What Is the Best Food to Eat for Itchy Skin?

Whether it's a mosquito bite or an underlying health condition, there are a number of reasons why your skin can feel itchy. There are likewise a number of ways to ease that irritation — for instance, you can incorporate the best foods to eat for itchy skin into your diet.

First, the causes of itchiness: According to the Mayo Clinic, here are some of the common culprits for itchy, inflamed or scaly skin:

• Dry skin (or nutritional deficiencies that lead to dry skin)
• Skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, scabies or parasites
• Burns and scarring
• Insect bites
• Internal conditions like liver disease, kidney disease, anemia, diabetes, thyroid problems, HIV, multiple myeloma or lymphoma
• Mood disorders like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression
• Allergic reactions, which can cause hives or rashes

How you relieve itching ultimately depends on the root cause, per the Mayo Clinic. For instance, you might apply anti-itch cream to quell an eczema flare-up or an insect bite, whereas prescription medication may help you tame itchy skin related to a mood disorder or underlying disease.

Still, your diet may also help with itching and other skin irritation. Here's how to relieve itching naturally with the best food for itchy skin.

So, what's good for itching? Foods that contain vitamin E may help.

Here's why: Vitamin E has antioxidant properties, meaning it helps protect your cells (including skin cells) against damage, according to Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute.

Applied topically, it can relieve skin inflammation and swelling from exposure to UV rays. This may help prevent the dryness or itching that can come with a sunburn, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

A small November 2015 study of 42 people in the ‌Journal of Research in Medical Sciences‌ found that taking vitamin E supplements helped relieve dry, itchy skin associated with atopic dermatitis (also called eczema) better than a placebo. However, larger studies are needed to better establish this link.

If you prefer to harness vitamin E's skin-protecting abilities through diet alone, it's likely best to supplement sources of vitamin E with plenty of vitamin C-rich foods that help skin (more on that later), per the Linus Pauling Institute.

Foods high in vitamin E include:

• Nuts and seeds
• Fruit like avocado and kiwi
• Vegetables like spinach, red bell pepper and asparagus
• Shrimp
• Canned salmon

Adults should aim to eat 15 milligrams of the nutrient every day, according to the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Another group of foods to eat for itchy skin are sources of vitamin C. Similar to vitamin E, vitamin C's benefits include antioxidant properties that help protect your skin from damage, according to the Linus Pauling Institute.

These antioxidant effects may also help ease inflammation (and the red, dry or itchy skin that can come with it) from conditions like eczema and psoriasis, per an August 2017 review in ‌Nutrients‌.

What's more, vitamin C helps your body create collagen, a type of protein that makes up your skin and helps keep it elastic and hydrated, per the Linus Pauling Institute. As we age, collagen production decreases. But getting enough vitamin C can support collagen production and skin health throughout your life.

Dry skin is also more common as you age, according to the ‌Nutrients‌ review. And one of the ways to stop itching from age-related dry skin may be — you guessed it — vitamin C. Indeed, research suggests that vitamin C can help the skin protect itself against water loss.

However, more studies are needed to evaluate whether these effects are also linked to vitamin C from your diet, as most research focuses on vitamin C-enriched creams and lotions.

Here's what vitamin C-rich foods may help your skin (and overall wellbeing):

• Fruits like guava, kiwi, berries and citrus fruit (although citrus foods may be inflammatory and worsen certain skin conditions in some people, such as those with eczema or rosacea)
• Vegetables like bell peppers, broccoli and Brussels sprouts

Per the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, here's how much vitamin C adults should eat each day:

• ‌People assigned female at birth:‌ 75 mg
• ‌People assigned male at birth:‌ 90 mg

You can also take probiotics for itching — and you can get these beneficial bacteria in foods that heal your skin.

Probiotics can alter your skin microbiome for the better, which may help prevent or treat itchy skin, rashes and other symptoms of conditions like eczema, acne or sun damage, according to a March 2015 review in ‌Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition‌. The review also found that probiotics can help with skin inflammation from an allergy.

Because of this, some of the best foods to eat when you have skin allergy may include natural sources of probiotics such as:

• Yogurt
• Kefir
• Certain cheeses, like gouda and cheddar cheese
• Buttermilk
• Sauerkraut
• Kimchi
• Kombucha

Probiotics are also available in supplement form. Talk to your doctor about which strain and dosage is best for you before trying one, though, per the Mayo Clinic.

You may also be able to reduce itching by eating foods that contain a type of flavonoid called quercetin, according to Mount Sinai. Flavonoids are a type of naturally occurring pigment that give plants their color. They're also antioxidants that can help protect your cells from damage.

And there's early evidence to show that quercetin in particular may be good for a rash. In laboratory settings, quercetin helped prevent immune system cells from releasing histamines, a type of chemical that's responsible for allergic responses and the ensuing symptoms like sniffles, watery eyes, facial swelling and hives. In other words, there's potential for quercetin to help you avoid itchy skin from an allergic response.

However, there needs to be studies that investigate this link in humans to establish whether quercetin is indeed connected to a decreased allergic reaction.

In the meantime, though, it doesn't hurt to eat the flavonoid — it's plentiful in nutritious plant foods that are part of any balanced diet, even if there's not sufficient proof that it's the best fruit for skin allergies. Per Mount Sinai, good sources of quercetin include:

• Citrus fruits
• Grapes
• Dark cherries
• Dark berries like blueberries and blackberries
• Apples
• Onions
• Parsley
• Sage
• Olive oil
• Tea
• Red wine

While there's no diet-related way to cure body itching instantly, eating anti-inflammatory foods may help prevent or treat skin irritation.

That's because many skin conditions cause inflammation (think: eczema and psoriasis), which can lead to dry, itchy, scaly or otherwise irritated skin, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Foods can't cure these skin diseases, but noshing on the following anti-inflammatory ingredients may help, per Harvard Health Publishing.

• Olive oil
• Tomatoes
• Nuts and seeds (as long as you don't have an allergy)
• Fish
• Dark leafy greens
• Fruit