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[music] Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
It’s wintertime and, despite your best efforts to the contrary, your skin
is getting dry and it’s starting to itch. Let me tell you how to stop that
itching. First, try a non-sedating antihistamine like Allegra, Hismanal or
Zyrtec and, the reason I say “non-sedating,” is because we don’t want to
put you to sleep. Now antihistamines won’t help the itching for everybody,
but they’re certainly worth a try. Use a cold water humidifier in your
bedroom, especially at night-time when you’re sleeping. You spend several
hours there, and that’s a perfect opportunity to restore the moisture in
your skin. Use a cold water humidifier, not a hot water one, and make sure
the chamber that holds the water is easily detachable. That way, you can
clean it every day and avoid the build-up of undesirable germs. If you
don’t want to use a humidifier, and if you have a free-standing radiator,
you can actually put a pot of water on the radiator. When the dry steam
heat in the radiator comes on, it causes the water in the pot to evaporate,
again putting more moisture into the air. Just make sure you clean out that
pot every day. But the most important thing for helping the itching of dry
winter skin, of course, is moisturizers. Apply them as soon as you get done
patting dry after your bath or shower to help lock in the moisture that you
pick up in your bath or shower. Re-apply them frequently and, if your skin
is very itchy, get a moisturizer with menthol in it because menthol causes
a cooling sensation; it supersedes and stops the itching. An example is
Sarna lotion,” S-a-r-n-a,” and that’s available without a prescription.
Avoid wearing wool because wool fabrics have little fibers that poke out
into the skin and really, really aggravate itching in people who have dry
itchy skin. Lastly, if you’re itching, don’t scratch. Scratching feels
good, stops the itching but, unfortunately, it begets more itching. If you
are itching, you can just apply pressure to the area, as I am on my arm,
and that pressure will stop the itching without causing more itching. But
the most important thing to remember, if you’re itching from dry winter
skin is moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.