Poison Ivy Thread!

[Platinum Pete]

Rubbed bleach on my legs today trying to get this poison oak to go away.
Yesterday I tried Tecnu Extreme, vineagar & baking soda paste, oatmeal bath, hydrocortison cream, Ivarest, and various anti-itch lotions. All that plus aleve and benadryl. Some progress.

[iceman]

The bleach will work but you gotta pop the blisters and then use the bleach. It'll burn the fuck out of you if you try to do too big and area or use too much bleach, trust me on this one.

[stalefish3169]

I'm open to ayurvedic, eastern medicine, foods, plants, ointments, etc.

Rubbed bleach on my legs today trying to get this poison oak to go away.

Geez man, that's quite the downward spiral. I've been there many times. It sucks and I feel for you.

You guys should seriously do some research and not be putting bleach and gasoline on open rashes. Bad ideas.

[mobygrape]

Have had good luck with swimming in the ocean after picking up poison ivy rash.
salt water bath is an alternative if you're far from the coast. But the ocean water really seems to dry it out well ( better than a salty bath)
fels naptha laundry soap works well, too

[SkeezeBall]

I've had poison ivy probably 15 times in my life, had it so bad once when i was a kid my eye swelled shut, and the roids have been the only thing that works for me. Plus i'm totally ripped now!

[iceman]

There's no video but every single other fucking thing is perfect about this gem of the American Music Thing.

You owe me:

[Diamond Joe]

^^ bwahahaaha that just made the annual "I have poison ivy" thread a CLASSIC

anyhow, I'll throw in my two cents

http://www.zanfel.com/help/
/thread

[snowsprite]

That's a great song!

My poison ivy is FINALLY fading now. Jeez. That first post was like 2 weeks go. Couple it w/ the heatwave and I've really been in itchy, oozy, sweaty misery. I hope I never get this crap again. and next time I'm bee-lining for the Technu the minute I suspect I've touched this crap.

[4matic]

Have had good luck with swimming in the ocean after picking up poison ivy rash.
salt water bath is an alternative if you're far from the coast. But the ocean water really seems to dry it out well ( better than a salty bath)
fels naptha laundry soap works well, too

Just a chlorinated pool works well too. The chlorine is a great disinfectant and also dries it out. Myth that it would spread to someone else.

[soul_skier]

zanfel.

Takes itchy, oozing, painful blisters/rash and you are completely back to normal within 24 hours.

[iceman]

I had never heard of zanfel until Diamond Joe posted about it up there^^^but it sure does sound like the magic bullet. Awesome news.

[stalefish3169]

Spray Lights Up The Chemical That Causes Poison Ivy Rash

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012...oison-ivy-rash

You'd think that someone who is a science correspondent and is as allergic to poison ivy as I am would have heard of urushiol, but no. I didn't recognize the word when I saw it a week or so ago. Now, thanks to my new beat (Joe's Big Idea), I'm allowed to dig a little deeper into stories, and what I learned about urushiol is pretty amazing.

It all started with a press release I received from the American Chemical Society highlighting an article in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Urushiol is the oily sap on poison ivy leaves that causes all the problems. In the paper, Rebecca Braslau and her colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz, describe a nontoxic spray that will fluoresce in the presence of urushiol.


Braslau has gotten that horrible poison ivy rash more times than she'd care to remember. She knows how to avoid the plant herself, but she has a problem. "My husband's a geologist. He tramps around in the Santa Cruz mountains," she tells Shots. Her husband is one of those lucky people who isn't allergic to the oil in poison ivy.

"When we first got together he wasn't very careful about it, and so he would get it on his arm and he wouldn't even know it," Braslau says. And then he'd put his arm around her and she'd break out. So Braslau got to thinking: "There's got to be some way to deal with this, and I just had this eureka moment because I thought about it for a couple years."

The eureka moment involved a class of chemicals known as nitroxides. Braslau was able to develop a nitroxide-based solution that would react only with the oil in poison ivy. By adding a fluorescent dye that would show up only when the reaction occurred, she could spray her nitroxide solution on a surface, and if the poison ivy oil were there, the surface would light up.

She says until there is thorough safety testing, it's probably best to use the spray on inert things like shoes or backpacks to see if the oil is there.

"Ultimately I would love to be able to spray it on my arm, or my husband or my dog, and find out where this stuff is," she says.

The compound Braslau describes in the article is just a proof of concept. She says she needs to find a better dye, maybe even one that will light up without having to shine a fluorescent light on it. She's got a patent and would be happy to hear from potential investors.

So, OK, Braslau's spray lets you know you've been exposed to urushiol. Then what, I asked her?

"TecNu," she replied.

TecNu is a water-free cleanser. There are other soaps that work getting the oil off — for example, that stuff called Goop car mechanics use to degrease their hands, Braslau says, and some dish-washing detergents. But she relies on TecNu.

Mark Christensen, a chemist at Oregon State University, works on TecNu for its manufacturer, Tec Labs of Albany, Ore.

I asked him why TecNu was so good at removing poison ivy oil from someone's skin, and he said it was because it contains a benzene ring which has ortho hydroxyls, and "then para to that off of that benzene ring is a long alkyl unsaturated chain, 15 to 18 carbons."

Not quite the simple explanation I was hoping for. After he explained it a bit more, the idea seems to be the chemicals in TecNu can mix with poison ivy oil so you can wash it off your skin.

One other interesting thing about urushiol: It's harvested from the Japanese lacquer tree and prized as a lacquer for artwork. Antoine Wilmering is an expert in urushi lacquerware, as it is known at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. He says you apply multiple layers of the lacquer with a brush, cure and polish each layer, "and then you get these really beautiful shining surfaces."

The good news is if you properly cure the lacquer, it not only hardens but it also loses its allergenic properties. But an object covered with improperly cured urushiol lacquer can still cause a rash.

[Shredhead]

FYI: Don't ever burn poison ivy or oak. The urushiol will volatilize, become airborne and can be inhaled, really fucking you up.

[Alaskan Rover]

I don't have any of my Foxfire books with me right now, but it would be interesting what remedies Foxfire has for poison ivy/oak/sumac. I had a fairly awful case this summer...took 2 weeks...arms and legs. Not fun. Swimming made it feel better.

--

[iceman]

I don't have any of my Foxfire books with me right now, but it would be interesting what remedies Foxfire has for poison ivy/oak/sumac. I had a fairly awful case this summer...took 2 weeks...arms and legs. Not fun. Swimming made it feel better.

Foxfire, page 240

Well that that took ten seconds.

[snow_slider]

Poison Ivy - I hate the dreaded weed! The reason gasoline works to rid the skin of the oil is because it contains naptha - same stuff that's in lighter fluid. Just get Fels-naptha soap (in the laundry aisle in the grocery store) and you can rid your skin of the oil if you wash the area with in 30 or so minutes. Fels-naptha also has naptha in it and is way less nasty that scrubbing down with gas.

Zanfel - stuff works pretty well, but is expensive. If I recall correctly, has the same ingredients in it as spermicide. Whatever - it works better than anything else I've tried for reducing the outbreak.

There's also a product around called something like Ivy-Block. It's a lotion you put on your skin (it rubs the lotion on it's skin...) before you come into contact with poison ivy. The lotion turns chalky on your skin and absorbs the urushiol before it can actually contact your skin. The obvious disadvantage is that you have to know you're about to contact poison ivy. I used to slather this stuff on my legs before mountain biking of some ivy-ridden trails. Never got an outbreak with that stuff on.

[DeathVan]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Wandering Bear
-he can also fix vaginas!