of started slow and eventually she ended up at this kind of safe camp for people like her right um very distressing movie and one of her first movies too i'll have to check it out yeah it's really
good oh it's old yeah it was it was early 90s i think i know you're talking about no it's called the road to wellville is that what you mean no it's called safe okay i'll check it out yeah it's good very distressing i'm trying to think of any and that wasn't necessarily itching but it was just like
that psychogenic thing of like i think everything in my house is killing me yeah i mean have you ever like stopped and thought about something and thought there's there's the path to madness right there i'm staring down it right now i should probably not keep thinking about this i don't really get like
that oh no no i'm very easily kind of led on to the next shiny thing i guess oh like a bird yeah yeah basically that's probably for the best it is it has its drawbacks though uh what else you got well one thing it says in here is that um having someone else scratch your itch does apparently does not do
the trick so you have to scratch your own itch yeah i mean somebody can like obviously like you know if you're like a little left a little left up up yeah see i agree with that oh man not you the them saying oh right like i think it definitely helps i think what they're saying is it doesn't have quite
the same relieving properties as if you do it yourself oh yeah and if you could reach that area of your back it would be better than that yeah i guess so i got a pretty good back scratcher now though oh yeah what's it made of bamboo no it's it's metal but it's uh telescoping so it's not you know two
feet long gotcha but it can be but it's metal yeah it looks like a like what are the bear claw not the pastry but a real bear claw which actually looks like the pastry yeah i guess it does that's why they call it that i never thought about that why'd you think that was called that i'm just kidding actually
should call it a bear paw it looks more like a bear paw i guess it does i'm gonna try and bring that bring that around unless you get somebody who like really goes the extra mile and puts almonds on the tips to make it look like the claw yes and not just haphazardly scattered about the bear paw exactly
yeah that's the difference between a baker who loves their job and one who's just in it for the money yeah uh a couple more things charles like we said there's um still plenty of mysteries around itches yeah why say does a feather tickle sometimes but itch other times big question They don't know.
Right. But I'd like to know.
Well, maybe the Germans will get active on this again.
Yeah. They're the only ones who can solve it.
Only the Germans can save us.
You got anything else?
No, I don't. I don't either.
Itching. Nice work.
Thanks, man. Same to you.
Thank you. And you haven't scratched in a while, so.
No, I'm actually, I've been scratching the same spot, and it's starting to get a little tender, so I'm stopping man there's nothing worse in a movie and I've seen I feel like I've seen this a few times in movies where someone is compulsively like scratching until it becomes a sore and then they're scratching
it it's just like through to their brain well yeah so I guess the moral of this one is what would Tom Petty do I'll ask him tomorrow if you want to know more about itching or what Tom Petty would do you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks .com and since I said search bar it's time
for listener mail I'm going to call this one of the many emails we got on the swearing episode did you notice that?
People really seemed to like that one.
Yeah they did A lot of response mostly from fellow potty mouths which were very filthy emails too which were great and I responded in turn by cursing at them in my replies which I hope they enjoyed in all caps?
no I didn't want to be too aggressive so this is from Emily Allen hey guys, long time listener first time writing in writing about swearing I should start by saying that it's funny I'm writing about this episode because I almost never curse and when I do it's normally not a very offensive swear however your
intro made me think of something interesting I wanted to share you talked about how you really censor yourself during recording in order to keep your show family -friendly.
It got me thinking about how our jobs really shape our vocabulary, how we express ourselves.
I noticed a major change in the way I speak since becoming a teacher.
I primarily teach kindergarten to second -grade students, and I found this really changed the way I express myself.
For example, I try to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids.
We'll often say, well, isn't that silly, instead.
This works in the classroom, but I often get laughs from friends and family when I refer to a situation as silly like a disagreement with a colleague or something a politician does there are other expressions I use with the kids that often slip into regular conversation as well the most embarrassing
when I'm out and excuse myself to go potty that always gets a laugh anyway, I just wanted to share and thank you for all the great work you do I've learned so much from listening each week and I'm always excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday Wednesday.
That is from Emily Allen.
Thank you, Ms. Allen.
Very silly. That was a very nice email.
Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us like Ms.
Allen did, you can send us an email to the StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks .com.
And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow .com.
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