Posted on 05/22/2024 1:09:02 PM PDT by Red Badger
How far would you go to avoid a rash from a common pest on hikes?
Well, one reporter for The Wall Street Journal has gone as far as to blend poison oak into smoothies and mix them into his salad bowl — all in a bid to develop an immunity towards the chemical irritants found in the plant's leaves.
Jeff Horwitz, who usually reports on technology, wrote about his slightly mad mission for a feature article in the Saturday newspaper.
"I started eating poison oak in January, when the first buds began to swell on the hazardous plant’s bare stems," he wrote, explaining that he was sick of getting poison oak rashes during mushroom foraging trips in California.
And surprisingly, despite some stern written warnings he came across during his research, Horwitz's newfound habit of eating poison oak seems to have built up a resistance to the shrub and its plant resin urushiol, also found in poison ivy and sumac, and which causes the rash.
After ingesting an increasing amount of poison oak leaves in his smoothies and salads — the "taste of young poison oak is surprisingly mild, grassy and only a little bit tart," he notes — he didn't get any signs in his body that it was stressed out from the experiment, except for red rashes here and there. He also experienced an itchy butt — presumably from pooping out the remnants.
At the end of his experiment, Horwitz says he could rub a poison oak leaf on his skin and not experience any rash breakouts.
"My poison-oak salad days are over, but I do intend to nibble a few leaves here and there when hiking around the Bay Area in an effort to maintain my resistance on a permanent basis," he wrote.
Horwitz got his idea from reading about how California's indigenous tribes would make tea from poison oak roots and eat the leaves to develop immunity. He also read online forums where outdoors enthusiasts discussed noshing on poison ivy or poison oak helped them develop a resistance, though much of literature he consulted warned not to eat the plants.
In the first half of the 20th Century, pharmaceutical companies capitalized on this folk remedy and sold to the public poison ivy pills and shots in order to prevent spring and summertime rashes, according to Horwitz. But for unknown reasons, Big Pharma stopped making these urushiol extract medicines, making the larger public forget there's a preventative treatment for the rash beyond a good shower, antihistamine pills or hydrocortisone cream.
But before you reach for your blender or visit Erewhon and ask them to drop a couple of poison oak leaves into your smoothie order, Horwitz reports that pharmacologist Mahmoud ElSohly, who has been working with medical startup Hapten Sciences, has developed a new urushiol drug that would prevent poison ivy or poison oak rashes.
The medication could be available to the public as soon as 2026.
another moron steps up on the soap box...
Reminicent of my esperience - except the cat never goes outside except by accident. I have extensive training in immunology, but am actually a CV physiologist.
As a farm kid, I was often exposed to poison ivy; rarely, poison oak. Never a problem. While an undergrad, I sometimes picked the species for botany herbarium collections. (snark - they didn’t want to reciprocate by collecting crotalids).
Years later, I ran a biomed company. My chief tool and die maker had a Wisconsin farm (NOT a hobby farm) and raised Scotch Highland cattle. I ate 1.5/year.
One spring I was out helping him with a barn raising when a neighbor stopped by to tell him he has cattle out on the county road. Yup! He had just separated calves from mammas and the calves were bawling.
One mama took down two fences to get to the complainer. We rounded them up and restrung the fencing. He warned me - there is poison ivy on the fence lines.
I said something along the line of, “Don’r worry, I don’t react.” The next two days were an epiphany.
I could densesitize, or avoid. Now on my Florida acres, I avoid and kill the MF plants.
Highlander cattle.....There aint a fence made to hold em. I once put a 9mm right between the eyes. We were butchering that day. The steer was still at a full run five miles away when he finally dropped. A very rugged breed.
A safe and effective urushiol drug.
Dead Husband? Private Investigator?
Hey Dude, why don’t you try that with cyanide?
California ground squirrels have a similar tactic for developing immunity to rattlesnake venom.
When they said I wouldn’t believe what happened next, I thought they were going to say his mouth and throat got super itchy and his butt was covered with hives and he was $#itting green blood. That I would not believe. But that he developed immunity? I believe that all day long. It’s not as funny though.
Thanks! The only options I had at the time were calamine lotion and/or getting on prednisone.
No, your thread's title isn't any more deserving of attention that anybody else's.
I don't know why I even bother posting, being as your persistence shows you don't care that you're being rude and inconsiderate.
Exactly, I concur and just adding in my own 2¢ as I think poison ivy is associated with too many “old wives’ tales.”
It is a complicated condition, not as simple an “allergy” as caused by many other substances, such as pollens.
The older poison ivy “immunization” shots made country doctors extra money every summer, but they barely worked if they worked at all. I suspect that is mainly why they are not available any more.
And although corticosteroids (strong creams for small areas aand pills for bigger ones) do help to reduce poison ivy/oak/sumac symptoms, the anti-histamines like the article mentioned do NOT work at all.
Steroid pills are better than steroid shots — it is a 3+ week reaction, and a steroid shot is long gone before that, and the itch and rash will flare back up. Pills (typically prednisone) also work just as fast and are just as strong. “Dose packs” taper too quickly and do not last long enough.
His girlfriend has the worst “yeast” infection ever!
I was a young man once, and I did foolish things, but that...that sounds like a death wish! He is damned lucky he didn't pay for that with his life.
In the military, when you get a lot of young guys together between that ages of 17 and 21, you see it all, don't you?
I remember reading something back during Gulf War II about a Marine or soldier in Iraq, who was clowning around with a ram in an enclosure. He had his helmet on and everything, was on his hands and knees while his grinning buddies and an assortment of Iraqi civilians, adults and kids looked on.
He had his head down showing the top of his helmet to the ram and was goading it on.
The ram stood there, looking a bit uncertain about this, and was shifting its weight from foot to foot, then suddenly charged the guy and hit him head on with its horns.
I don't recall what happened, but I think he sustained a neck injury. That thing hit him damned hard. It reminded me of this scene from one of those Jackass movies (mostly because the ram looked like this one):
Oral ivy.
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