Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow. Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Stress and anxiety can lead to itch. So I would imagine a lot of

Americans have done a lot of scratching over the past few months. There's the kind of itch that you

scratch and poof, no more itch. But sometimes the more you scratch, the more you itch. And then

there's the kind of itch that is so alive, explosive, persistent,

and all-encompassing that nothing seems to help. And it hijacks your brain. That's the kind of

itch that my guest, Annie Lowry, writes about in her Atlantic magazine article titled,

Why People Itch and How to Stop It. It's about what researchers

are learning about itch and how that's opening the door to new treatments. Lowry suffers from

itch so intense. She's dug holes in her skin and scalp and once asked a surgeon to amputate

her limbs. Her issue is related to a rare and degenerative liver disease. Part of her

article is about her own itch and the extremes it's led her to. Lowry is a staff writer at the

Atlantic, focusing on the economy and politics. She's a former staff writer at the New York Times

and New York Magazine. Annie Lowry, welcome to fresh air.

Is today an itchy day for you?

It is. I have been itchy for about four days now.

So we're talking during the daytime, so I'm not terribly itchy.

But my feet are itchy, my scalp is itchy, and my hands are itchy.

But it's like a two out of ten. It's manageable. So people are very dismissive of itch. And I want you to describe what your kind of

itch feels like. At its worst, it was like having poison ivy in the acute phase of poison ivy, although my skin didn't show anything.

There was no rash or anything like that.

And it was completely maddening.

It was impossible to do anything other than focus on scratching or trying to find relief from the itching.

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