How to STOP ITCHING NOW. This works even for Poison Oak itching.
I can no longer remember, at least not clearly, the terrible annoyance of poison oak itching; but I do remember saying I would give almost anything for relief. I tried all the usual remedies—but nothing worked, at least not very well. Then after much experimentation I discovered the following previously unknown procedure. It is deceptively simple but it works great. The technique is to heat the itching area of skin up to the point where that area feels heat pain. For some reason heat pain flips the switch on the itch and changes how the body responds to the irritating agent. The safest and easiest way to apply this heat pain is with a hair dryer.
Practice the following procedure on a few square inches of un-afflicted skin before approaching an afflicted itching area. Set a 1200 watt hair dryer on the high heat setting and blow the hot air directly onto a small patch of your normal skin. Hold the stream of hot air closer and closer to the chosen spot until at some critical distance, probably about two inches, the temperature of the skin starts to heat up rapidly. After a second or so at this critical distance the skin will suddenly feel painfully hot. Remove the stream of hot air immediately. It is this brief, 1/10 of a second, flash of pain that will kill the itching sensation for that specific area of skin.
With that bit of knowledge and experience acquired move on to the next skill level. Heat up a new area of normal unaffected skin but this time once you reach the pain level move the stream of hot air and its little zone of pain along the skin. Move at a speed that just brings each new area of skin to the pain point before you move on but also move fast enough so that it stops hurting the very instant that you do move on. You should work at a level of pain that isn’t particularly annoying. With a few adjustments of the skin to hair dryer distance and speed of movement, you should be able to move along at about one inch per second.
Now go to some afflicted area, where the skin is itching but where it is not blistered, and paint over it with a brief instant of heat induced pain. Move quickly enough that you don’t even come close to burning your skin, but be sure to paint every bit of the afflicted area. Use overlapping strokes. This technique is an OFF switch only; you don’t need to worry about the itch switch being turned back ON by going back over it repeatedly. With a little practice you should be able to treat a group of areas collectively as large as a whole arm in less than ten minutes.
Wait about ten minutes after you have finished this treatment and then ask yourself if you have any itching whatsoever. If you do, it’s probably because you missed that area. Just go back and treat that specific itch again, which should only take a few seconds. The treatment should totally suppress all itching for eight hours or more and so two or three procedures per day should be all you need. After a few days of treatment the itching should be eliminated altogether.
If the itching isn’t caused by some known allergen such as poison oak, mosquito or flea bites (see the bottom paragraph for insect bites) and it covers a large area you should see your doctor. There are some very serious conditions that result in itching skin and some of them can be cured by modern medical techniques. If you were to suppress these symptoms using this technique you would be successful in treating the itch but you would cause a much more serious condition to be ignored. Therefore you must be careful when using this treatment to know the cause of the itch.
The procedure described so far has been intended for those areas of skin that are itching but not blistered. Blistered areas are more difficult to treat using the flash of pain technique because the nerves in the skin are then located beneath a blister of water and it is necessary to heat the fluid of the blister to the temperature which causes the pain. That is a problem because once the fluid is raised to that temperature it will stay there for a while and may, by its excessive heat, injure the tissues directly beneath it. The tissue can endure a tenth of a second of heat followed by instant cooling down but it may not stand a couple of seconds of excessive heat caused by a slower cool down. The blisters are the body’s attempt to flush away the afflicting agents and it will be eventually successful in doing it—in a couple of weeks. Probably your best way to contend with these blisters is to cooperate with the body’s washing process and rinse those blistered areas thoroughly several times a day with Technu ® followed by the heat treatment. This way you will wash away some of the allergens and perhaps the heat will evaporate some of them.
The above treatment is new and it will probably be enough but if it isn’t take Benedryl ® antihistamine tablets as directed on the carton, which, by itself, will not shorten the weeks of suffering but will vastly reduce the annoyance and will permit you to sleep normally. Also slather on aloe vera gel and calamine lotion and wrap the whole mess lightly in gauze bandages lightly overlaid with Ace ® elastic bandages to hold it in place. Undo the mess twice a day, clean it up and redo the whole treatment. About this time it should occur to you that it would have been better, in every way, not to have gotten yourself into this horrible situation in the first place. Therefore, learn to identify poison oak, poison ivy, poison sumac on sight in all of their forms and avoid them. The allergy causing molecule is the same for all of these toxic plants so once you have developed an allergic reaction to one of them you will be allergic to them all. Sometimes you may not have access to a hair dryer and you can use an infrared source such as a stove or a light bulb but these methods are harder to control. The new detergent like product called Technu ® will prevent the allergic reaction if it is used before your exposure or immediately after so ask your pharmacist about it. If you have a fever or a large area of rash consult your doctor immediately.
The experience is a powerful motivation to develop forethought because you must be constantly aware of your emotional desires and learn to control your impulses. You will find that getting emotionally excited for any reason whatsoever causes the itching to become more severe but if you consciously relax you can reduce the surface itching. The deeper itching doesn’t seem to respond much to relaxation but at least having something under control during this trying time will help you feel better.
Tiny itches such as insect bites can be safely treated with the flash of pain technique by using a hot teaspoon. The procedure is to dip the bowl of a teaspoon into boiling water, remove it, shake off the water, let the teaspoon cool for two seconds and then touch the bowl of the spoon to the itch. You should let the spoon cool to the point where pressing it on the skin for one-quarter of a second brings the skin to the flash of pain point. Then instantly remove the spoon from the skin and go to another itch. With each heating of the teaspoon you can treat about five itches. As with the hot air treatment above, it is the flash of pain that seems to flip the switch on the itch.
Liability disclaimer statement: These Probaways contain new and unique information that has been created, tested and retested by me alone. You must approach these findings and materials very carefully as your results may differ greatly from my experience and I can offer no recompensation of any kind for any injuries.