Fall has arrived, and with it brings all those great memories: playing in a big pile of leaves, a ride on an old wagon filled with hay or sitting in the cool grass looking up at the colorful trees. Although those are all fantastic and worthwhile fall activities, why do some of them make you itch so badly afterward? There is a scientific reason for that itchiness. Let�s take a look.

Why Do We Itch, Anyway?

Your skin acts like a blanket that covers and protects your body from many harmful things in the environment. Your skin is covered with millions of tiny receptors that can deliver messages to the brain to react to something. Those sensors are designed to protect you.

In the environment, those sensors might sense when a bug has bitten you � or even landed on you. They can sense a sharp thorn on a plant, and they can even sense when you have been out in the sun too long.

The bottom line is that these receptors are sending a signal that something is irritating your skin. That signal in your brain triggers an itching sensation that is designed to get you to want to move away from whatever caused it ... or, in the case of a bug, the scratching will get the bug to move away. So itching is a method of protecting you from further harm.

What Causes the Itch?

There are many things that can cause our body to feel itchy. One of the most common causes of itchiness is sitting or rolling around on grass.

There are several reasons grass can make you itch. The thin nature of a blade of grass can cause microscopic scratches in your skin. When sweat � which contains salt � comes in contact with those tiny scratches, your skin is irritated, and you itch.

Second, pollen is constantly falling through the air, and much of it will find a place to rest on top of grass. Lots of people are allergic to pollen when it enters their nasal passages, but some people�s skin reacts just by touching it. It usually is not a major reaction, but it is just enough to make your skin a little itchy.

Finally, if you look at a blade of grass under a microscope, you will notice that grass has many tiny hairs underneath it. Just like a feather, those hairs can trigger a tickle or itching reaction on your skin. And sometimes those hairs have a drop of fluid secreted from the grass hanging onto them, and that adds to the itchy reaction.

Stopping the Itch

Although itching has a biological cause that is designed to protect you, sometimes it gets to be just too much. Many people will try anything to stop the constant itch of a bug bite or poison ivy rash. Have you ever noticed those medicines and creams really don�t help stop the itch much?

New studies have found that the signals that cause your brain to create the itch are caused by a complicated chain reaction of events. The receptors on your skin send a signal, then that signal goes to a set of nerve cells deep in your body. It is those specialized nerve cells that control your itching. What this means is it might not be that useful to treat the place that is itchy because that itch is controlled far from that area.

So now you know! That innocent-looking grass might not be so innocent after all.