What is the cause of itching all over the body during pregnancy?

Some pregnant women may feel itchy in their bodies during daily life, and the location of the itching is not fixed. Sometimes the itching feeling is quite severe, which affects their lives. The causes of itching in pregnant women may include excessive hormone levels, bile stasis, etc., so everyone should do regular prenatal examinations.

When it is late at night and everyone is trying to fall asleep, the itching is often severe and the more you scratch it, the worse it becomes, making it difficult to fall asleep. Some pregnant women who experience itching during pregnancy have miliary rashes on their skin, while others have no rashes; for some, the itching will subside on its own within a short period of time, while for others, it will continue until the end of the pregnancy, and the itching will disappear quickly after delivery. Since this skin itching is a unique symptom during pregnancy, it is also called prurigo of pregnancy or pruritus of pregnancy.

From the perspective of Western medicine, there may be two reasons for itching during pregnancy:

First, it may be related to the high estrogen level in the blood of pregnant women;

The second is related to cholestasis. Researchers believe that because the gallbladder emptying time is prolonged in pregnant women, the gallbladder expands and its tension decreases, resulting in bile stasis, increased bile acid and bile salt levels, and skin itching.

Itching during pregnancy is a unique symptom during pregnancy. Although it may include certain skin diseases with a good prognosis, it needs to be carefully identified to rule out skin diseases caused by viral infection that seriously threaten the lives of pregnant women and fetuses (embryos) and have strong teratogenicity, such as rubella, herpes gestationis, and impetigo herpetiformis. Pregnant women suffering from the above-mentioned skin diseases must terminate the pregnancy or abort the fetus. They should not blindly treat the disease to preserve the fetus, so as to avoid serious consequences.