Sitting cross-legged leaves lines on my legs
Sarah's answer to "what do you actually do about it" — a daily antihistamine, cooler showers, fragrance-free products, and less pressure on the skin.
Sarah ·
- Living with it
- 3–5 years
- Main trigger
- Stress, heat and pressure on the skin
- What helped
- A daily antihistamine, cooler showers and fragrance-free products
Someone in one of the Facebook groups asked what everyone actually does about their dermatographia, and this was my answer.
Mine shows up as raised welts anywhere my skin gets pressed or scratched. Sitting cross-legged leaves lines. A tight sleeve leaves lines. If I'm stressed or hot, it takes almost nothing at all.
What I've settled into: I take an antihistamine every day rather than waiting for a bad flare, because chasing it after the fact never worked for me. I keep my showers warm rather than hot and I don't scrub. Fragrance-free everything — body wash, moisturiser, laundry. I moisturise while my skin is still damp, which sounds minor but makes the evening itch noticeably less.
The other half of it is stress, which is harder. When work is bad, my skin is bad, and there's no cream that fixes that. Sleep helps more than anything I've bought.
It hasn't gone away and I don't expect it to. But it went from being the thing I thought about all day to something I mostly manage without noticing, and that felt worth writing down for anyone who's just been told what it's called.