Mosquito bites stop itching fast with doctor’s free tip

As the UK is in the middle of a heatwave, with temperatures reaching up to 34 °C in some areas, more bugs, like mosquitoes, will be around.

Mosquitoes in the UK typically emerge in April or May, with peak activity occurring during the warmest summer months of July and August. Depending on autumn temperatures, they can remain active through September and October before dying off or hibernating.

While mosquito bites aren’t generally dangerous or harmful in the UK if they don’t carry disease, they can quickly become annoying because they itch so much. While the itching often only lasts a few days, there are simple ways you can stop it in seconds.

To share her expertise, Harvard-trained doctor and author Dr Trisha Pasricha has taken to social media to share a scientifically proven method to stop mosquito bites from itching in seconds.

“If you get bitten by a mosquito, I’m gonna tell you something that’s literally gonna change your life,” Dr Trisha said at the start of her video.

“Do not scratch,” she urged, a piece of advice many of us have heard before.

She added: “Instead, do what I’m doing: just rub it gently with two fingers.” Dr Trisha showed herself rubbing her own mosquito bite with two fingers a few times.

After demonstrating the technique, she said: “That’s it. The itch is gone. I didn’t scratch it. I didn’t inflame it and make it a million times worse. I just rubbed it gently.”

So how does this work? Dr Trisha went on to explain a recent study, where scientists at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine found that stroking the skin could halt the itch signal in its tracks.

This is because when you get a mosquito bite, the nerve fibres in the skin become activated in a patchy manner. Apparently, it’s the contrast between some fibres being irritated and others being fine that causes the itch.

Because of this, rubbing gently on and around the bitten area creates a potent counter-signal that inhibits the uncomfortable one, essentially keeping the itch from reaching the brain.

Dr Trisha believes this can also work to stop eczema from itching too, so it can be a super powerful method.

She added: “If we rub just like this, we actually remove the contrast. And here’s the coolest part, you don’t actually have to rub the area where you got bitten. You just have to rub somewhere in the same dermatome.”

People soon flooded the comment section with amazement, with many saying they’d give the tip a try.

One wrote: “My entire life I’ve been scratching around bites, I could’ve just been rubbing them!”

A second person shared: “I have done this unintentionally (trying to keep from scratching) and it works!”

And a third added: “I just tried this with an eye itch… rubbed round the orbital but not the delicate part… it worked!!”