This past weekend, I was able to hit up central park between my personal training clients and get some sun. The great lawn is an incredibly peaceful with it’s bright green thick grass and is surprisingly quiet considering it’s in the middle of Manhattan!
While it was great to lay out for a bit and relax, I was dumb and didn’t put on sun tan lotion…now that I think about I don’t believe I’ve been in the sun for that long in over a year, so that was seriously stupid and I paid for it.
My chest and stomach was pretty much as bright red as Will Ferrel on Friday and Saturday but by Sunday I woke up with an incredible itch- also known as “Hells Itch”. You maybe rolling your eyes but this is itch is crazy bad. If you scratch you get a relief for maybe 5sec and then it comes back with a vengeance. It feels like there’s little bugs crawling all over you but you can’t do anything about it! This isn’t oh, it’s just you peeling, this is way beyond that. You can’t move because once you get a little relief if ANYTHING touches the area it’s like a bomb of itchiness explodes…terrible and completely avoidable- in this case.
the itch feels like it’s below the epidermis…not fun…
Long story short here’s what I found to be SOME what helpful, hell I’m still dealing with it now as I type!
3 Sunburn Itch Remedies
Vitamin A & D Ointment
Vitamin A & D ointment (diaper cream) is used to help prevent and treat diaper rash, help heal dry skin, soothe cuts and burns, etc… since the itch comes from your skin repairing itself it makes sense that using this ointment will help for the long term.
Personally I found it to be helpful the first day and then the cortizone was my go to.
Cortizone
Cortizone is an anti-itch ointment, that seemed to help me the best. It doesn’t work perfectly as I still have some parts that are itchy but it’s MUCH better than the feeling of fire ants crawling underneath your skin. Keep in mind that this isn’t an instant relief, at least it wasn’t for me. It took about 15-20minutes for some relief to kick in.
Oatmeal Bath
The oatmeal bath seemed to help an ok amount for me. Just make sure that your oatmeal is very fine (blend it) so that the water turns milky and that the water isn’t hot but luke warm or cold. The problem I found was that as soon as I got it, it still burned and itch like a mofo- so then I went back to the cortizone suffered for about 15-20minutes until it kicked it and then DID NOT MOVE until I felt somewhat back to normal. With that said though, if you’re at the tail end a cool oatmeal bath definitely feels pretty good.
Summary
There’s a lot of remedies out there, you’ll have to play around and be patient. The above is what worked for me. The popular aloe vera or vinegar did absolutely nothing but irritate the devil itch. I guess the main point here is to not take your health for granted and use sun screen! I was a complete idiot and I’m paying for it- my weekend was shot I had to cancel on a few personal training clients, and miss my workout over something that could’ve easily been avoided.
Put on sun screen!
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