Will antihistamines help your child’s itchy skin?
If your child is struggling with itchy rashes, you’ve probably gone down the histamine rabbit hole.
That makes a lot of sense, because histamine can cause itch symptoms.
But I want you to know that the itch that’s associated with eczema more often than not, has nothing to do with histamine.
Here’s how you can tell whether or not your child’s itch is histamine related... this isn’t exactly scientific (far from it), but I find it to be a pretty good way to figure out this piece of the puzzle for your child.
If a regular, over the counter product like Claritin, Zyrtec, or Benadryl helps with itch symptoms then most likely there’s a histamine component to what’s happening.
If that’s the case, then it’s possible a natural antihistamine like quercetin, vitamin C, and immunoglobulins, will help.
These can be great alternatives because they don’t shut off histamine like a conventional antihistamine does. Histamine is not all bad! It’s a neurotransmitter, it’s part of a normal and healthy immune response, and it’s part of the digestive process. All this makes shutting it off, especially longer term, a BIG problem.
If these products do not help with itch, it’s likely it’s not histamine causing the problem, and that means a natural alternative most likely won’t help either.
If something like Benadryl helps with sleep, that’s different than it helping with itch (keep that in mind).
Do antihistamines help your child’s itchy skin? LMK!