Best Of: Why Do We Itch? / Writer Richard Price
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From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, itching. The kind that scratching only makes worse. The kind that can take over your brain.
Itching, it's just a little bit like disrespected. You look like a dog with fleas. It's like embarrassing to scratch yourself in public. It's inappropriate to scratch yourself in public. I think people just kind of don't take it very seriously.
Our guest Annie Lowry, a staff writer for The Atlantic, has written an article called Why People Itch and How to Stop It. She has severe chronic itch. Also, we hear from screenwriter and author of one of the most anticipated novels of the season, Richard Price. He wrote for HBO's The Wire and co-created HBO's The Night Of and The Outsider. Several of his novels, including Clockers, were adapted into films. He has a new novel. And Maureen Corrigan recommends two books if you're looking for inspiration, beauty and humor. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Stress and anxiety can lead to itch. So I would imagine a lot of Americans have done a lot of scratching over the past few months.
There's the kind of itch that you scratch and poof, no more itch. But sometimes, the more you scratch, the more you itch. And then there's the kind of itch that is so alive, explosive, persistent, and all-encompassing that nothing seems to help. And it hijacks your brain. That's the kind of itch that my guest Annie Lowry writes about in her Atlantic Magazine article titled Why People Itch and How to Stop It. It's about what researchers are learning about itch and how that's opening the door to new treatments. Lowry suffers from itch so intense she's dug holes in her skin and scalp and once asked a surgeon to amputate her limbs. Her issue is related to a rare and degenerative liver disease. Part of her article is about her own itch and the extremes it's led her to. Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic, focusing on the economy and politics. She's a former staff writer at The New York Times and New York Magazine. Annie Lowry, welcome to Fresh Air. Is today an itchy day for you?
It is. I have been itchy for about four days now. So we're talking during the daytime, so I'm not terribly itchy. But my feet are itchy, my scalp is itchy, and my hands are itchy. But it's a two out of ten. It's manageable.
So people are very dismissive of itch. And I want you to describe what your kind of itch feels like.
At its worst, it was like having poison ivy in the acute phase of poison ivy, although my skin didn't show anything. There was no rash or anything like that. And it was completely maddening. It was impossible to do anything other than focus on scratching or trying to find relief from the itching. And the type of itching that I have is not sensitive to the medications that we have that normally... turn the itching dial down. So the two big ones being steroids and antihistamines. And it just became all encompassing. I would spend hours in cold baths. I would walk to try to get rid of the itch. It was most intense. I've been pregnant twice. I have two kids. And at the end of one pregnancy, I asked my surgeons, I was like, if this doesn't stop, I don't want these limbs on my body anymore.
It was really debilitating. And I'm not like that all the time. And in fact, the itching has never been quite as severe as it was in my pregnancies. Now the itching is much calmer, although it is persistent. But it comes and goes. At its worst, it's really, you know, just like pain is debilitating, itch is debilitating.
Okay, so you mentioned that you were especially itchy on the bottom of your feet, your hands, and your scalp. Are those, if I use the word, popular sites for itch? And if so, why? I mean, a lot of people go around scratching their scalp.
The amount that you might itch and the place that you might itch has to do with the network of nerves inside your body and the messages that those nerves are receiving from chemical irritants from outside your body or the chemical messengers within your body.
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