along with the first stripers of the year for me, so comes the first case of poison ivy. :af: i start my season off fishing the CT river which is basically the breeding ground for super poison ivy/sumac/etc.... anyway, i found a pretty good site to help undertand and treat this ailment. anyone have any home remedies or advice on treatment?

Poison Ivy Site (http://poisonivy.aesir.com/)

Use stick deoderant to dry it up quick. I keep some mitchum just for that make sure you LABEL it or something. The deoderant stops moisture from forming and aids in drying it out.

Just go to the Emergency room and get a Script for Prednizone. I had it real bad last year and went and got this...Itching was gone w/ in 2 days.....The only way to go

tOBY TOBY TOBY :)

TIMBER U R 2 FUNNY ,,,, CHIX PROBLEMS WITH ALL THE SMELLY STUFF ON ...LOL

VB

Caladryl - Combo Calamine lotion & Benadryl (stops itch and dries it up quickly), no prescription needed.....

bleach..leave it on till you can't stand it anymore, then wash it off with water.......kills it dead. gone, no waiting.

Originally posted by capesams
bleach..leave it on till you can't stand it anymore, then wash it off with water.......kills it dead. gone, no waiting.

I did this once in my young & foolish days, ended up in a local ER with a staph infection!

Toby,

Didn't your mother tell you not to wipe with leaves? :bshake:

:happy: :happy: :happy:

I have tuff hide. works great for me.

Wouldn't know---I'm not allergic to it. :D

Years ago when I was in the Boy Sciuts, some genius brought some back for firewood :eek: Half the troop would up in the hospital from breathing it. Didn't even make my eyes water.

not allergic yet Mike.

it is an acquired reaction. get;'s worse the more you come in contact with it.

haven't had much of a problem either but I know better than to tempt it :(

I second the prendizone. Go to your doctor. I had a wicked case last year and spent 100 bucks on overy home remedy available and the only thing that killed it for me was a trip to my doctors

I am the king of poison ivy. Get a shot, it helps BIG TIME! I don't waste time any more with home remedies.
Once I get in contact with that chit it gets in my blood and I'm done.

i only have a little bit so far, but i know more is on the horizon. anyway, i thought this little tidbit from that link was kind of interesting:

Honey
As for susceptibility to PI, you may not know that spring honey in the areas where it grows is usually loaded with PI pollen. I believe that regular use of raw, local, spring honey has rendered me immune to the effects of the sap. I worked in apple orchards for many years, with frequent, almost constant problems with poison ivy. When I began keeping bees and eating honey every day, I no longer was affected by poison ivy. It has been many years since I've had any reaction at all, though I sometimes walk right thru the stuff

this will sound alittle sick but this is what i do.pick the swollen areas with a pin.just enough to open them up.then douse the whole area with rubbing alcohol.burns like hell,but it'll dry the stuff up quick.

guzz

If it gets nice and swollen, take a hot shower, as hot as you can, then itch it till it oozes (feels really good). Then make a thick slurry with baking soda and water, smear it all over and stay really still till it dries. I get it really bad and this works great for me, something in the baking soda neutralizes the acids in the essential oils of the PI and will stop the spread.
When I fish the River I wear long everything and gloves...this seems to help me, Toby.
Love, Rick

I've read ENOUGH about poison IVY....man i hate the stuff more than the taliban. When i was younger i was in California and accidentilly was playing hide and seek with my youngest nephews and having only shorts on got it bad....real bad. Apparently it was poison oak ...and in cal it turns red so i didnt realize it was poison ivy's cousin just a different color. I just went to the site you listed to see if my remedy was in there and its not.

first a few facts.... poison ivy is an oil ok... and when you get it on your skin it penetrates the outer layers and gets on the red
flesh underneath and reacts with the blisters pushing up.
on any tree you can tell its poison ivy by looking for the hairy roots that help it to cling to the tree so it can climb up.

IF you try and weed whack poison IVY you will only slow it down
and at 10,000 Revolutions per minute from the average weed whacker you fling it at your ankles face and other exposed areas.
Poison Ivy oil /juice can penetrate dungarees very easily.

the best way to get rid of poison IVY thats growing is to spray it
with a real strong solution of ROUND UP (need four days of sun after you spray) which will work systemically meaning whats sprayed on the leaves will works its way all the down to the roots and kill them. Other than that you have to smother it. Use black plastic, old carpeting but keep it covered getting no sun.it hates that. periodically in spring i look for the huge vines that are as big as a silver dollar and cut them with loppers so theres less of it in my area.

after getting poison ivy you have to try to dry it up obviously and many oil busting techniques are previously mentioned with the exception of an old home remedy of laundry soap....you know that tan kind of smelly real strong bar soap. All the rememdies
except for getting a shot are all topically applied. The problem is
that at night when you sleep you scratch the infected area and then scratch elsewhere and spread the oil to uninfected areas.
to prevent this cover it up GOOD so this cannot happen in your sleep. Salt water does wonders if its warm enough to swim.

my favorite remedy is EATING brewers yeast in yogurt. Brewers yeast is a by product of making beer....its the left over yeast they added to make the beer ferment and its extremely healthy for you.
its also called nutritional yeast NOT to be confused with bread rising yeast or yeast infection. ITs whats in most of the body building formulas too. ITs full of all the B- Vitamins and will turn the MOST stubborn case of poison IVY around in a day or two so you start winning the WAR. There's two kinds you can buy....the flake type (go to your local health food store ok)
that you can stir in milk (makes milk taste like the old days) and the powdered brewers yeast which is a bit more expensive.
it will CURE ANY skin problem like magic ACNE ,poison IVY, rashes...
you name it... When used in conjuntion with topical remedies
you wont have it very long. then ummm dont walk though it.:D

Toby go see a doc, no sense in getting sidelined with a secondary infection. You'll probably be prescribed some kind of steroid to reduce the inflamation.

If it's oral prednisone, take it easy for the next few days, it can make you moody.

Raw aloe straight from the plant.

I don't get it either. I have a friend that says everybody gets it I told him he was wrong. After a while he points out some of the stuff and says if you don't get rub your arm with it. I did and like I said I don't get it. Now he belives me. THomT

The suggestion of using a "cheap" non-scented stick deodorant is a good one as a preventative. It has a benzochorium chloride base which essentially is clay-like. This will act as a barrier to the spores if they do contact your skin. There is also a commercial product based on this simple technology called Ivy Block.
If you have inhaled spores and are systemicly symptomatic then see a MD. They will probably write you for predinisone but don't suggest it; let the doctor make the call. You can take 50mg of benedryl caps but it may make you drowsey and it's like hunting cow bass with a snoopy rod i.e your chances of success exist but are remote....

spores are from mushrooms....

with regards to Poison Ivy, etc. "spores" are like pollen....
Yup...spores..

as they both blow around in the air.....but poison ivy doesnt produce spores ....it produces pollen.

according to a dermotologist I spook with, the only way you can get it is when the oils from the plant come in contact with your skin.....YEAH FREAKIN RIGH!

but some people are more sensitive than others.....and the thing is and i've read a great deal on the subject being that i catch it if i even give poison IVY a dirty look.... that the oils are viable for a year and a half later on clothing... uwell gibbons used to suggest
eating the little blue berries to build an imunity to it and i thought that was a real nutty idea and he didnt live that long.

i hate the stuff so bad i travel with a pair of loppers in my car so when i hike or fish in an area thats rampant with it i can clear a wide path in the fall so i dont have to travel way around it.

the lot my family had owned was so loaded with the crap that we had to build a stone retaining wall out in front and bring in 3 feet of fill to kill it off. [ smother it to death ]

Hey, Raven . good info . thank you.

Burn it off with either an iron or cigarette buts.

Ivy Block is made by a division of the company I and Mr. Kav used to work for. It is actually made using a bentonite, which is an alumina/silica formulation.

At the plant I worked at, we used an alumina (aluminum oxide) slurry to manufacture our products. While I, too, don't get poison ivy, other guys did, and they swore by applying the alumina slurry we used to it, letting it dry on their skin, and the rash would dry up within a day and be gone. This makes sense, as alumina is extremely hydroscopic (adsorbs moisture), and would also soak up the oils.

That is probably why the deodorant works, as many contain aluminium oxide.

BTW, the Ivy Block is not marketed as a "cure". It is to be used BEFORE possible exposure to the ivy, and creates a barrier so that you don't get it in the first place.

Having had it on my face once I avoid it like the plague, but sometimes you just aren't thinking when you're out and then it's too late. I find one thing that's particularly soothing if I get it is soaking in salt water. It's very cooling and the salt has the drying effect that helps.
I remember as a kid my father being rather anal about poison ivy, but that was because if he got it, he got it bad enough to have to go to the emergency room for cortisone shots. But I do remember anytime he thought we'd been exposed he'd make us scrub down with "green soap" It was a liquid soap that was supposed to get the oil off your skin if you hadn't started scratching it yet. I don't really know whether it worked or not, but we really didn't get poison ivy much as kids so maybe it really did work. Never been able to find it on any store shelves, though. Plain looking glass bottle with a plain lable that just said "Green Soap" on it. Don't know if anyone else ever heard of this stuff.

your skin is one of your biggest elimination organs due to its large surface area and is a good indicator when problems arise that your liver isnt too happy with your diet, Then you have to go on a cleansing diet for a week to give your liver a break. So when you come in contact with poison ivy oil that penetrates your skin and lands on your sub cutaneous layers your body has to form blisters to excrete it. so topical remedies work good but are rather superficial in their application so thats why i use brewers yeast along with becoming pink (calamine lotion)and attack the poison ivy from both directions.:btu: