Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Mr. Prim. As the owner, proprietor, and founder of Mr. Prim's Prim and Proper Etiquette School, I love telling people what not to do.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than waving my index finger in the air and shouting at the top of my lungs, no, no, no. Just the other day, I saw someone buttoning their coat from top to bottom. Everyone knows the proper way to button a coat is to start with the bottom button and work your way up.
And I simply cannot forget the time I saw my cat, Tim Prim, lapping water from the left side of his cat bowl. As I've told him many, many times, the proper way for a cat to lap water is from the right side of the bowl.
But if there's one thing that really gets my tailcoat in a twist, it's when people don't use proper scratching technique. That's right. There's a right way and a wrong way to scratch yourself. The proper way to scratch is with the tip of your pinky finger for no more than three seconds while humming the Canadian anthem like this. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
And do not, I repeat, do not itch your scrapes, scratches, boo-boos, and burns. It's most unseemly. I know that one's skin itches dreadfully while it's healing, but that's no excuse. Come to think of it, why does that happen anyway? Anise had a question about this as well. Why does your skin feel itchy when it's healing? The reason it's itchy has to do with the healing process itself.
My name is Emma Gersten-Zang and I'm a pediatrician in Philadelphia. When you have a cut or when you get hurt, when that injury starts to heal, it's very common that it's itchy for a part of the time. Let's say you fall down, you scrape your knee, it's bleeding.
So the first thing that happens is you have blood cells that clump together and start to make a clot. And then eventually they dry and they make a scab. And that scab kind of covers up where the cut is, right, to keep it from getting exposed to more germs. Some cells called macrophages come and they kind of clean up all the broken down cells there.
And then what happens is new cells start to come and they start to build back more skin cells and build back more collagen, which is kind of like the scaffold that holds all those cells together.
And in all that building process, there's some different molecules and things that are being released that just give you a really itchy feeling. When you have a cut and it's healing and it's itching, it's really, really hard not to scratch it. But you have to try as best you can to not because every time you scratch something, you can create more injury. You can put germs that are on your hands into the cut as it's healing. So you have to do anything that you can to distract yourself.
Um, uh,
How positively fascinating. It's quite natural for your skin to feel itchy when it's healing. Your body is made of cells. Those are tiny little building blocks that make up all living things. And when you get a cut or scrape, special helper cells in your body go to the spot that's injured. Some of these cells make a scab to help protect that spot, like a little roof over the ouchie. Other cells start to clean up the part that got hurt and repair it.
And that process can make your skin feel itchy. Now, please, for the love of all things prim and proper, do not itch that spot. It is quite impolite, and it makes it harder for your skin to heal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I see a bird over there that's eating a worm with its mouth open. You there! Bird! That is most improper!
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