I guess I have just itched a lot for my entire life, so I just scratch and don’t really think about it. But it was recently brought to my attention by someone, and I realized that I am scratching constantly. Like all over my body. I’ll scratch my leg, then my head itches, then the back of my hand, then my cheek, then my arm, and so on and so on, every few seconds. I might scratch 10 or 20 spots within a minute. I think I might stop scratching if I’m really focused on something, but if I start thinking about my itching, then it just keeps happening. And like I said, I think this has been going on for my entire life, but I never really paid much attention to it. Is this normal?
Oh, that’s very interesting. I never knew what the mechanism was. I never really learned if it had a specific name. It was just something I finally figured out for myself after a lot of grief with no answers from the doctors.
There are a few genetic factors that can contribute to it. I’m lucky enough to have most of them, so it’s been a journey figuring this out. What got me on the right track was trying a low histamine diet for a week, and all kinds of not-quite-allergy things I had experienced my whole life began to clear up.
The exact list of foods varies a bit depending on the resource, but here’s a pretty good one.