I still got a "tingle" even when I did not get a rash.
The way to tolerate the adaptation is hot water - spray water as hot as you can stand (without damage) on the affected area and you will get substantial relief for about 12 hours. The relief of hot water on an affected area cannot be understated. A friend used the word "orgasmic" and it fits. I can almost imagine someone purposefully getting the rash just to take a shower.
Finally in this bizarre world of Urushi - when it is cured (warm & humid), NOT dried, the chemical properties change so the coating does not cause problems. If you see photos of Chinese or Japanese rice bows ls that are red or black they are probably wooden bowl coated with Urushi and cured. Urushi as used to make eating utensils.
There is more. There are an incredible number of decorative techniques. Supposedly each village had its own. One of the best is Rankaku. Tiny chips of quail egg shells are placed to form a pattern.
Yes. Similar to poison oak (in irritant effect), we've also got poodle-dog bush out in California. It thrives in post-fire environments, and isn't as well-known as poison oak. The reaction to it is often even worse than for poison oak. And so, before I was better versed in the "fun" plants of our local mountains, I had a run in with some poodle plants, and.. that was a rough few weeks.
I tried everything to make it more tolerable, and hot water was by far the best. The effect didn't last forever, but it was remarkable how it a) was actually pleasurable and b) muted the itchiness for a fairly significant amount of time (although still not as long as I would have liked..).
It's probably still best to avoid hot water until you've done a good job of getting the offending substance off (as best as possible). And near scalding water isn't otherwise great for the skin, so it's probably not something one should do all the time.
But wow, it was amazing for poodle-dog bush.
Same result, without having to get wet. Can spot-kick the "too hot" -> remove the itch phenomenon any time, any place.
I've been thinking of a "low fantasy" story, which is actually Sci-fi under the covers. In it, the "fey" characters are just indigenous people who have immunity to a plant which is similar to poison oak, but which grows in nigh impenetrable hedge like clumps and walls. Your mention of hot water for relief gave me an idea for a story beat, where another character discovers the hot water effect, and simultaneously discovers how to infiltrate the "fey" character's territory and bathing practices similar to Japanese and Finnish bathing.
“ a poison ivy rash (like any other allergic reaction) is caused by the body releasing the chemical histamine to the affected area as part of your immune response. Heat will stimulate the production of histamine, and although this creates an unpleasant itching in the moment, the heat will eventually deplete the affected cells of their histamine, which can provide up to 8 hours of itch relief afterwards. This can be achieved by aiming warm water at the affected area, and slowly increasing the heat to the maximum tolerable temperature until itching stops.”
https://teclabsinc.com/why-you-shouldnt-use-hot-water-on-a-p... (article title referring to not using hot water when washing off oils after initial exposure)
If you want to try urushi, you can go the hazmat suit method (apron, arm length gloves, etc.) Just have situational awareness. I had a friend who tried this. Her cell phone in her pocket rang and without thinking she reached in with her gloved hand and got it out. The urushi went through the pocket and she got a horrible rash! I just bit the bullet and got the rash.
I am no expert on urushi at all - I dabbled mostly. You can mix urushi with all kinds of things and there are perhaps 250 grades, including the most refined which is clear. Urushi was and is used in sword making. So the answer is out there, but I have not done any for a long time. I sort of remember mixing rice-paste and urushi at one point but I might be making that up.
I raised bronze and copper vessels and was trying to come up with ways to complete them. I found out about Jean Dunand, art deco guy, who decorated vessels with urushi and egg shell among other things. I highly recommend finding a good museum nearby and asking them if they have work and know of anyone who does restoration. Then follow those leads.
There are people out there who know and will share knowledge but I am out of touch. My sense is that many people who are interested in Japanese sword making (Katana) end up knowing about lacquer because it was used for handles.
Asian lacquerware, which may be called "true lacquer", are objects coated with the treated, dyed and dried sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum or related trees, applied in several coats to a base that is usually wood.I don’t know if those who consume a lot of mangoes or have grown up with mango trees around them are immune to poison oak’s urushiol(arguably much more concentrated) as its present in stems, saps, leaves, skin more than the flesh..but they likely have more tolerance.
Also..in India, we don’t burn mango leaves or branches as it increases respiratory risks..which ..now that I think about it..is likely due to the urushiol
However, when picking mangoes, you need to be careful about the sap that comes from the broken stem. That will cause a rash, and also disfigure the fruit's skin (which hurts market value). You can Google about it.
[..]Hot Water Treatment Requirements According to USDA APHIS requirements, for rounded varieties (Tommy Atkins, Kent, Haden, Keitt), the treatment for fruit flies requires heating in 115ºF (46.1ºC) water for 75 to 110 minutes, depending on the weight of the mango.[..]
https://www.mango.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Alternative...
In Ayurveda, ripe and unripe mangoes.. mango bark, leaves, roots, seed and flowers are all considered to have medicinal qualities.
This thread made me realize I’m allergic to kiwi’s…
Personally I have OAS with raw carrots, which is likely cross-reactive from my birch pollen allergy. Raw carrots make my throat mildly itchy, but I don't have a food allergy to carrots and I don't get anaphylaxis. Cooked carrots are totally fine, the cooking destroys the protein. This is a common feature of OAS.
Actually, while I did have OAS with carrots in the past, I have recently been undergoing immunotherapy for pollen allergies (plus cat dander and mold) and in addition to my hay fever symptoms disappearing, I no longer get the itchy throat with raw carrots.
This page has a list of common pollen allergies and the foods that they may be cross-reactive with: https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/oral-allergy-syndro...
I discovered it in a funny way - I was in Tokyo trying all sorts of random foods. One night after dinner, in the cab, my throat started to swell. I had a fun time getting some emergency Benadryl from a gas station late at night speaking Japanese poorly.
I had no idea what caused it.
Flash forward a few months, I was at a birthday party back in the U.S., had a slice of kiwi, and felt like I'd swallowed battery acid. Throat immediately closed up, worse than in Tokyo. Thinking back to that previous night, I realized it hadn't been some exotic food - I'd had a salad with kiwi in it.
Fun and rare allergy.
For even more fun, try being allergic to milk. I developed that allergy later in life and hoo boy has it been a humdinger.
Am curious now if I’m brave enough to test poison oak immunity. Probably not..
This may be a reason why babies stick everything in their mouths.
This is the basis of oral immunotherapy, and if you ate latex daily it could possibly desensitize you. However, the immune system is insanely complicated and not fully understood. There are a lot of gotchas here. It may actually be possible to desensitize with skin exposure with careful control of the dose, as there are some 'skin patch" treatments that work for some people although generally not nearly as well as the oral route. Not all allergies are the same, and may not be treatable by exposure in some people. The immunity obtained by immunotherapy may not be the same as natural immunity, it may disappear over time, and the treatment itself can have hard to detect but severe chronic side effects like eosinophilic esophagitis. So don't DIY!
Interestingly I have heard that mango skin contains the same irritant chemical as poison oak. I wonder if eating mango skin would help desensitize people to poison oak. I once ate a very small amount by accident and had a weird feeling in my throat and a bad taste in my mouth for ten minutes afterward, so it sounds pretty unpleasant to me.
Latex may be an exception depending on the mechanism of action, but almost all organic compounds that can be metabolized by your body can be adapted to.
Allergies occur because the immune system incorrectly associates a substance with a bad reaction, and so attacks it as it would a pathogen. The problem is that the allergen isn't a pathogen, and so the immune system can't actually kill it.
There's a treatment for pet/pollen/etc. allergies that works by injecting a very small quantity of the allergenic substance every week, slowly building up tolerance. The body learns that the small dose didn't cause problems, and slowly gets accustomed to higher and higher doses. If the doctor sets the dosage too high, the body has an allergic reaction and then that allergic reaction reinforces the immune system's determination that the substance is dangerous. The treatment response to this is to drastically reduce the dosage and try again.
If the sibling comment's assertation that oral exposure was desensitizing was correct, that wouldn't explain why some people develop food allergies later in life. (As one anecdotal example, my Wilderness First Responder instructor was slowly getting more and more allergic to mangos.)
It was much more rigorous than the author's approach, with weekly doctor visits and taking increasingly large amounts of whatever they were allergic to (starting with micrograms of nut powder).
I think my niece had the best time as she eventually was advised to start eating daily measured amounts of nutella.
I mention this mostly because I do think the author was a bit cavalier in his approach (mostly because it's hard to accurately judge dosage from wild plants) but also to just spread the word that the allergy desensitization therapies are out there and quite effective and life changing.
There's still today another camp: Many allergists still preach avoidance however and put fear into worried parents about the dangers of oral immunotherapy.
Because it can be hard to find an office that will run your immunotherapy program for you, or costly if you do, many parents are doing it on their own, following dosing protocols they find in Facebook groups or on YouTube. The ones I've seen have been supportive and helpful, not quackery.
Meanwhile the medical establishment is finding ways to monetize this immunotherapy by turning, for example, peanut doses into pharmaceuticals, e.g. Palforzia, which is a recently FDA approved "food allergy treatment" and is in fact simply peanut protein.
Although many do achieve remission, there is no guarantee that the allergy is gone for good. The immunity obtained by immunotherapy is not necessarily the same as natural immunity. It may not be complete and it may not be long lasting. The immune system has a long, long memory and we do not have any reliable tests to determine if anyone's immunity is permanent. For that reason allergists recommend continuing dosing indefinitely to maintain immunity, and continuing to carry an epi-pen. For the rest of your life. You will get sick of peanut butter.
All that said, we are doing sublingual immunotherapy for our son. But I am hoping that within his lifetime new treatments are developed that will free him from allergies completely.
Precise control of the immune system would be the holy grail of medicine IMO. Dysfunctions of the immune system are at the root of so many diseases, not just allergies. If the immune system could be easily trained to ignore or attack arbitrary targets at will it could likely cure almost any infection or cancer. And I bet it could be useful in treating the diseases of aging as well.
Because immunotherapy can be dangerous, even when conducted in a doctor's office with supervision. I know two people with serious adverse effects requiring getting rushed to the ER.
We think we know a lot about the human body, and we do, but our immune and nervous system and its myriads of interaction paths are to a large part a mystery, with most of what we think we "know" being observed knowledge without understanding the foundation.
The author may not have had access to a physician with experience in this.
I live in the part of the US where the only physician access is what can be afforded out of pocket (not much). Self initiated treatments are the order of the day.
This guy should be aware of said story.
It's not exactly a _toxin_, just sometimes trigger allergic reactions.
I can’t condone it but I can’t rule out that some variant of this might work.
The reaction to urushiol is an allergic reaction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urushiol
and a vaccine is under development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDC-APB
Some people just don’t react to it while others do.
I had hay fever as a kid which developed into asthma in my 30s, I had immune therapy from a specialist who gave me increasingly concentrated shots of allergens weekly for years. After a while my asthma went into remission and I quit taking medicine for it. I still have hay fever symptoms some times but they aren’t too bad and I rarely medicate for them because I get side effects even from some of the “non-drowsy” antihistamines.
Even though it is done under medical supervision, it is a controversial treatment. It’s banned in the U.K. They’d have me sit around the office for 30 minutes in case I had a bad reaction which they could usually treat with an injection of epinephrine but could be lethal if somebody was really unlucky.
Note there is at least one report of treatment of poison ivy sensitivity this way
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(09)01972-1/ful...
The thing is I got a treatment from my doc which was somewhat evidence based, compare that to all the bizzaro ideas circulating such as Edgar Cayce’s idea that you could treat hay fever with an alcohol tincture of ragweed. (Got that from a herbalist once, it does seem harmless)
Edit: OK, not quite. The Japanese lacquer tree was used which produces the same "active" substance which is what slowly kills you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_vernicifluum
Joe Rogan isn't the best source of medical advice, but he has been smeared by the media on behalf of big pharma. His approach to treating COVID came from a doctor and was not "horse paste"... CNN was proven to have edited video of Joe Rogan to make his skin look off-color. Also, never forget that the mainstream media said the "vaccines" would stop transmission of the virus when all the experts knew it wouldn't do so, from the start. They also lied about side effects.
This is in contrast to the experience many kids have in the US of sporadic exposure and no immunity. Apparently intense sustained exposure is required.
Given that I know dozens of people who demonstrably lost their sensitivity to poison oak via the accidental chronic exposure regimen I outlined above, at the very least it should raise a scientific question. It would be easier to dismiss if it was an isolated case or two. No one exposes themselves like that intentionally.
Maybe there's a bit of short term immunity from severe exposure. I've never tested that since the discomfort from an intense rash makes me avoid exposure like the plague for a few years.
East Asian countries have a long tradition of lacquerware, which is made with urushiol-containing saps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacquerware
In fact urushi is the Japanese word for lacquer, the plant is in the genus Toxicodendron.
Like most jobs until recently, making lacquerware was hereditary, and (clearly) the people making it were able to withstand sustained and direct exposure. It's possible that there is a genetic proclivity involved in ability to do the work, but just as clearly, there is hyposensitivity gained in exposure.
Let me back that up with a citation. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1839723/
I’ve also never heard from others that your body gets used to it. I’ve always heard it gets worse every time, which was my experience. Obviously anecdata.
Something similar happened to my father (we had moved to a new house that had a large patch that kept coming back) and the year before he finally managed to get rid of it, his reaction was so bad he actually couldn't eat cashews for a long time, since they can have traces of the urishol.
His pickup bed was full of poison oak and landscaping tools, arms and hands filthy from the work.
He warned me not to touch anything and not shake his hand etc. saying he's covered in poison oak but immune from the frequent exposure.
It's everywhere around here and I react horribly to it, but this experience lends some credence to your claims...
The component that causes the reaction is not the allergen. It's a chemical that reacts with multiple proteins in the body - it's a very reactive molecule and not at all selective.
So theoretically, subsequent exposures would create new antigens each time - molecules your immune system hasn't seen before.
I'm not actually sure what the lesson he was trying to teach their was but in hindsight it's a cool flex lol
What does the military do for treatment of the rashes?
My wife is allergic to a plant we have in the garden, 5 years of rashes and it’s not getting better.
It turns out that Urushiol shows up in some surprising places, including mango skin, which I discovered later in life after peeling a bunch of mangoes to make a mango salad. Apparently the husks of cashew nuts are notoriously bad for the workers who deal with them too (although the nuts themselves are perfectly safe)..
I don't think I'm likely to deliberately eat anything with urushiol in it, but I must admit, the idea of being able to train my immune system to deal with it is kind of appealing.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_succedaneum
Also, I have an extreme sensitivity to poison ivy and react to mango and peach leaves. Perhaps there's a clue here? Anyway, I'd be grateful to understand why I spontaneously developed an allergy to leather, which really hinders my work at times.
As always, Chesterton's Fence applies to medicine.
Be very wary of anything outside of healthy diet, sleep, exercise, and relationships.
If you don't know why your body is fevering, don't lower the fever. If you don't know why your blood pressure is high, don't lower it.
We in the medical field vastly overestimate our understanding of human physiology.
And if you don't know why you have cancer, don't do anything about it?
Like, I get the point with fever (which is a known defense mechanism), but high blood pressure is a big problem in the long run and even if it's just a symptom, not doing anything about it is not likely to be the best move.
Humans evolved to reproduce as a species successfully, not to ensure the optimum survival of an individual. Not everything your body does is in your best interests: something that tends to be the best solution for long-term survival for a group might be entirely wrong for your specific case.
That's an overstatement. More than one thing can be true. What you said is valid, useful and mostly true, and so is what skepticalmd said above.
So by taking some substance it seem I became more sensitive to it's side effects, not less.
Those most at risk of developing anaphylaxis from bee stings are not those that get some as rarely as the typical population, or as often as experienced and busy beekeepers wearing mediocre protection, it was the hobbyists wearing complete protection that only got stung once or twice a year.
Made me start wearing a little less protection for fear of developing a stronger allergy.
So my best guess is that when you live a life indoors for years without much exposure to natural outdoor bacteria/viruses/plants, and then you encounter a human disease, your immune system goes into overdrive and misidentifies the culprit.
There are two types of people; those that are allergic to poison ivy, and those that will become allergic eventually.
By way of contrast, I've told my doctor about sinus rinsing, and she was not disapproving. But she said, "a lot of my patients do this and they seem to like it."
I think this is a better response than blanket disapproval. The corresponding response to urushiol desensitization would be "There's no guidance on this. Be very careful! Here are some risks." Which is the best you should expect from an establishment doctor.
A homeopathic doctor would tell you a lot of stuff that might or might not be accurate or safe.
Not in the USA. In the USA doctors can absolutely recommend non-medical treatments like supplements and homeopathy and other crap. Each doctor has their own threshold of comfort in what they will and won't recommend. But as you yourself then followed up, your doctor said when you brought up nasal rinses, "a lot of my patients do this and they seem to like it." Other doctors will go so far as to suggest them, mine has, and he was right. My doctor (same doc for my wife) will bring up lots of things, and explains his position on them all clearly, even explaining risks and things. He even went so far one time as to suggest a Chinese medicine treatment for a rare disorder my wife has. He didn't say it would work, but said he's heard about it and it should be risk free if she wanted to try it.
Doctors are allowed to recommend lots of things, it's the presentation and outcome that define liability. If a Dr says "you should shove bees up your butt to cure this ear infection" then yeah, they're going to get in trouble. But it's a lot less black and white than you seem to feel.
Note: I've worked in real-medicine healthcare for 9 years now.
That's the problem. The concept of what is reasonable is too nebulous to rely on.
Also people are quite simply really dumb. You can make some innocuous statement like "others have found nasal rinses to be beneficial", and some idiot will get themselves hospitalized with a draining abscess in their face. It turns out that person decided their nasal rinse was going to be alternating eucalyptus oil and bone broth because someone on Facebook said that was the most healing, and they claim that you as their doctor said it was OK. The case gets escalated to you having to explain to the board that you didn't make any such claim, but because there is a record of you saying that nasal rinses can be beneficial, it can be at the discretion of a "reasonable person" if that skirted too close to their line of culpability for the injury that the person sustained.
The solution is to stick close to what is accepted medicine, and if people want to complain about establishment medicine, then let them. Doctors understand there is safety in the herd.
In other words, eating poison ivy absolutely will work. But nobody knows how much you should eat. And the leaves aren't fungible, so how can anyone tell you how many to eat even if they knew how much you should eat?
the way i was taught to do it is to take just the tip of a leaf from a young plant and eat that, put it on my tongue and swallow it.