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Asked by spacenut1982 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 23 Jun 2013.
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Christina Pagel answered on 23 Jun 2013:
there are a few different types of creams that do slightly different things…
There’s hydrocortisone which is a steroid – this reduces inflammation and restricts blood flow, deadening the nerves that are producing the itching feeling..
There are anti-histemenes – histemene is a natural substance in your body but you body makes too much of it in response to an allergy (or say a sting or a bite) and so anit-histemene creams counteract the effect of the histemene reducing itching…
You can also get local anaesthetics that just numb the area – the numbing also deadens the itching response…
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Comments
spacenut1982 commented on :
How do local anaesthetics work?
Christina commented on :
I think Jess might be best to asnwer that but having looked it up, apparently they interrupt how sodium ions are transmitted through the body and so the nerves from where it’s painful can’t transmit their signals to the brain…