The Strange Reason Why Your Skin Is Feeling Itchy Lately

When it rains, it pours. You’ve got a hellacious deadline at work, you haven’t done laundry in weeks (bikini bottoms as underwear, again), and…your skin’s itchy? Weird, definitely, but if this sounds familiar, it’s not a fluke—it’s fact, says a new study in the International Journal of Dermatology.

Let us explain: Stress activates the hippocampus, the same area of your brain in which itch signals are also processed. While you can’t do anything about the connection itself, OTC sedative antihistamines, such as diphenhydramine, can actually pull one over on your brain by soothing the regions that sense relief when you scratch, so you can get a little release without raking your skin with your germ-harboring nails (ick!).