Why do people get itchy?
In: Biology
As others have said, the itch is caused by pain receptors triggered at a low level but the relief you feel when you scratch an itch, that almost indescribable pleasure you sometimes get, that is a reward your body gives you for attending to the itchy sensation, for taking care of yourself, to make sure you’ll do it again. It shows the importance of scratching an itch that you get that kind of reward for doing it. Think about it, you don’t even get a pleasurable reward like that for moving away from pain, only the end of the pain which is good and all but not exactly a reward like scratching an itch. It’s kind of interesting (if you’re a certain kind of person, I guess). Now, it’s not always beneficial in the long run, sometimes scratching makes it worse and all that, but that reward you get for scratching makes you want to scratch even when you know you shouldn’t.
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