Animals resort to all kinds of scratching techniques to relieve their itches.

Just think how badly outfitted you would be to respond to an irritation if you were equipped with pointed claws, webbed toes or hooves.

For animal with claws, scratching must be a fairly perilous adventure, even if they pull them in.

Primates nails have evolved gradually, starting with the index fingers (called toilet claws) to extend to all digits.

Nails let you explore and mend the itching area, rather than brutally ravaging the skin.

Touching your skin will desensitize it for a while.

When you groom or scratch, an anesthetic effect takes place that causes a temporary loss of sensation in the immediate area around where your nail strikes.

When you scratch, only the anesthetic effect takes place because the source of the itching is not removed.

You feel relieved, but you've done nothing at all.

At any occasion the itching will return.

But just wait; it's preparing that terrible ache, that chronic pain, that disability that will ruin your future days.

You don't scratch for long before your nails penetrate the epidermis.

You hurt your skin.

However, when you scratch the same location over and over again, your skin may get badly irritated and your itch may get worse.

Don't do it.

Groom your skin instead to locate the itch precisely.

Peck the area with your nail to crush the entangled skin.

PARASITES

When you see an animal scratching, you immediately conclude that it is infested by fleas or another parasite.

This may be true in many cases.

Yet, scientists know that they see their laboratory rodents scratch even in a parasite free environment.

In your case, when your finger hits your skin in search of the cause of an itch; insects are easily found and eliminated.

LESIONS, CUTS AND BURNS

Damaged skin is readily recognizable when you investigate the itching area with your finger and nail.

While exploring, you can usually feel some differences in texture and evenness between the healthy and the wounded areas; along with the acute pain that injured skin produces.

You want to let the skin heal and you should not touch it.

SKIN FOLDS

When you reach the itching spot and that no insect or wound can be found; folded skin is generally the culprit.

If this is the case, the itch should fade and disappear when you touch and work on your skin, not increase.

Itch and pain have always been considered as two distinct phenomenons.

But, grooming the skin proves that the two sensations are simply different stages in the evolution of the same cutaneous deformation.

Itching is low level pain.

If left unattended, it will develop into full-blown pain.

The itch and the pain both come from the same folds and their crossings in the skin.

Folded skin feels like it is being pinched continuously.

Itch is a perfectly well-designed natural sensation, telling you where your body needs attention.

It is not to be ignored.

Your body is urging you «Groom me there!»

When your nail explores the itching location, it will find a fold crossing.

It is best to groom the spot immediately because the itch may not come back for a while.