Itchy skin

[Sampowell542]

Every now and again my body feels so itchy. I dont even know if its normal! I can literally be any where on my body. If clothes or blankets lay on my body a certain way I get itchy. It's like ants are crawling all over my body.
Weirdly enough i dont get this at work. Only at home. Which leads me to believe i could be an allergy. I googled it and obviously the big c came up and im beside myself!

[MyNameIsTerry]

There are so many possibilities with itching and the vast majority are going to be skin allergies or sensitivities of some kind.

Itching was never one of my symptoms but I don't have great skin anyway and things like wools can make me itch. I've found if clothes are less fresh the trapped in sweat can cause itching.

I've been put on BP meds for Hypertension and these come with itching side effects which is very common (my mum has battled with various severities of it for many years now) and this has made my skin more sensitive than normal. What I now have are times where the itchiness seems to increase. When I started the meds it got quite bad but this was a side effect issue (and I had to swap meds as the first one wasn't getting any better after 5 weeks) but on my current one it calmed down.

I would approach it as you were, as an allergy issue, and talk to someone about that to see what they can suggest. You could also try skin care to see if it helps calm it down when you are at home e.g. something that helps in the bath or some creams to get moisture back in.

I've found with my mum that itchiness issues tend to mean GP's trying creams to calm it down. If it's bad they can try steroid creams to deal with the inflammation.

Histamine is something you can also tackle in the inflammatory response. Anti histamines work really well (they reduced my symptoms a lot from the side effect of the first med) but you don't want to need them long term. They may help you quickly now though.

And then there is always our old friend, anxiety. Itchiness can be experienced, as can many sensations (paraesthesia covers things like crawling sensations, pins & needles, etc The word may sound a scary one but it's just for skin sensation issues).