Photo illustration for the story, “The Big Itch.”Got an itch?
Go ahead. Scratch.
“I never tell patients to stop scratching as this sometimes is the only means patients have to relieve their itch,” says Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, chairman of the Department of Dermatology at Temple University School of Medicine and the director of the Temple Itch Center, which he founded in Philadelphia, Pa.
But “scratch away” isn’t his only prescription.
“I often urge patients to attempt to distract themselves by using relaxation techniques,” Yosipovitch says.