The 15 Causes of ITCHING You've Never Heard About

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this podcast, I’m going to share 15 underlying causes of itching. Pruritus is the medical term for itching. Itching usually involves a superficial nerve that is aggravated to some level.

Here are 15 causes of itching:

1. Body lice

2. Scabies

3. Hookworms

4. Herpes

5. Insect bites

6. Yeast infection

7. Poison ivy

8. Tick bites

9. Diabetes

10. Polycythemia

11. Problems with the parathyroid glands

12. Uremia

13. Liver issues

14. Cholestasis

15. Dry skin

Itching is often a symptom of diabetes because of circulation problems. Poor circulation causes the nerves to die, which can feel like itching or burning pain and even cause severe pain.

Polycythemia is a condition where you have too many red blood cells. This can decrease circulation and the amount of oxygen in your skin, causing itching.

The parathyroid gland consists of 4 glands around the thyroid that control calcium. If the thyroid works too hard, you could develop too much calcium in the blood. This can lead to calcification of your skin, which can affect your nerve endings.

Liver issues like cirrhosis, hepatitis, or cholestasis can cause itching. You can develop cholestasis if the liver’s function is impaired and it can no longer make bile salts.

Dry skin is a common cause of itching, often caused by a lack of vitamin A or vitamin D.

There is a high correlation between people who have itching and people with liver or gallbladder issues. This is typically caused by irritation to the gallbladder and decreased omega-3 fatty acids.

Dietary changes can help eliminate itching. TUDCA, a bile salt that helps thin the bile, has been found to significantly decrease itching in people with cirrhosis.

DATA:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Transcript

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0:00.0	So today we're, oh one second, let me just, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, that's that's a spot.
0:08.8	A little to the left, good, a little to the right, oh my gosh, he's come in handy.
0:15.0	Today we're going to talk about the 15 deeper causes of itching that you probably have never heard about before.
0:23.0	So the medical name for itching is called pruneritis, okay?
0:26.0	And the remedy typically is just to scratch the itch, right?
0:30.0	And it usually involves some superficial nerve that is within your skin that's being aggravated to some level.
0:37.0	You can have lice on your body, scabees, which is a microorganism.
0:41.0	You could have hookworms, herpes, an insect bite like bedbugs.
0:46.6	You can even have a yeast infection, different places in your body, usually private parts, or you
0:50.6	can have poison ivy.
0:51.6	Now, I am deadly allergic to poison ivy. Now I am deadly allergic to poison ivy and when I get it it
0:56.7	spreads and boy does it itch like crazy and I have to resist the temptation to scratch it.
1:02.2	I found that going into a hot shower tends to be the only thing that can relieve the itching for three hours, but I can definitely relate to poison ivy.
1:11.6	Then you have a tick bite, right?
1:13.6	Usually tick bites initially kind of numb the area
1:17.4	and you don't know they're there.
1:18.8	I think in the last year I had 20 different tick bites
1:22.4	that I've found on my body because I live in the countryside and some even
1:26.3	had the bullseye and I never got lime. So that's good but sometimes you have to kind of check
1:31.5	yourself because you don't know if these ticks around your body,
1:34.0	but sometimes they do leave an itch and you can find out where they are.
1:38.0	And you can also itch from having diabetes.
	...

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