Extreme 'fire ant' itch after sun burn

[Lord Percy]

Not really a 'Dear Auntie' thing because I'm over it now, but thought I'd share the experience and see if others know much of it.

After getting a bad-but-not-terrible sunburn on my back last week in Barcelona, I thought nothing of it, because it's just a sunburn and not a particularly bad one. It was all red but didn't hurt to sleep on it, was only a bit sensitive to touch, and I didn't even consider aftersun. I've honestly had far worse.

Three days later and now home, this morning I had an incredible wave of itchiness come over my entire back and no amount of scratching or soothing would get rid of it. It started to feel like torture and I was pacing up and down the living room, totally unable to keep still and unable to focus on anything else. I've of course had sun burn plenty of times before and this was not at all like the usual itchy damaged skin repairing itself.

It got a lot worse, utterly torturous, then eventually reduced a little and I was able to sit in front of my computer and do a bit of internet self-diagnosis, and it turns out this hellish 'fire ant' itch is a real thing which seems to randomly affect people on rare occasions after getting sun burn. The cause is still unknown, but there are a few interesting remedies which many people have taken good advantage of.

Some links here - they're just personal blog posts but the hundreds of user comments speak for themselves.

https://kathrynjennings.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/sunburn-fire-ant-hell-itch.html
https://medicalschoolofhardknocks.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/how-to-stop-sunburn-itch.html
https://lowgravityascents.com/2013/06/05/the-worst-sunburn-aftermath-ever/
And a news article - https://news.nationalpost.com/news/whitest-mans-burden-for-an-unlucky-few-sunburn-means-a-debilitating-itch-torture

Definitely the most intense itch/pain/torture feeling I've ever felt. Which I don't mind admitting because some women claim it was worse then childbirth for them. I just consider myself lucky because it seems to have gone now after just a few hours (only getting the odd intense itch every few minutes now), but others say it lasted for days or weeks.

Anyone else know about this, or have experience of it?

[Tracey Suntan-King]

Yep. Sid's been very busy applying Aloe Vera to the bits I couldn't reach*. It really works, really cools the itch. However I mean the stuff you get abroad, not here.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/12_03/VeraDuckworthREX_228x402.jpg


* I mean the bits I can't reach on me, not him!
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[Lord Percy]

Nope, it's far more than something a bit of aloe vera can fix...! Read the articles I linked to.

[.....]

I've had it before and it can be so painful, like somebody is stabbing needles into my skin.

Antihistamines. Stopped it completely for me.

[Lord Percy]

[Tracey Suntan-King]

[Lord Percy]

I still don't think you've really had a read of any of the links I gave, or at least any of the many user comments which give support to what the articles are saying.

I'm not the one who made the 'childbirth' link, it was other women who've presumably experienced both. They said they would choose childbirth over reliving the torture of this weird itchy sunburn thing. Plenty of other people made similar admissions if you read down the comments on those blogs.

It's a weird kind of pain, too. Like it isn't really a pain as such, but just a torturous and unbearable prickly itchy feeling, like a million insects trying to work their way out of your skin all at once. Apparently it might be an allergic thing, so it's not actually about the physical severity of the burn, but the way the nerves are reacting. So I suppose it can't be given a pain comparison, but it certainly ranks up there on the list of 'unbearable things'!

I promise it's not just bad sunburn that fades after a week. I thought I made it pretty clear I've had far worse sunburn and never had to go through this before.

[stinkwheel]

Colloidial oatmeal has been used for centuries and is clinically proven.
Citation

Get a sock full of porridge oats and use it like a teabag in a tepid bath.

Soak yourself in it.

EDIT: As for the heat reference. Anecdotally, I use something similar for the extreme, delayed type 4 hypersensativity I have to midge bites and it works for me. My current working theory is that the itch is caused by histamine releasing cells called mast cells. They are ustable and the heat can make them burst, releasing all their histamine at one which then takes time to recover. Certainly takes me from unbearably itchy, pacing the room to being able to sleep.

Another interesting thing. I see a syndrome in cows where their skin becomes sensitised to daylight (the white bits can slough off entirely). Two main ways this happens. One is if their liver stops processing chlorophyll properly, a substance called phylloerythrin is deposited in the lower layers of the skin. The UV light converts this into a toxic compound. The other is if a plant toxin is laid down in the skin and damages the skin in the same way. St. Johns Wort is the most common culprit. Giant Hogweed burns in humans work in a similar fashion.

So it's possibly something you ate causing the sun damage to penetrate much more deeply and in a more severe fashion that it would normaly.

EDIT 2: Did you come up in a rash? Prickly heat?
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Lord Percy]

Nope, no rash. Looking nicely tanned now but I'd rather it all just peel off and start over!

I'm really liking the histamine theory, specially since I also was pacing the room and unbearably itchy! Also since plenty of the suggested remedies often revolved around antihistamine. And scratching it makes it worse, which also might point to some kind of affectation/damage to these mast cells..?

Seems to have almost totally gone now. If I give my back a good scratch, the mad itching comes back at about 10% of what it was earlier, but soon fades away.

Thanks for the input

[Suntan Sid]

You've got prickly heat, you nana!

Slap on lots of natural yoghurt, you will stink, the pain will go away!
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[Lord Percy]

Hmm I don't think it was prickly heat. I don't have much natural yoghurt around but I did use tons of aftersun and it was completely ineffectual after about 2 seconds of being applied. A bit of a read up on prickly heat it tells me it's related to sweating, heat and humidity, all of which was totally not affecting me at the time! Also there's no sign of a rash on me at all. A big point I notice is that a remedy for prickly heat is cool showers, whereas that for me made my itching literally a thousand times worse, it became utterly unbearable, pacing up and down making funny shapes and flinching into funny positions to try to escape it! On the websites I linked to, people actually said that using heat seemed to help - ultra hot showers seemed to be a miracle cure for some. This wouldn't work for prickly heat as it just induces more sweating. I didn't dare try the hot shower anyway, after the torture of my cold shower. I just let it die down itself, and it's now fine, just a slight but severe individual itch every now and again.

A lot of people, in the accounts given in the websites I linked to, who had the same symptoms for days or even weeks, said they even went to doctors who had no idea what their issue was.

[Jewlio Iglesias]

Hmmm.

OP bawws in the hope of getting sympathy.

OP receives advice on how to MTFU, which he presumably doesn't like.

OP should go die in a fire.
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[Lord Percy]

??

I've had two people relating to what I said - one of whom knows a fair bit about biology things in general - , and two people saying to man up because it's just a bit of itchy sunburn. I've been living long enough to know what typical sunburn is like, hence me saying why it's not just a bit of itchy sunburn.

It wasn't a call out for sympathy either! I was just seeing if anyone on here has experienced it before.

[Jewlio Iglesias]

[Tracey Suntan-King]

[orac]

have I experienced it, no. I use sun cream, I burn worse than un-watched puff pastry in an over hot oven.

if there is anything that you learn from this let it be apply sun block often.
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[stinkwheel]

Bickering part split and moved to here:
https://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=4159016#4159016
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[pepperami]