May 9, 2017 • 44 mins
It was only in the last few decades that science became aware that itches aren't just low-level pain. And in that time, the mystery of how we itch and why we scratch has gotten even more baffling.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. 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 Indigenous Yeah, this
(00:21):
is one of many. You remember when we did Yawning. Um, 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 and poison ivy and scabies for sure. Oh yeah,
(00:41):
and talked about some of this stuff. But I think
it we had an itch we needed to scratch with
this particular topic. Well, I'm glad, um, 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 or four hours long. Okay, if I
remember correctly, that mean we have to do this. You
(01:03):
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. Okay. I
think it was a brain stuff video, isn't it. I
watched Did it scratch your itch? Yeah, I watched it yesterday.
Nice work, thank you very much. Just like now we
finally arrive on what I was after compliment. Yeah, it
(01:23):
was great, thanks man. Um. So I guess the point
of all that is to say, you guys are going
you're going right, and my videos are the best. Uh,
that you're going to scratch, You're gonna feel an itch,
which is one of the great mysteries of itches. It
turns out we only very very recently have started to
(01:44):
get a handle on what itches are, um, 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
that's odd, That's that's weird. The video of an ant
(02:08):
crawling up an arm will make you itch. It will.
But I mean, think about it. If somebody is sitting there, Um,
you see a video of some schmo who's got his
hand like 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. That doesn't happen.
I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like
(02:28):
a leg break with You're just like, what a stupid idiot,
that's what it excites. Yeah, I hope that guy's hand
just burns clean off. That's what I think. Right. Uh,
you sourced a couple of well we've had our own
article on how stuff works dot com, but you also
sent this great New Yorker article, um, written by Dr
(02:48):
a tool go on Day, one of the best names
in writing today. Yeah, that may be my new hotel name. Well,
you may be thronged by science right, science fans, because
that guy's pretty pretty well known. Actually I don't. I've
never used to alias at a hotel. That's dumb. I
don't even know if you can. Can you? I guess
if you're a big shot you can. Yeah, but you
(03:09):
have to be like, I'm not Brad Pitt, I'm a
tool go on Day right. Uh. But the we'll get
to some of the uh more interesting aspects of that
article later, specifically a very specific patient that's quite distressing,
So calm down for now, a Tool's mom, but get
to it eventually. He did include a couple of neat
(03:32):
historical tidbits Uh, like in sixteen sixty there was in
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 it right.
But there was a position in sixteen sixty named Samuel Hoffenruffer.
(03:54):
Actually that's my new hotel name. Yeah, that's a good one.
Uh he kind of well, he defined it by saying,
an itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire
to scratch. Pretty simple, 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
(04:17):
itch word for word, that's the definition they use. Yeah,
although poor hoff and reference 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 haf
reference he felt that was implied. And it's like it
goes without saying, yeah, and then I'm scratching right now,
(04:41):
you know, Yeah, it's started. I don't know if I
just noticed more, because as I was doing it, I
was thinking, well, now, I'm scratching, but I thought, do
I always scratch this much? Or it's this much? Oh,
I hadn't thought about that. I'm pretty sure that I was.
I don't think I scratched as much as I don't know.
Do you raise a really good question. Maybe we can
(05:01):
get an intern to follow us around and just record
our scratching. Right, 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 scratched this much. I don't notice
(05:24):
it alright. 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 falsifiers us? I know really like.
(05:45):
Isn't that that somebody who like bears false witness, or
somebody who falsifies a document or is it just a
fancy name for liar? Maybe? Oh, I thought you were
gonna tell me you were just wondering. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know, all right, I don't know what don
they meant, but they're they're bad people. Apparently there's a
special place in health for him literally, well, I guess
(06:06):
actually not literally figuratively literarily, Oh very nice. Uh So,
itching um scientifically is known as uh puritis p r
U r I t I s. It's one of those
tough to pronounce things for me at least um and
for well. Actually, they still believe that the evolution of
(06:29):
the itch was to help humans um survive basically because
so many things that can kill you, uh, and and
nature or things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or
fleas that can have like malaria or the plague or
any number of diseases attached to their tiny little insect bodies. So, hey, human, um,
(06:53):
you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill
you. You You might want to slap it or scratch. Yeah,
And that's still, as far as I know, the the
evolutionary hypothesis for why we experience itching. Yeah, and it's
not just us either. What you're scratching like crazy, it's
found throughout the animal kingdom um from us too, apparently,
(07:15):
fish have shown scratching behavior. Yeah, that's crazy fruit flies.
How's the fish scratch? You might ask? It rubs up
against rocks. It's kind of cute. It is a little cute.
It's like I remember my dad did like the uh
who was the Barren Jungle book? Was that blue? Yes?
He would do the blue or he would get up
against a tree or a wall. And then I did
(07:36):
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
look kind of silly. But do you sing while you do? Yeah?
Bair necessities, that's still my favorite. What else are you
gonna sing? Like Mambo number five? I'm gonna start doing that.
(07:57):
Actually you could be like, think something's wrong with yeah. So,
like you said, though, it was up until almost was seven,
the mid to late eighties that another German h O
hand worker UH and his gang um they started to
(08:19):
do actual like research about it. They were puzzled and
wanted to solve it right because up to this point,
up to actually seven, everyone thought that an itch was
just a low grade pain stimulus. Since they're happy with that,
that's just what they thought it was. And hand worker said,
you know what, let's let's find out if this is
(08:41):
actually true. I'm tired of sitting around just assuming this
is fine. I'm a hand worker. And he got to
work or at his hands testing this. Right. So what
he I know is like Jonathan Strickland level funds um.
What he did was this is just awful. He introduced
(09:03):
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,
natural chemical, right that the body releases UH in response
to certain stimuli, say, for example, like a mosquito bite
or something, and it triggers the inflammation and immune response
(09:26):
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
(09:48):
imaginable itch. And they never felt pain. Yeah, Like, even
though they ramped it up to eleven, no one ever
said like, holy crap, that hurts. But they said, please, please,
for love, God, stop let me out of this. And
hand worker just cackled and cackled. Right, these men with
like black leather gloves are holding the participants down. Yeah,
(10:10):
they said, this is not worth the five deutsch marks
that I'm getting for the slousy study. Yeah, that's nice man,
that's This would have been pre euro I think even
though the EU was around, I don't think the euro
was around in eighties seven, right, No, no, because in
nineties I traveled, Uh, I traveled to Europe in and
(10:31):
that was I was still on all the weird money. Okay, yeah,
so it was a while after that. So now scientists, uh,
I think this sort of um introduced an itch to
the scientific community because after hundreds and hundreds of years,
hand Vuka sort of disrupted the thought process of the
(10:55):
itch and the scratch, and all of a sudden, scientists
were like, oh, well, maybe should start looking into this.
Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this
thing out. Yeah, because I mean, if it's not if
it's not just 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
(11:16):
know more about it. So they got to they got
to study in it. Yeah. What makes I wonder if
all of this was under the notion that they were
trying to cure it. I don't know, because from what
I was reading, UM, and all of this was pretty
recent stuff. There's a real un medical need in dealing
and addressing like chronic itch because you know, most people
(11:40):
who go through life just experiencing it's 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 um swimming or an outer space or doom, whatever,
you're itching constantly. Suppose really, um, it has as much
(12:02):
of a pronounced effect on a patient's life UM as
chronic pain does. It's constant, persistent, and agonizing, and it's
not it's not being met or treated because it's not understood.
So they're just now starting to get into pain re
or itch research. I saw UM that somebody put it
(12:22):
where pain research was about twenty 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 until just now, but
(12:43):
I wonder what happens when a a performer or somebody
like that is in the public eye or on TV
or on stage, or like the president giving a address,
Like what what what do they do if they have poison,
ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis? Have you
ever thought about that? Like what if Lynn mal went
(13:05):
Manuel Miranda has like a really bad case of pin.
I guess they can get an understudy in that case,
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, Like 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.
(13:27):
I guess the news anchor can tape things, but I'm
talking about live. What's Tom Petty do? For God's sakes,
Tom Petty grins and bears it. He had a hard
scrabble childhood prepared him for that. I'm going to see
him tomorrow night, Yeah, for coffee. He's not performing. Um anyway,
I was just curious about that. Um. Well, it's a
(13:49):
good question. Thanks. Do you remember when Kosta's head red
eye at the Olympics and it was so dedicated to
to being the commentator the anchor for the Olympics. They
finally were like, you have to stop keep writing in
you're disgusting them. Uh. One thing that made me think
of that is I had UM recently. You can still
kind of see it on my forearm that the scars.
(14:11):
But I did a cement job. Was building this fence,
putting in a gate at my house, and um, Scotty,
you know, Scotty and I built Scotti tipping uh. He
and I built this uh thing together and we sank
these huge posts for this gate. And I didn't know
(14:33):
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 the 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
(14:57):
dermatitis I've ever seen, 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. Um, trash
the gate and have to start over. I think I
was probably not the best husband though over that time period. UM,
(15:19):
judging from Emily saying, hey, you're real a hole, Get
off the steroids, Um, get off the juice, 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 the TV show or something,
or like doing anything on or performing live like I
(15:41):
would have to address it because I would scratch and smack.
It was what I usually do. That's how you're supposed
to do, not scratch. Well, I guess we'll just cut
to the chase hairs. 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 handheld implement in the
(16:04):
shower along with the regular shower head and put that
sucker on the tightest, hardest, most penetrating flow and just
put that hot water on it. Man, And that was like,
I think I spent half my days in the shower
over that week and a half. Are you biting down
like a broomstick while you're doing that? How it felt
so good? Man? I was just like I couldn't get
(16:25):
enough of it. Huh. And then the court of zone
and all that jump too. So we'll well, we'll talk
about this because this is you're raising some great points here.
Well I just kind of that are ruined the spoiler. No, no,
this is good stuff. We're gonna analyze what was going
on with your arm after this break? How about that
sounds good? So, Chuck, you had contact dermatitis, right, I
(17:08):
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 that we sunk in sument.
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 reacting chemically with the um mast cells
(17:33):
in your skin, and histamine was released, right apparently, And
so the histamine UM sent a signal through specialized nerve
cells called sea fibers. Yeah, which UM. Sea fibers aren't
just limited to itching. I think only about five handle
that and most of the rest are for pain. Right,
(17:54):
So they used the same type of neural pathway as
pain for itch. It's it's basically it's just like, no,
these these are just for itches only. And it sent
a signal through your spinal column, and in your spinal
column it released a neurotransmitter called UM gastron releasing peptide receptor,
(18:16):
and so at the skin, the histamine would have released
a neurotransmitter called what natural uretic polypeptide B Okay, So
that says it's signal coming your way along those sea
fibers okay. Uh, it makes it to the spinal column,
and I guess in about two thousand and seven they
found that there's another neurotransmitter in the spine that I
(18:38):
guess UM accepts the the n p PB the invitation
and says I'm going to transfer this along up to
the brain. That's gastron releasing peptide receptor that shoots up
to the brain and it starts this cascade of activity.
Right because when they, like after hand worker said, hey,
you know, itching is its own thing. The other researchers
(19:00):
went to town and traced and figured out there that
there were specific um specific types of its receptors that
were dedicated just two itches, right, more Germans, more Germans,
a couple of Swedes, but mostly Germans for good measures. Yeah,
And what they found eventually from tracing this pathway, they
were able to follow it into the Wonder machine and
(19:23):
apparently they made some people itch and would not let
them scratch it. And then they had them lay down
in an m r I and they took a brain
skin 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 a
there's a signature pattern in the brain when you get
(19:45):
an itch, and uh, a few specific areas light up.
One is a cortex and it all makes sense when
you put it together. The cortex, uh, in this case
just sort of geo locates where on your body. You're
getting that sensation, so that helps. It's like left elbow, yeah,
or in my case from right elbow to wrist, right,
(20:09):
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, very complex conversation going on. Uh.
And then the region I thought this is interesting, the
region that governments governments that governs emotional response. Um, so
basically this is your brain saying like, I don't like this,
(20:31):
this makes me feel bad. It's the worst thing ever
do something. And then finally the olymbic 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 wanna eat too much cake,
says you have an itch that is unbearable and you
need to scratch it and maybe go smoke some crack
(20:54):
and eat some cake while you're at it because that
will help. So I just I don't. I thought that
was all very super interesting. When you can find that pattern, Yeah,
that's the that's an itch. And then then it's followed
by the irresistible urge to scratch it, which Apparently research
has shown those two do not happen independently. There, they're
part of a cycle. Yes, there's that is something called
(21:15):
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,
(21:37):
But it doesn't feel like an urge. It almost feels
like an involuntary reflex. 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 it's scratches. It's an irresistible urge where it's like
pulling your hand back from a hot hot or something
(22:01):
is like an involuntary reflex. It just feels different, like
a scratches its own thing. Well it is, you know.
They kind of found that out and and go on day.
Doctor Gowan day Um 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
(22:21):
little string that's just poking one little area, that might
trigger an itch. Right, And so you would think that
you know, it's receptors are super finely tuned and they
covered just this one tiny like that's what it would
seem micron of skin as a matter of fact. No,
Apparently an INS receptor can sense it's stimuli like three
(22:42):
inches away from it. Yeah, so they're really sensitive. Yeah,
whereas pain receptors are that specific down to like you know, millimeters. 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 ing, which um as
(23:02):
opposed to like heat on the hand, like 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 it's kind of slow to come and then
slow to resolve by scratching. Yeah, it's not like you're
scratching you're like, oh, it's all better now. Yeah, it
helps a little bit. So, so the itching is a
(23:23):
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 problem is taken care of. The
issue is is that that itch scratch cycle eventually becomes
(23:43):
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 scratch an itch, um you're stimulating
(24:04):
other receptors in the area that aren't itch receptors. So
I got that, but what does that do to sort
of like say, hey, Boddy, don't worry about that for
a minute. I think 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, right. I think the problem is that neurologically
(24:27):
or neurochemically, when you scratch an itch and 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
(24:47):
the itch sensation. So you're itch not only comes back,
it gets worse. So you go to scratch it again,
and then the same thing happens over and over again.
That's the itch scratch cycle, which it's not the best
c go around, No, you get better cycles. Not a
bad band name, Yeah, it's okay, cute maybe Prague Folk
(25:11):
Prague They well, they'd have to be German, probably German
folk pog Okay. Another interesting thing they learned too was 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
(25:31):
you have had that itch on my right forearm and
I could scratch, maybe don't you have to be the
left forearms. 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 didn't work
for me. But I think the reason why there's that's
it's possible that it could have that effect. Is supposedly
(25:54):
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 interesting, Well yeah, but I mean
think about it. It's like if you scratch your scratch
(26:17):
your like you're clavical, 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 you're back in your ankles supposedly
or 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
(26:41):
scratches when I was a kid, and it was always
like one of my favorite things ever. And so I
don't get those anymore now that i'm a grown up,
because that's gross. You know, I'm scratch my back right,
I'm forty six years old, lay down. Uh, but yeah,
(27:01):
it was like I think I preferred to backscratch to
a back rub, even when I was younger, but now
you know, massage is probably way better. But if they
if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there,
get ready for a huge tip for me. Yeah, or
does that? What is that sexual? I think it crosses
a line once they're potentially clawing away skin cells. I
(27:25):
think that's so longer in the Masseus range or Messur range. Yeah,
I get that. One 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, uh articles I've ever read? Uh?
(28:06):
All right, so we've referenced this article from the New
Yorker from Dr atul go on day and Um, he
talked a lot about itching and just had good information
on the science of it all. But most of the
article was focused on a patient, a woman in Massachusetts.
(28:26):
H that they named him for the article just M
the letter M. In other words, you know, she's anonymous, uh.
And I think she was anonymous because she kind of
had a rough go after her divorce. Um, she ended
up getting HIV from getting on heroin kind of spun out,
it seems like. But then got her life back by
(28:49):
all accounts, but ended up getting shingles as a result
of HIV complications, and the shingles went away, but the
itching did not to the least. Yeah, I think the
itching came after the shingles even and that first her
her physicians were like, well, I mean you must have
you damage some nerves in there, so t s for you,
(29:14):
I guess, um. And then eventually after treating it like
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 ditch. Do whatever you need to
to treat it, because I'm literally scratching this itch in
(29:34):
my sleep. It was on her scalp, wasn't it. It
was on her head, and she um, she kind of
managed to control it during the day, but like you said,
at night, she couldn't control it to the point where
I think she was like restrained in her sleep. That
came after after they realized it's a problem because your
brain is using out of your head. Can you believe
(29:55):
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 then apparently the doctor didn't even say anything, he
was just she or she was like, excuse me, went
and called an ambulance and came back and said please
(30:15):
lay down and don't talk or move or do anything else.
And they finally told her after she was at the
e er, you scratched through to your brain, like that's
your brain you're touching right now. Doctors like very interesting
and just give me a second here, or oh my god.
Uh well, they gathered up all the other doctors and
(30:36):
nurses like sure, yeah, you gotta come see this. She said.
Also in this article, um, she said that she had
a uh what do they call him a roommate at
h Okay a roommate, So, um, she had a roommate.
While she was like, they treated it, gave her a
(30:56):
skin graft, and then she she she's scratched away the
king and then um, they finally were like, okay, you're
going to an asylum and she's like do they even
call it that anymore? And they're like, just shut up,
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
(31:18):
if she heard didn't survive. He had scratched through his
carotid artery and died blood death. Um, so they never
really got to the bottom of this. She finally got
a doctor. Like, the doctors are like, it's something that
had to do with the shingles. This is what we
think happens. That her doctors that the the nerve endings
(31:39):
around the area where she had shingles were so devastated
by the shingles that there were just a couple of
nerve endings left and it just so happened that they
were itch receptors itch itch, um, yeah, it receptor, and
that those were like really exacerbated by the fact that
there was no other competing sensations. If so, fact though,
(32:00):
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, frank, yeah,
and then the itch came back and she's like, you
have to be kidding me. So finally she met a doctor.
He said, I don't think it's your your receptors or
(32:21):
the nerve transmission. I think it's your brain, not psychologically.
I don't think it's a psychosis. I think there's that
the actual itch signaling your brain is being set off
without any stimulation or transmission going on. And UM, apparently
she was right, but then they were like, good luck
treating that. You know. I didn't see much follow up
(32:42):
on this. I did read one article that UM 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 of metal file to
scratch through your skull. And he said that his theory
was that bacteria it became infected, it had eaten it
(33:03):
away such that the skull became soft turn into much yeah. Uh.
And then people also said, and 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 room next door. Um, and quit
being pedantical. Man. I think people just didn't believe it.
(33:24):
So all these folks rode into the new Yorker. So
those coastal elites 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 to a
Gwanda is pretty upstanding cat and didn't make this up.
But even if I say she was hypothetical, her problem.
(33:46):
What the doctors initially thought it was, was that she
had a neuropathic kitch, type of chronic kitch. But then
the doctor who apparently figured it all out, said no, no, no,
it's a neurogenic another type of chronic catch, and it
has to do with whether it's the brain going off
or the nerve transmissions going off. Either way, you don't
(34:09):
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 uh, man,
that's such a hard time per receptive, and that's what
you get from like a mosquito bite or if you
(34:29):
have a skin disorder like exema or something. So they
basically ruled out the most common one and at various
stages said, now you've got this other one for the
other three finally, and then again they said, we don't
there's really nothing we can do to treat it. The
one that they've got down pretty well is per receptive.
We've got all sorts of stuff to treat that because
that's that's basically histamine is being released and your your
(34:53):
skin is itching. So you can treat histamines with anti histamines,
you can reduce that response and then you're itch will
go away. Well, I took a ben a drill at night,
and they also make this ben a drill spray, a
topical spray that just it really helps. So between that
and cortisone and then the bene drill at night, I
(35:14):
did okay, and there's awesome showers. So the like the
pro receptive itch, we've got treatment for basically the other three,
you're 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's a lot of movement right
now on treating this stuff, but it's like they're having
(35:37):
to figure out how to block some really otherwise important
chemicals in the body, like that m p p B. Right, Yeah,
that one, what does it can help, can regulate your
blood pressure as well, So they off, right, just turn
off the gene that produces that. You won't itch, but
you might die early. Not worth it. The one that really,
(35:58):
I mean, they're all sad, but the psychogenic when you
have a mental illness where you feel like parasites and
bugs on your skin. Um, they remember our Morgelon's disease. Yeah,
how did you said it? More gallons? Right? And I
said Morgelon, I can't remember. I know that I said
it the way everyone else else says it, though, that's
(36:19):
all I remember, Morgan laws, that's right, That's how I
said it. Man. But all this stuff just had so
much empathy for m Yeah, and wanted to follow up
so bad to see how she was doing, you know. Yeah,
and if she kept scratching holes in her skull, I
don't know, geez. So there's I read another article called
(36:42):
Accidental Therapists. It's by a guy named Eric Brudman, and
it was published on a website called stat and it's
all about delusional parasite parasitosis but how it's treated sometimes
by um entomologists, you know, like those um extension services
at universities, here in the US, like state universities have
(37:04):
where to call extension services where like uh um, the
scientists will basically be there for the public to come
talk to about whatever. Usually it's like household stuff, for
farm stuff, something like that. Um. And apparently in tomologists
frequently are approached with people who are like, I've got
these bugs like crawling all over me. Here's a sample
(37:24):
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,
where you know that they had neurogenic itches and we
just treated them like they were crazy even though they weren't,
(37:45):
and it's gonna be like a real blemish on the
history of neuroscience, 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 Moore. No,
it was one of his first movies after the Karen
Carpenter thing he did. Uh that wasn't like, I mean,
(38:07):
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 believing that
the world was poisoning her 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. Um,
(38:28):
very distressing movie and one of her first movies too.
Have to check it out. Yeah, it's really good. It's old,
Yeah it was. It was early nineties. I think I
know you're talking about. It's called the Road to Wellville.
Is that what you mean? It's called safe? Check it out. Yeah,
it's good, very distressing. I'm trying to think of anything
that wasn't necessarily itching. But it was just like that
(38:50):
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 the madness right there I'm staring down at 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 onto the next shiny thing, I guess. Yeah, yeah,
(39:14):
basically that's probably for the best it is. It has
its drawbacks. So, 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
(39:37):
like a little left a little left up up up. Yeah.
See I don't work. Oh man, not you that them saying, right, Like,
I think it definitely helps. I think what they're saying
is is it doesn't have quite the same relieving properties
as if you do it yourself. Yeah, and if you
could reach that area of your back, it would be
better than that. I got a pretty good backscratcher now though.
(40:00):
Oh yeah, it's a made of bamboo. No, it's it's metal,
but it's telescoping, so it's not you know, two ft long,
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. Man. I guess that's why they call it that.
(40:21):
I never thought about that. Why do you think that
was called that? I actually call it a bear paw.
It looks more like a bear paw. I'm 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. That's
(40:44):
the difference between a baker who loves their job the
one who's just in it for the money. Yeah. Uh,
A couple more things, Charles. Like we said, there's a
still plenty of mysteries around itches. Why say, does a
feather tickle some times but it's other times? Big question?
(41:04):
They don't know, right, but I'd like to know. Well,
maybe the Germans will get active on this again, they're
the only ones who can solve it. Though only the
Germans can save us. You got anything else? No, I don't.
I don't either. Itching nice work, thanks man, same do you?
(41:26):
Thank you? And you haven't scratched in a while, so no,
I'm actually um, 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 than a movie, and I've seen it.
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
(41:46):
through 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 part how stuff works dot com.
And since I said search far, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
(42:11):
I'm gonna call this one of the many emails we
got on the swearing episode. Do you notice that people
really seem to like that one? A lot of response
from mostly from fellow potty mouse, which we're very filthy
emails too, which were great, and I responded in turn
(42:32):
by cursing at them and my replies, which I hope
they enjoyed in all caps M No, I didn't want
to be too aggressive. UM. So this is from Emily Allen. Hey, guys,
a long time listener, first time writing in UM writing
about swearing. I should start by saying that it's funny
I'm writing about this episode because I almost never curse,
(42:52):
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 really censor yourself during
recording in order to keep your show family friendly, and
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, primarily teach
(43:12):
kindergarten to second grade students, and I found this really
changed the way I expressed myself. For example, I try
to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids.
Will often say, well, isn't that silly? Instead? Uh. 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.
(43:38):
There are other expressions I use with the kids that
often slip into regular conversation as well. The most embarrassing
when I am 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.
Learned so much from listening each week, and I'm always
excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday.
(43:58):
That is from Emily Allen. Thank you ms Allen, very silly. Uh,
that was a very nice email. Uh. If you want
to get in touch with us, like ms Allen did,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or josh um Clark. You can hang out with
us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know
or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
(44:21):
an email and stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. 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 Indigenous Yeah, this
(00:21):
is one of many. You remember when we did Yawning. Um, 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 and poison ivy and scabies for sure. Oh yeah,
(00:41):
and talked about some of this stuff. But I think
it we had an itch we needed to scratch with
this particular topic. Well, I'm glad, um, 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 or four hours long. Okay, if I
remember correctly, that mean we have to do this. You
(01:03):
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. Okay. I
think it was a brain stuff video, isn't it. I
watched Did it scratch your itch? Yeah, I watched it yesterday.
Nice work, thank you very much. Just like now we
finally arrive on what I was after compliment. Yeah, it
(01:23):
was great, thanks man. Um. So I guess the point
of all that is to say, you guys are going
you're going right, and my videos are the best. Uh,
that you're going to scratch, You're gonna feel an itch,
which is one of the great mysteries of itches. It
turns out we only very very recently have started to
(01:44):
get a handle on what itches are, um, 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
that's odd, That's that's weird. The video of an ant
(02:08):
crawling up an arm will make you itch. It will.
But I mean, think about it. If somebody is sitting there, Um,
you see a video of some schmo who's got his
hand like 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. That doesn't happen.
I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like
(02:28):
a leg break with You're just like, what a stupid idiot,
that's what it excites. Yeah, I hope that guy's hand
just burns clean off. That's what I think. Right. Uh,
you sourced a couple of well we've had our own
article on how stuff works dot com, but you also
sent this great New Yorker article, um, written by Dr
(02:48):
a tool go on Day, one of the best names
in writing today. Yeah, that may be my new hotel name. Well,
you may be thronged by science right, science fans, because
that guy's pretty pretty well known. Actually I don't. I've
never used to alias at a hotel. That's dumb. I
don't even know if you can. Can you? I guess
if you're a big shot you can. Yeah, but you
(03:09):
have to be like, I'm not Brad Pitt, I'm a
tool go on Day right. Uh. But the we'll get
to some of the uh more interesting aspects of that
article later, specifically a very specific patient that's quite distressing,
So calm down for now, a Tool's mom, but get
to it eventually. He did include a couple of neat
(03:32):
historical tidbits Uh, like in sixteen sixty there was in
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 it right.
But there was a position in sixteen sixty named Samuel Hoffenruffer.
(03:54):
Actually that's my new hotel name. Yeah, that's a good one.
Uh he kind of well, he defined it by saying,
an itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire
to scratch. Pretty simple, 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
(04:17):
itch word for word, that's the definition they use. Yeah,
although poor hoff and reference 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 haf
reference he felt that was implied. And it's like it
goes without saying, yeah, and then I'm scratching right now,
(04:41):
you know, Yeah, it's started. I don't know if I
just noticed more, because as I was doing it, I
was thinking, well, now, I'm scratching, but I thought, do
I always scratch this much? Or it's this much? Oh,
I hadn't thought about that. I'm pretty sure that I was.
I don't think I scratched as much as I don't know.
Do you raise a really good question. Maybe we can
(05:01):
get an intern to follow us around and just record
our scratching. Right, 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 scratched this much. I don't notice
(05:24):
it alright. 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 falsifiers us? I know really like.
(05:45):
Isn't that that somebody who like bears false witness, or
somebody who falsifies a document or is it just a
fancy name for liar? Maybe? Oh, I thought you were
gonna tell me you were just wondering. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know, all right, I don't know what don
they meant, but they're they're bad people. Apparently there's a
special place in health for him literally, well, I guess
(06:06):
actually not literally figuratively literarily, Oh very nice. Uh So,
itching um scientifically is known as uh puritis p r
U r I t I s. It's one of those
tough to pronounce things for me at least um and
for well. Actually, they still believe that the evolution of
(06:29):
the itch was to help humans um survive basically because
so many things that can kill you, uh, and and
nature or things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or
fleas that can have like malaria or the plague or
any number of diseases attached to their tiny little insect bodies. So, hey, human, um,
(06:53):
you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill
you. You You might want to slap it or scratch. Yeah,
And that's still, as far as I know, the the
evolutionary hypothesis for why we experience itching. Yeah, and it's
not just us either. What you're scratching like crazy, it's
found throughout the animal kingdom um from us too, apparently,
(07:15):
fish have shown scratching behavior. Yeah, that's crazy fruit flies.
How's the fish scratch? You might ask? It rubs up
against rocks. It's kind of cute. It is a little cute.
It's like I remember my dad did like the uh
who was the Barren Jungle book? Was that blue? Yes?
He would do the blue or he would get up
against a tree or a wall. And then I did
(07:36):
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
look kind of silly. But do you sing while you do? Yeah?
Bair necessities, that's still my favorite. What else are you
gonna sing? Like Mambo number five? I'm gonna start doing that.
(07:57):
Actually you could be like, think something's wrong with yeah. So,
like you said, though, it was up until almost was seven,
the mid to late eighties that another German h O
hand worker UH and his gang um they started to
(08:19):
do actual like research about it. They were puzzled and
wanted to solve it right because up to this point,
up to actually seven, everyone thought that an itch was
just a low grade pain stimulus. Since they're happy with that,
that's just what they thought it was. And hand worker said,
you know what, let's let's find out if this is
(08:41):
actually true. I'm tired of sitting around just assuming this
is fine. I'm a hand worker. And he got to
work or at his hands testing this. Right. So what
he I know is like Jonathan Strickland level funds um.
What he did was this is just awful. He introduced
(09:03):
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,
natural chemical, right that the body releases UH in response
to certain stimuli, say, for example, like a mosquito bite
or something, and it triggers the inflammation and immune response
(09:26):
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
(09:48):
imaginable itch. And they never felt pain. Yeah, Like, even
though they ramped it up to eleven, no one ever
said like, holy crap, that hurts. But they said, please, please,
for love, God, stop let me out of this. And
hand worker just cackled and cackled. Right, these men with
like black leather gloves are holding the participants down. Yeah,
(10:10):
they said, this is not worth the five deutsch marks
that I'm getting for the slousy study. Yeah, that's nice man,
that's This would have been pre euro I think even
though the EU was around, I don't think the euro
was around in eighties seven, right, No, no, because in
nineties I traveled, Uh, I traveled to Europe in and
(10:31):
that was I was still on all the weird money. Okay, yeah,
so it was a while after that. So now scientists, uh,
I think this sort of um introduced an itch to
the scientific community because after hundreds and hundreds of years,
hand Vuka sort of disrupted the thought process of the
(10:55):
itch and the scratch, and all of a sudden, scientists
were like, oh, well, maybe should start looking into this.
Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this
thing out. Yeah, because I mean, if it's not if
it's not just 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
(11:16):
know more about it. So they got to they got
to study in it. Yeah. What makes I wonder if
all of this was under the notion that they were
trying to cure it. I don't know, because from what
I was reading, UM, and all of this was pretty
recent stuff. There's a real un medical need in dealing
and addressing like chronic itch because you know, most people
(11:40):
who go through life just experiencing it's 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 um swimming or an outer space or doom, whatever,
you're itching constantly. Suppose really, um, it has as much
(12:02):
of a pronounced effect on a patient's life UM as
chronic pain does. It's constant, persistent, and agonizing, and it's
not it's not being met or treated because it's not understood.
So they're just now starting to get into pain re
or itch research. I saw UM that somebody put it
(12:22):
where pain research was about twenty 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 until just now, but
(12:43):
I wonder what happens when a a performer or somebody
like that is in the public eye or on TV
or on stage, or like the president giving a address,
Like what what what do they do if they have poison,
ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis? Have you
ever thought about that? Like what if Lynn mal went
(13:05):
Manuel Miranda has like a really bad case of pin.
I guess they can get an understudy in that case,
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, Like 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.
(13:27):
I guess the news anchor can tape things, but I'm
talking about live. What's Tom Petty do? For God's sakes,
Tom Petty grins and bears it. He had a hard
scrabble childhood prepared him for that. I'm going to see
him tomorrow night, Yeah, for coffee. He's not performing. Um anyway,
I was just curious about that. Um. Well, it's a
(13:49):
good question. Thanks. Do you remember when Kosta's head red
eye at the Olympics and it was so dedicated to
to being the commentator the anchor for the Olympics. They
finally were like, you have to stop keep writing in
you're disgusting them. Uh. One thing that made me think
of that is I had UM recently. You can still
kind of see it on my forearm that the scars.
(14:11):
But I did a cement job. Was building this fence,
putting in a gate at my house, and um, Scotty,
you know, Scotty and I built Scotti tipping uh. He
and I built this uh thing together and we sank
these huge posts for this gate. And I didn't know
(14:33):
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 the 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
(14:57):
dermatitis I've ever seen, 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. Um, trash
the gate and have to start over. I think I
was probably not the best husband though over that time period. UM,
(15:19):
judging from Emily saying, hey, you're real a hole, Get
off the steroids, Um, get off the juice, 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 the TV show or something,
or like doing anything on or performing live like I
(15:41):
would have to address it because I would scratch and smack.
It was what I usually do. That's how you're supposed
to do, not scratch. Well, I guess we'll just cut
to the chase hairs. 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 handheld implement in the
(16:04):
shower along with the regular shower head and put that
sucker on the tightest, hardest, most penetrating flow and just
put that hot water on it. Man, And that was like,
I think I spent half my days in the shower
over that week and a half. Are you biting down
like a broomstick while you're doing that? How it felt
so good? Man? I was just like I couldn't get
(16:25):
enough of it. Huh. And then the court of zone
and all that jump too. So we'll well, we'll talk
about this because this is you're raising some great points here.
Well I just kind of that are ruined the spoiler. No, no,
this is good stuff. We're gonna analyze what was going
on with your arm after this break? How about that
sounds good? So, Chuck, you had contact dermatitis, right, I
(17:08):
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 that we sunk in sument.
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 reacting chemically with the um mast cells
(17:33):
in your skin, and histamine was released, right apparently, And
so the histamine UM sent a signal through specialized nerve
cells called sea fibers. Yeah, which UM. Sea fibers aren't
just limited to itching. I think only about five handle
that and most of the rest are for pain. Right,
(17:54):
So they used the same type of neural pathway as
pain for itch. It's it's basically it's just like, no,
these these are just for itches only. And it sent
a signal through your spinal column, and in your spinal
column it released a neurotransmitter called UM gastron releasing peptide receptor,
(18:16):
and so at the skin, the histamine would have released
a neurotransmitter called what natural uretic polypeptide B Okay, So
that says it's signal coming your way along those sea
fibers okay. Uh, it makes it to the spinal column,
and I guess in about two thousand and seven they
found that there's another neurotransmitter in the spine that I
(18:38):
guess UM accepts the the n p PB the invitation
and says I'm going to transfer this along up to
the brain. That's gastron releasing peptide receptor that shoots up
to the brain and it starts this cascade of activity.
Right because when they, like after hand worker said, hey,
you know, itching is its own thing. The other researchers
(19:00):
went to town and traced and figured out there that
there were specific um specific types of its receptors that
were dedicated just two itches, right, more Germans, more Germans,
a couple of Swedes, but mostly Germans for good measures. Yeah,
And what they found eventually from tracing this pathway, they
were able to follow it into the Wonder machine and
(19:23):
apparently they made some people itch and would not let
them scratch it. And then they had them lay down
in an m r I and they took a brain
skin 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 a
there's a signature pattern in the brain when you get
(19:45):
an itch, and uh, a few specific areas light up.
One is a cortex and it all makes sense when
you put it together. The cortex, uh, in this case
just sort of geo locates where on your body. You're
getting that sensation, so that helps. It's like left elbow, yeah,
or in my case from right elbow to wrist, right,
(20:09):
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, very complex conversation going on. Uh.
And then the region I thought this is interesting, the
region that governments governments that governs emotional response. Um, so
basically this is your brain saying like, I don't like this,
(20:31):
this makes me feel bad. It's the worst thing ever
do something. And then finally the olymbic 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 wanna eat too much cake,
says you have an itch that is unbearable and you
need to scratch it and maybe go smoke some crack
(20:54):
and eat some cake while you're at it because that
will help. So I just I don't. I thought that
was all very super interesting. When you can find that pattern, Yeah,
that's the that's an itch. And then then it's followed
by the irresistible urge to scratch it, which Apparently research
has shown those two do not happen independently. There, they're
part of a cycle. Yes, there's that is something called
(21:15):
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,
(21:37):
But it doesn't feel like an urge. It almost feels
like an involuntary reflex. 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 it's scratches. It's an irresistible urge where it's like
pulling your hand back from a hot hot or something
(22:01):
is like an involuntary reflex. It just feels different, like
a scratches its own thing. Well it is, you know.
They kind of found that out and and go on day.
Doctor Gowan day Um 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
(22:21):
little string that's just poking one little area, that might
trigger an itch. Right, And so you would think that
you know, it's receptors are super finely tuned and they
covered just this one tiny like that's what it would
seem micron of skin as a matter of fact. No,
Apparently an INS receptor can sense it's stimuli like three
(22:42):
inches away from it. Yeah, so they're really sensitive. Yeah,
whereas pain receptors are that specific down to like you know, millimeters. 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 ing, which um as
(23:02):
opposed to like heat on the hand, like 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 it's kind of slow to come and then
slow to resolve by scratching. Yeah, it's not like you're
scratching you're like, oh, it's all better now. Yeah, it
helps a little bit. So, so the itching is a
(23:23):
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 problem is taken care of. The
issue is is that that itch scratch cycle eventually becomes
(23:43):
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 scratch an itch, um you're stimulating
(24:04):
other receptors in the area that aren't itch receptors. So
I got that, but what does that do to sort
of like say, hey, Boddy, don't worry about that for
a minute. I think 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, right. I think the problem is that neurologically
(24:27):
or neurochemically, when you scratch an itch and 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
(24:47):
the itch sensation. So you're itch not only comes back,
it gets worse. So you go to scratch it again,
and then the same thing happens over and over again.
That's the itch scratch cycle, which it's not the best
c go around, No, you get better cycles. Not a
bad band name, Yeah, it's okay, cute maybe Prague Folk
(25:11):
Prague They well, they'd have to be German, probably German
folk pog Okay. Another interesting thing they learned too was 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
(25:31):
you have had that itch on my right forearm and
I could scratch, maybe don't you have to be the
left forearms. 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 didn't work
for me. But I think the reason why there's that's
it's possible that it could have that effect. Is supposedly
(25:54):
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 interesting, Well yeah, but I mean
think about it. It's like if you scratch your scratch
(26:17):
your like you're clavical, 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 you're back in your ankles supposedly
or 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
(26:41):
scratches when I was a kid, and it was always
like one of my favorite things ever. And so I
don't get those anymore now that i'm a grown up,
because that's gross. You know, I'm scratch my back right,
I'm forty six years old, lay down. Uh, but yeah,
(27:01):
it was like I think I preferred to backscratch to
a back rub, even when I was younger, but now
you know, massage is probably way better. But if they
if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there,
get ready for a huge tip for me. Yeah, or
does that? What is that sexual? I think it crosses
a line once they're potentially clawing away skin cells. I
(27:25):
think that's so longer in the Masseus range or Messur range. Yeah,
I get that. One 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, uh articles I've ever read? Uh?
(28:06):
All right, so we've referenced this article from the New
Yorker from Dr atul go on day and Um, he
talked a lot about itching and just had good information
on the science of it all. But most of the
article was focused on a patient, a woman in Massachusetts.
(28:26):
H that they named him for the article just M
the letter M. In other words, you know, she's anonymous, uh.
And I think she was anonymous because she kind of
had a rough go after her divorce. Um, she ended
up getting HIV from getting on heroin kind of spun out,
it seems like. But then got her life back by
(28:49):
all accounts, but ended up getting shingles as a result
of HIV complications, and the shingles went away, but the
itching did not to the least. Yeah, I think the
itching came after the shingles even and that first her
her physicians were like, well, I mean you must have
you damage some nerves in there, so t s for you,
(29:14):
I guess, um. And then eventually after treating it like
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 ditch. Do whatever you need to
to treat it, because I'm literally scratching this itch in
(29:34):
my sleep. It was on her scalp, wasn't it. It
was on her head, and she um, she kind of
managed to control it during the day, but like you said,
at night, she couldn't control it to the point where
I think she was like restrained in her sleep. That
came after after they realized it's a problem because your
brain is using out of your head. Can you believe
(29:55):
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 then apparently the doctor didn't even say anything, he
was just she or she was like, excuse me, went
and called an ambulance and came back and said please
(30:15):
lay down and don't talk or move or do anything else.
And they finally told her after she was at the
e er, you scratched through to your brain, like that's
your brain you're touching right now. Doctors like very interesting
and just give me a second here, or oh my god.
Uh well, they gathered up all the other doctors and
(30:36):
nurses like sure, yeah, you gotta come see this. She said.
Also in this article, um, she said that she had
a uh what do they call him a roommate at
h Okay a roommate, So, um, she had a roommate.
While she was like, they treated it, gave her a
(30:56):
skin graft, and then she she she's scratched away the
king and then um, they finally were like, okay, you're
going to an asylum and she's like do they even
call it that anymore? And they're like, just shut up,
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
(31:18):
if she heard didn't survive. He had scratched through his
carotid artery and died blood death. Um, so they never
really got to the bottom of this. She finally got
a doctor. Like, the doctors are like, it's something that
had to do with the shingles. This is what we
think happens. That her doctors that the the nerve endings
(31:39):
around the area where she had shingles were so devastated
by the shingles that there were just a couple of
nerve endings left and it just so happened that they
were itch receptors itch itch, um, yeah, it receptor, and
that those were like really exacerbated by the fact that
there was no other competing sensations. If so, fact though,
(32:00):
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, frank, yeah,
and then the itch came back and she's like, you
have to be kidding me. So finally she met a doctor.
He said, I don't think it's your your receptors or
(32:21):
the nerve transmission. I think it's your brain, not psychologically.
I don't think it's a psychosis. I think there's that
the actual itch signaling your brain is being set off
without any stimulation or transmission going on. And UM, apparently
she was right, but then they were like, good luck
treating that. You know. I didn't see much follow up
(32:42):
on this. I did read one article that UM 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 of metal file to
scratch through your skull. And he said that his theory
was that bacteria it became infected, it had eaten it
(33:03):
away such that the skull became soft turn into much yeah. Uh.
And then people also said, and 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 room next door. Um, and quit
being pedantical. Man. I think people just didn't believe it.
(33:24):
So all these folks rode into the new Yorker. So
those coastal elites 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 to a
Gwanda is pretty upstanding cat and didn't make this up.
But even if I say she was hypothetical, her problem.
(33:46):
What the doctors initially thought it was, was that she
had a neuropathic kitch, type of chronic kitch. But then
the doctor who apparently figured it all out, said no, no, no,
it's a neurogenic another type of chronic catch, and it
has to do with whether it's the brain going off
or the nerve transmissions going off. Either way, you don't
(34:09):
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 uh, man,
that's such a hard time per receptive, and that's what
you get from like a mosquito bite or if you
(34:29):
have a skin disorder like exema or something. So they
basically ruled out the most common one and at various
stages said, now you've got this other one for the
other three finally, and then again they said, we don't
there's really nothing we can do to treat it. The
one that they've got down pretty well is per receptive.
We've got all sorts of stuff to treat that because
that's that's basically histamine is being released and your your
(34:53):
skin is itching. So you can treat histamines with anti histamines,
you can reduce that response and then you're itch will
go away. Well, I took a ben a drill at night,
and they also make this ben a drill spray, a
topical spray that just it really helps. So between that
and cortisone and then the bene drill at night, I
(35:14):
did okay, and there's awesome showers. So the like the
pro receptive itch, we've got treatment for basically the other three,
you're 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's a lot of movement right
now on treating this stuff, but it's like they're having
(35:37):
to figure out how to block some really otherwise important
chemicals in the body, like that m p p B. Right, Yeah,
that one, what does it can help, can regulate your
blood pressure as well, So they off, right, just turn
off the gene that produces that. You won't itch, but
you might die early. Not worth it. The one that really,
(35:58):
I mean, they're all sad, but the psychogenic when you
have a mental illness where you feel like parasites and
bugs on your skin. Um, they remember our Morgelon's disease. Yeah,
how did you said it? More gallons? Right? And I
said Morgelon, I can't remember. I know that I said
it the way everyone else else says it, though, that's
(36:19):
all I remember, Morgan laws, that's right, That's how I
said it. Man. But all this stuff just had so
much empathy for m Yeah, and wanted to follow up
so bad to see how she was doing, you know. Yeah,
and if she kept scratching holes in her skull, I
don't know, geez. So there's I read another article called
(36:42):
Accidental Therapists. It's by a guy named Eric Brudman, and
it was published on a website called stat and it's
all about delusional parasite parasitosis but how it's treated sometimes
by um entomologists, you know, like those um extension services
at universities, here in the US, like state universities have
(37:04):
where to call extension services where like uh um, the
scientists will basically be there for the public to come
talk to about whatever. Usually it's like household stuff, for
farm stuff, something like that. Um. And apparently in tomologists
frequently are approached with people who are like, I've got
these bugs like crawling all over me. Here's a sample
(37:24):
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,
where you know that they had neurogenic itches and we
just treated them like they were crazy even though they weren't,
(37:45):
and it's gonna be like a real blemish on the
history of neuroscience, 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 Moore. No,
it was one of his first movies after the Karen
Carpenter thing he did. Uh that wasn't like, I mean,
(38:07):
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 believing that
the world was poisoning her 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. Um,
(38:28):
very distressing movie and one of her first movies too.
Have to check it out. Yeah, it's really good. It's old,
Yeah it was. It was early nineties. I think I
know you're talking about. It's called the Road to Wellville.
Is that what you mean? It's called safe? Check it out. Yeah,
it's good, very distressing. I'm trying to think of anything
that wasn't necessarily itching. But it was just like that
(38:50):
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 the madness right there I'm staring down at 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 onto the next shiny thing, I guess. Yeah, yeah,
(39:14):
basically that's probably for the best it is. It has
its drawbacks. So, 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
(39:37):
like a little left a little left up up up. Yeah.
See I don't work. Oh man, not you that them saying, right, Like,
I think it definitely helps. I think what they're saying
is is it doesn't have quite the same relieving properties
as if you do it yourself. Yeah, and if you
could reach that area of your back, it would be
better than that. I got a pretty good backscratcher now though.
(40:00):
Oh yeah, it's a made of bamboo. No, it's it's metal,
but it's telescoping, so it's not you know, two ft long,
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. Man. I guess that's why they call it that.
(40:21):
I never thought about that. Why do you think that
was called that? I actually call it a bear paw.
It looks more like a bear paw. I'm 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. That's
(40:44):
the difference between a baker who loves their job the
one who's just in it for the money. Yeah. Uh,
A couple more things, Charles. Like we said, there's a
still plenty of mysteries around itches. Why say, does a
feather tickle some times but it's other times? Big question?
(41:04):
They don't know, right, but I'd like to know. Well,
maybe the Germans will get active on this again, they're
the only ones who can solve it. Though only the
Germans can save us. You got anything else? No, I don't.
I don't either. Itching nice work, thanks man, same do you?
(41:26):
Thank you? And you haven't scratched in a while, so no,
I'm actually um, 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 than a movie, and I've seen it.
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
(41:46):
through 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 part how stuff works dot com.
And since I said search far, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
(42:11):
I'm gonna call this one of the many emails we
got on the swearing episode. Do you notice that people
really seem to like that one? A lot of response
from mostly from fellow potty mouse, which we're very filthy
emails too, which were great, and I responded in turn
(42:32):
by cursing at them and my replies, which I hope
they enjoyed in all caps M No, I didn't want
to be too aggressive. UM. So this is from Emily Allen. Hey, guys,
a long time listener, first time writing in UM writing
about swearing. I should start by saying that it's funny
I'm writing about this episode because I almost never curse,
(42:52):
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 really censor yourself during
recording in order to keep your show family friendly, and
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, primarily teach
(43:12):
kindergarten to second grade students, and I found this really
changed the way I expressed myself. For example, I try
to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids.
Will often say, well, isn't that silly? Instead? Uh. 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.
(43:38):
There are other expressions I use with the kids that
often slip into regular conversation as well. The most embarrassing
when I am 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.
Learned so much from listening each week, and I'm always
excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday.
(43:58):
That is from Emily Allen. Thank you ms Allen, very silly. Uh,
that was a very nice email. Uh. If you want
to get in touch with us, like ms Allen did,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or josh um Clark. You can hang out with
us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know
or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
(44:21):
an email and stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff Works dot com
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