An itch is an annoyance for most of us and is generally cured by some soothing lotion....or scratching, but for a small minority it can develop into an uncontrollable and unstoppable self-mutilating reflex as it did for "M."
For M...the itching was so torturous, and the area so numb, that her scratching began to go through the skin. At a later office visit, her doctor found a silver-dollar-size patch of scalp where skin had been replaced by scab. M. tried bandaging her head, wearing caps to bed. But her fingernails would always find a way to her flesh, especially while she slept.One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
This fascinating New Yorker (Memo to self: Subscribe ASAP) dives into this "most peculiar and diabolical sensation" that may have "evolved in order to protect us from insects and clinging plant toxins." While previously considered to be a sub category of pain, doctors now know that a specific type of nerve was responsible for an itch where"unlike, say, the nerve fibres for pain, each of which covers a millimetre-size territory, a single itch fibre can pick up an itchy sensation more than three inches away." But can science and medicine explain why just thinking about it can make us itch, unlike say other sensations? The answer may rest with...mirrors.
Contemplating what it’s like to hold your finger in a flame won’t make your finger hurt. But simply writing about a tick crawling up the nape of one’s neck is enough to start my neck itching. Then my scalp. And then this one little spot along my flank where I’m beginning to wonder whether I should check to see if there might be something there. In one study, a German professor of psychosomatics gave a lecture that included, in the first half, a series of what might be called itchy slides, showing fleas, lice, people scratching, and the like, and, in the second half, more benign slides, with pictures of soft down, baby skin, bathers. Video cameras recorded the audience. Sure enough, the frequency of scratching among people in the audience increased markedly during the first half and decreased during the second. Thoughts made them itch.
There is so much interesting information related to this topic and the patient "M" that it's not to just basically copy and paste the whole goddamn itchy article. I'm so fucking itchy now. Damn you New Yorker.
So, read more here.
[Via]