Thanks foe the replies.
I did notice the other day that i felt much better and the itching stopped when i took my clothes off and put a cotton nightshirt on.
Bingo!
I do prefer to wear natural fabrics, but its so hard to get them and afford them (plus we have clothes moths tht have eaten all my pure wool jumpers)
Yes, it's very difficult to get hold of cotton particularly, the price has gone through the roof in the last year or two. I was doing well with M&S until recently, but the latest set of 100% cotton clothes I bought there is no good.
I was doing well at Primark for a while until the prices went up - stuff doesn't necessarily have to be really expensive, just the right kind of fabrics. I haven't had good results with the expensive stuff you get online for MCS sufferers, but haven't tried very much. Mainly I cast around a variety of shops and try on as much as I can...now that I'm tuned in to the effect, if I trust my instincts I can usually get a pretty good idea how something is going to work out in the first few minutes. Always a knackering experience though because I have to get through a lot of stuff that I react to in the process...
My sofa are very very old - i dare not replace them due to flame retardants in a new one, i dont use any perfumed washing powder - eco only, and natural body care products.
That's most of my other suggestions already covered then.
I use the washing balls, I found that all powders, even Eco ones, are a problem.
Mark - i think you are right about catching it early - as sson as it gets more intense it starts to spread and then nothing helps until i get changed and move rooms.Actually itching the itch is the worst thing i can do and leads to a severe worsening.
Actually everything you've described does sound very similar. Except that for me I have found that the nature of this itching is that each individual itch
has to be rubbed gently (not scratched), they basically never subside on their own, once they start, they just grow and grow and get more painful until I touch them. One little touch and they go...and start up somewhere else moments later. Moving around a bit sometimes helps. I've actually wondered whether the actual problem I have is that somehow what's broken is the 'cancellation' part of the neurology - natural little itches are not getting 'cancelled' as 'irrelevant' for some reason and that's why I'm so sensitive. But...I don't know...
Another thing is that I have found that, for me, the itching fundamentally prevents proper deep sleep. When the itching is 'on' severely, I will have a night or two where I just can't sleep at all because of the pain. Then, of course, I am just exhausted. After that, I will be able to fall sleep because I'm so sleep-deprived, and actually at that point I'm not feeling the itching, my skin is more 'numb', it's as if I go far enough past a threshold that I don't feel it any more in order to sleep. But the key thing is: once I'm in that state, I sleep, but not properly. That's when I wake up feeling absolutely trashed, more exhausted than ever. No more itching, just exhaustion. And the longer that goes on, the worse it gets, and within a few days I'm sleeping 14 hours and waking up absolutely exhausted. That has been happening again in recent weeks (and I haven't found the replacement clothes I need yet, but I definitely know it's the clothes that are fundamental, most of them have "gone bad")...and after a week or so of it, my neck and back pain came back again, then I started getting muscle weakness, then joint pain, then losing concentration...when I'm not able to truly sleep, it's clear to me that my muscles are not physically recovering during sleep as they normally would. I had chronic back and neck pain for years and years, saw every specialist going...then one day I got new bed and bedding along the lines described above, and the leather sofa, and overnight, my neck pain was gone - one good night's sleep, the first in many years, was all it took to fix that!...
I will definately think some more about foods. I have changed my diet a bit recently as i desperately need to lose some wieght - and the itching has increased since then.
Figures - dietary factors are correlated for me. My theory is that it's all 'skin' - effectively both one's skin and the lining of the gut define a surface, a boundary between the inside of the body and the outside world - consider the topology of it and it makes sense that anything affecting the overall sensitivity of one would also affect the sensitivity of the other. Food sensitivities are different for different people of course, so 'eat a healthy diet' is just not good enough advice - a classical healthy diet can contain foods that some of us are very sensitive to; the problem foods include quite a lot of stuff that is "good for you". For me, my fallback solution when things get tough is beef, potatoes and peas, plus cheese and fruit smoothies. Luckily I can tolerate dairy and fruit. Elimination diet confirmed for me that really only that basic diet is fine for me. Oh, and if the weight gain is basically bloating round the stomach, for me that turned out to be inflammation of the gut due to wheat/gluten, and as soon as I cut that out my stomach flattened out again without any exercise or reduction in eating required; I lost weight too.
All just my own experience, but there must be other people for whom all this is relevant as well...I hope somebody finds it helpful and I hope you get your itching under control Justy.
