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Hells itch constant pain1/5/2024 ![]() The itching reactions caused by chloroquine or cowhage don't respond to anti-histamines. This severe itching reaction is often treated with herbal remedies, such as cow dung in India, or moist tobacco in Mozambique. The local population of Northern Mozambique call it the ‘mad bean’, because those who touch it to begin scratching vigorously and uncontrollably. In Africa and India, there’s an infamous bean plant called cowhage. It can become serious enough that many are forced to discontinue the medication. In some African countries, 70 percent of patients treated with chloroquine develop an itch. For example, chloroquine is a drug that has been used to treat malaria since the 1940s, although it has an adverse side effect in dark-skinned Africans. Many of us who suffer from seasonal allergies have to take antihistamine drugs to block our over-reacting histamine receptors.īut most chronic itches do not respond to antihistamine. Nerve cells have receptors that ‘sniff out’ the presence of this histamine, and trigger an itch reaction. In the first type, mast cells under the skin release a chemical called histamine. There are broadly two types of chronic itches. But repentance follows too annoyingly close at its heels." - Montaigne. "Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and as ready at hand as any. ![]() Hours later, in the emergency room, her doctors informed her that she had managed to scratch through her skull, all the way to her brain. After many sleepless nights of relentless scratching, she woke up one morning with a greenish fluid trickling down her face. The patient had recently been diagnosed with shingles, a disease whose symptoms often include extreme itchiness. In a masterful essay entitled The Itch, the surgeon Atul Gawande recounts the case of an HIV patient suffering from a severe chronic itch. But this protective mechanism can also go awry. It’s a useful instinct to rid yourself of fleas, mites, mosquitoes and other small insects that might carry infection. As far as we know, every animal with a backbone has a scratching reflex. ![]() ![]() In 1660, the German physician Samuel Hafenreffer defined an itch as "an unpleasant sensation associated with the desire to scratch." As an operational definition, it does the job. But then there are those tortured few for whom scratching provides little relief. For most of us it ends here, in a fleeting moment of bliss. That familiar irritating feeling, swiftly followed by the inevitable scratch. ![]()
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