Friday, February 1, 2008

Scratching...the new Prozac?


Yahoo really knows how to put the hard hitting issues out there at the forefront. And by hard hitting I mean random Cliff Claven type facts with headlines that draw you in like a fly to shit, or honey...yeah, more flies with honey and such.

So this morning I see that Scientists Have Discovered Why Scratching Feels Good...apparently, the act of scratching shuts off the part of the brain associated with bad feelings and memories. What the...?! I'm not idiot and this just doesn't do it for me. You're saying, whether it be my back, the bottom of my foot, the inside corner of my eye, or that spot on your leg you just can't find, so you think its on the inside...when sharp objects move along ANY skin, you shut off certain parts of your brain? That is some crazy Ish-nizzle-nit!!! Kind of kills the whole theory of scratching your head when you can't remember something...that's right Disney! You've misled MILLIONS of western youth. And what about the fact that you don't generally see people in traumatic situations or in states of depression scratching wildly. You'd think if itching was the answer to abolishment of Prozac, the well evolved human physique would find a way to cause massive itching proportionate to the bad feelings and memories someone was having...but no such luck. Although, animals do seem to ALWAYS enjoy a good scratch. And my blind dog, Stevie Wonder, enjoys a scratch more than the average pooch. Could it be that the canine physique has figured out what our bodies have not? Stevie runs into a LOT of stuff...possibly VERY traumatic...so perhaps that's why he's itchy. Along those lines, I'd have to assume that dogs are evolving much more efficiently than people...hence, OBVIOUSLY...dogs will soon be taking over the planet. Practice greeting by ass sniffing ladies and gentleman...this is our future.

On a side note, apparently scratching also awakens the compulsive parts of our brains. Makes sense, the more you itch, the more you want to itch. We'll see how that affects Planet of the Pooches.

2 comments:

MOVIE MAN MIKE said...

Maybe the phenomenon includes both the itch and the reaction of a scratch to result in these effects. Maybe you can't just scratch when and where you want. Maybe it has to itch first and then when you scratch that itch, you shut off that brain stuff. Now all we have to do is spread chicken pox like wildfire or go rolling on the poison oak until we're all blissful enough to scheme wisely against those evil, plotting puppies!

Katie said...

Nice theory, but studies were done on people who didn't have "an itch to scratch"...literally.