Oh you have no idea the misery I've lived through as I've accidentally discovered increasingly more and more interesting ways/places to catch poison ivy. I've had stripes of it across my face and arms because someone threw some into our campfire, and everywhere the smoke touched my skin erupted in lesions within hours. I swear I've caught it on the wind. I've had it in my ear canals and down my throat. The absolute worst was the time that I got poison ivy *on the insides of my eyelids* Just think about that for a minute.
As a human biologist and researcher (and someone who is allergic against dust mites), I think that allergies and hypersensitivity are highly interesting subjects to study. Over 50% of Europeans suffer from at least one allergy (which is a lot!). The reason for this could be the strong association between excessive hygiene and a higher risk in developing allergies or different autoimmune diseases (would love to make a video about that!). There are several reasons for this phenomenon including antibiotic use, the absence of helminth burden or good sanitation. Once again, but allergies are highly complex but fascinating to study!
It's like reading youtube comments. They harden you, creating a protective shell. People who don't read youtube comments are far more likely to be trolled.
SciShow has more than one video (all of them good) that address the so-called "hygiene hypothesis" of allergic reactions. They've also covered the newly approved treatment for peanut allergies that involves ingesting carefully metered teeny tiny doses of peanut in an attempt to teach the immune system not to go into berserker-mode any time the relevant proteins are detected.
@lifelablearner With it being a near universal strong allergen apparently could it be used as treatment in almost a targeted chemo way. If it triggers the killer T-cell to attack any cell after absorbing it could you use it to help your own body hone in on cancerous tissue by injecting it with the oil? In (assuming the oil is something the cancerous tissue would take in easy / be seen as fuel to the tissue)
Yep I have no reaction to poison ivy but you know what I do react to? Christmas trees (most fir and conifer variations tbh) and cinnamon the next 3 months are gonna be hella expensive for me in terms of prescriptions 😂
Same here! I used to get crazy rashes from rolling around on the grass, yet would walk through trails with shorts on and never get the poison ivy rash that everyone else would. Ragweed season is brutal as well.
@@rach_laze My parents had to stop using real christmas trees when I was an infant because they'd aggravate my allergies and asthma so bad. Even now I can't put them up for myself so I understand your pain!
"One benefit of getting older" Im not entirely convinced that becoming so weak that your body cant effectively hurt itself really qualifies as a benefit.
Right. Reminds me of the Bill Murray meme. I'm getting older and my immune system is getting weaker, but I won't react to poison ivy as bad, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Oh nice, you covered the whole "immunity" thing very well! Both myself and my father spent most of our lives getting no reaction, then 20 years or so ago, dad started getting a traditional reaction with contact. About 10 years ago, I got a little bit of blistering, but thankfully, zero pain/itching. Since then, I've been super careful to avoid the stuff; I'm in no mood to tempt fate.
Agreed. I was a land surveyor for about 7 years and would go into fields full of poison ivy without a single itch. Just because I have never had a reaction doesn't mean I want to roll around in the stuff.
I'm 34 years old, and as far as I can remember, I've never gotten a reaction, either. In fact, a couple years ago, I was out near a river collecting milkweed leaves to feed to monarch caterpillars I was raising in my home. Took me an hour to realize the ground I had been walking on in flip-flops was completely covered in poison ivy. I freaked out, but nothing ever happened. That said, like you, I'm not going to tempt fate, as I'm well-aware of the the possibility of developing sensitivity, as described in this video. I've been lucky so far, but I may not be lucky the next time.
Never had a reaction as a child, despite walking through it regularly. Haven't been around it as an adult. My grandpa said he lost his immunity as he got older so I'm hesitant to try.
fun fact: this word comes from Japanese indeed, but the root of the word is "urushi"(漆/うるし ), which is a kind of paint material and adhesive, and its main ingredient is, yes, urushiol.
I was amazed that urushiol was the base ingredient in Japanese laquer. Apparently it causes the typical symptoms in liquid and dust form. One should get professional help when refinishing items coated with this laquer such as furniture, katana and wakizashi scabbards and Imperial Japanese rifles.
Only if you eat crap and don't stay fit, yeah. I knew this guy who was in his 70s and he still walked everywhere and didn't eat junk food. He was probably healthier than me.
I recently went hiking and got a little poison ivy on myself. So I immediately went to the pharmacy to pick up some medication, I had to make a rash decision.
DOH!!! and remember streams can carry the residue from poison ivy for a very long way so you can have it all over your feet and legs if you wade through a stream and not know it until your feet become one massive blister miles and miles from the main road and your car... yeah the wonders of nature....
I am allergic to a lot of things, even severely allergic to cats, they have sent me into anaphylactic shock. But Everytime I have come into contact with any of these three strains of plants, I seem to be immune to them. 🤷♀️
I'm an outdoors type of guy. I'm 47 years old and have been exposed to poison ivy many times, so thought, meh, I'm good. Then I had a little growing on the side of my house, so tore it down and had it in a pile. Nothing happened. About a week later I decided to mulch that pile of dead ivy with my mower. About 2 days later I noticed what I thought was insect bites on my legs. The next day, I had the worst rash I've ever had in my life, that just got worse over the next week. It was the most miserable experience of my life and lasted about 3 weeks total. The crazy thing about poison ivy is you're 100% ok with it until you're not, then it 100% sucks.
The tree that grows cashew nuts is related to the urushiol-containing plants. The cashe nut itself is enclosed in an outer covering - not really a "nut shell" - that contains an oil which is very high in urushiol. That's why you can only buy processed cashes, not "cashews in their shells" like peanuts. The oil from cashews can be used to create industrial resins or paints. And the "cashew apple" fruit the nut grows from is sweet, and can be made into various desserts, including some very tasty preserves, and also as a base for the alcoholic beverage cachaça. I just ate diced chicken stir-fried with cashews for dinner
"Most people don't react to urushiol the first time they're exposed" I must be supremely unlucky then. The first time I ever touched an (I assume) sumac plant, nearly my whole left arm broke out just from getting a small brush on it. Didn't realize what it was until the next day. Had a severe migraine from it, then another weaker one two days later. The rash took almost three weeks to fully go away and _hurt_ if it was touched. I needed to wrap my entire arm in bandages soaked in calamine lotion to even begin to cope with it. Never in my life had I been so happy to have a blister break on its own.
Yeah I watched this and I'm scared I might develop a reaction now that it's been years since I've encountered it. I used to hike thru patches of it all the time as a kid, lol. It really pissed my sister and friends off. One time one followed me, to their dismay, and got a bad rash... I have a terrible immune system thou, so maybe I'll stay immune cause it won't bother to fight some oil on my skin. It's not very hyperactive except with sulfates. Those seem to bother me to almost kill me XD fun times when I was shot with morphine sulfate IV.
Whenever this happens I keep imagining the interaction between the presenter and director, where the director is pulling teeth to get science nerds to emote for the sake of viewership, and the nerd finally cracks and sarcastically overdoes it, but either the director loves it, or it's the best take they could get.
So fun story, one of the snails I study lives in rock glaciers whose dominant understory vegetation is poison ivy. You do basically have to roll around in it to move all the boulders aside to find the snails underneath.Nothing made me happier than the day when I finally collected all the specimens I needed for the project....well I should say some day about three weeks later when the rash was finally, fully cleared up.
I have been tromping through the wood a lot when I was young. About three times, friends I was with had a reaction to Poison Ivy/"Urushiol". One friend was bandaged head to toe for two weeks. I never had any such reaction. Maybe I am one of those so called 10-15%.
I'm the same way only one time just last year started a little on my hand. But my hands have been sensitive from chemicals in cleaning supplies and etc.
Great remedy story: I’ve only gotten a poison ivy breakout once in my life at a summer camp. They gave me calamine lotion and some other junk. I had rashes head to toe. I was young and embarrassed so I called mom to come get me. She couldn’t come until the next day. All the kids went in a trail hike and the counselors let me hide in my room all that day. I was miserable, crying, and sooooo itchy! But during the hike, the cook from the mess hall told the counselor to let me jump in the pool while the others were out. The counselor did just that. She took me to the pool, alone and let me have the whole pool to myself for about an hour. When I got out almost all of the rashes and redness was gone except where I scratched excessively. I was stumped. So was the young counselor. She took me back to the mess hall and asked the cook if he know that would happen. He said, “of course, didn’t you?” Lol that poor lady has been dealing with my whimpering all day. She got every remedy and bit of advice that she could muster up and all the had to do was throw me in the pool! We called my mom back that evening and told her I was better and stayed there. Apparently chlorine is a fast way to get rid of it. -the next day at camp they let us do wood burning projects and passed out templates and nice wooden boards. I didn’t care for the template options and made my very own Ouija board. Apparently they weren’t as impressed as I was since it was a southern Christian camp. No one told me! I also flipped over our canoe, intentionally, right after the counselors instructed us how to prevent them from being tipped over. Pfft. At least I was listening! That’s more than I could say for all the those sheeple kids that were busy trying to whack fish that weren’t there while the counselors talked safety. They should’ve appreciated my abstract reasoning skills, my ability to reverse engineer sentences, and of course, showing initiative. Those were exemplary leadership skills in the making! I knew I was predestined for a leadership role, the moment I plunged into that icy river and two other girls followed immediately after without the slightest hesitation... as the canoe toppled over us, trapping us within.
I worked surveying many years ago and there is not always a port-a-john in the middle of the woods. One co-worker grabbed a handful of poison ivy to clean himself and wished he hadn't by the next day.
Yep. Mango mouth suuuuucks. :/ It's mostly in the peel, but I guess there's enough in the fruit to still give me a bit of a rash. Not cool, delicious plant. Not cool.
I was very sensitive to it when I was young. In my teens I developed a resistance to it, to the point that I have to have a significantly large exposure to have a mild, limited reaction. Likely simple repeated exposure is what helped, being that I spent a lot of time wandering around in wooded areas as a kid.
There have been times in my life where I would have extreme reaction to poison ivy and other times when I could even rub it on my skin and not get any reaction at all. What's causing this variation?
Squirm_ Definitely not that because I tested it. I grabbed some leaves and rubbed them vigorously over my arm. Nothing! The leaves were green and definitely juicy.
Rather than being static and unchanging your immune system is sensitive to circumstances in a way and to a degree that we have only just begun to understand. Anything you come into contact with, sometimes weeks beforehand, can prime or deaden your immune system's reactions, especially to general threats. Exposure therapy can deaden allergies through slowly increased exposure to the point that your body makes anti-antibodies because it's tired of all the false alarms. These can vanish over time if regular exposure is not maintained. Between this and the fact that illnesses can severely alter your immune balance (Measles for example can 'erase' up to 3/4 of a person's immune memory.) varying reactions to various things are common, if poorly understood.
my dad went camping with the boy scouts, and he asked them to collect wood for their fire. they brought back a lot, he stripped it and they had a nice fire. when he went to bed, he used his fleece jacket he was wearing as a pillow. obviously, they had brought back poison oak. they all woke up COVERED in rashes. his jacket was saturated with the smoke from the fire, and one half of his face was SWOLLEN like crazy. he said it was hell. it took most of them ages to fully heal from it lol
The best way to get rid of the rash. Pour white vinegar on a towel or cotton ball and also pour a little vinegar on the rash and then scrub the rash for a minute with the soaked towel or cotton ball. The rash will be gone in a few hours. This will also get rid of the itch. Reapply again the next day if needed
You misspelled (They're both) "people, but without the maturity or depth of character that makes them enjoyable to be around". Don't worry, they'll gain said maturity and depth (Provided they're not one of the unlucky ones) between ages 20 and 30.
When I was a kid in cub scouts I knew another kid who was convinced he was immune to poison ivy. Mainly because of a previous encounter with it where he didn't get a rash. To prove his immunity, he rubbed a leaf of it on his arm, and to no one's surprise he got a nasty rash. He was mercilessly picked on for the rest of the time we were all in that troop for it.(He was fine though) We always just figured he made an awful mistake, but now I wonder if it was the first time encounter immunity mentioned at 3:00.
@@ipissed its not something to try and aggrivate. Like they say in the video even if your immune your immunity is very likely to end from repeated exposure. That said, my bum was very pleased to learn that my first and seconed camping.. Toiletry encounter did not trigger any reaction when I learned that I was using poison oak. That was good enough for me.
I'm 47 years old. I'm an outdoors type of guy, in pretty good shape, and have never had a problem with poison ivy. . . until I did. I had some growing on the side of my house, tore it down and placed it in a pile. I took precautions just in case and scrubbed myself down really well right after. All was well. About a week later I decided to mulch the pile of dead ivy. Big mistake. About two days later I thought I had some insect bites on my legs. Nothing unusual for me. Then it became the most angry rash I have ever endured. Most of it was on my legs, but a bit was also on my arms. This all lasted for about 3 weeks until it was completely healed, and was one of the most miserable experiences of my entire life. The moral of this story is just because you've been OK with exposure to poison ivy, oak or sumac in the past, don't assume that you always will be. And it doesn't go from no reaction to slight reaction. It can go from no reaction to horrible reaction in an instant. If you think you've been exposed, even if you've been good in the past, scrub down as soon as you can just as a precaution.
Poison ivy is consumed by a large number of wild game animals. The leaves and berries are included in the diet of everything from deer and rabbits, to bears and ducks. If you’re sensitive enough to urushiol, a diet heavy in these game animals can result in a skin rash. (Trust me). Vengeance from the grave. Thanks for the content.
I've been messed up by poison ivy once. I went into anaphylactic shock. When my vision went tunnel and my hearing started to go I dialed 911. I hate that stuff.
Growing up on a farm tends to put you in contact with these plants. Mom always made a point of teaching us to head straight to the kitchen sink to scrub thoroughly with a softened mixture of Fels-Naptha soap. Did it work? It seemed to. One summer I got a decent sized patch on my left arm. The MD directed me to take a sewing pin, pierce every blister, and use the side of the pin to drain the juice from the blisters. He said to stop on the way home, to get a large bottle of cheap aftershave, which was to be scrubbed over the area with a cotton ball. I was horrified about the instructions violating all of my teachings about poison ivy. I did what he said, and in two days, it was gone! This has been my standard action plan since. Another grass plant, Orchard Grass used for pasture and a hay crop, will create a similar reaction.
I love how we just blindly assume that plants "evolved" these properties or that we are one big "cosmic accident". That's like saying that my house evolved a roof to keep the weather out.
You mean that a divine creator made poison ivy just to irritate the skin of some but not all humans? This creator sounds like a sociopath. Why would anyone worship a sociopath?
My dad's a nurse and had a handful of firefighters come in because they were fighting a small brush fire but the fire burned through a poison oak patch and they inhaled it.
I am eat up with it on my arms bc ive been cleaning up my yard(that I neglected for several years). Mild itching, broke out with scabs. Calamine lotion helps. Its all good. Preparing my yard to grow food instead of grass/weeds. Its worth the discomfort.
Last winter I got in a patch of poison oak vines and little bushes and had to got to the doctor to get shots to get rid of it. My face was covered and swollen in blisters.
What hes not saying is there are a small ammount of humans that are infact immune to poison what ever plants and can 100% roll around in it to show off to their friends with no side effects what so ever in the slightest. Its just very rare
Glad I'm one of the 10% because my province is made of PI. I never knew what PI looked like until way later in life and realized I've been in contact with it a lot. Never had a rash, but I still avoid it as a precaution. My son on the other hand had to go on prednisone because of a brutal case. Slipped off a log while on a hike and fell into a huge patch. I went in picked him and took him back to the path. Not even a slight itch. Unfortunately I lost the food allergy lottery☹
Interesting video. Good update on this subject. I grew up in the woods around a lot of poison ivy, spent a lot of my adult years around poison oak. Never a problem. (I did once get a nasty case of contact dermatitis from scratches on my arm and something in the Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power auditorium???) I'd always been told I wasn't allergic because I have some Native American ancestry and others who are more Indian than me have told me stories, "We were naked and I was on the bottom. Everyone but me got it. One of them spent a week in the hospital." I once asked a geneticist about this, and she reacted as if I'd said something racist. A ranger had a larger 'data set.' He would work with summer crews clearing brush. The first week everybody got some reaction, a lot of calamine lotion. After a couple of weeks though no one would get a reaction for the rest of the summer. An open cut though? No immunity. Always a rash. I got another urban interior case of contact dermatitis a couple of months after the first one. This time I sprayed on Dermaplast antiseptic spray. It seemed to seal it off and it cleared up within a couple of days. If a case wasn't too bad I'd recommend giving this a shot, it seemed a lot more effective than calamine lotion. Of course one-time is an anecdote not proof. And your last advice is rock solid: Avoid it if at all possible. When I wanted to post a brag photo of a poison oak leaf in my hand? I used Photoshop. (Although I have a photo where the entire foreground is poison oak. I was standing in it when I set-up the tripod and took the photo, knew it at the time. I'm pretty sure I was wearing shorts. No reaction.
You can get the rash just by touching the leaves. You can get it by burning the plant and getting in the smoke. You can also get it if it's growing in a tree and you sit under the plant on a real humid day.
Fun fact: Cashew and Mango are in the same family as poison ivy, oak, and suamac. In fact, the cashew nut’s shell has a large concentration of urushiol (significantly more concentrated than poison ivy) that actually makes it toxic.
I used to get a lot of contact with poison ivy when I was younger. First exposure caused nasty blisters. After that, it just caused a rash that went away in a few days. With enough exposure, the plant didn't seem to effect me at all. The trick is, it turns out, is not to scratch. It only got worse when I would scratch and if I used the power of mind over matter and did not scratch, it only caused temporary and minor irritation. I think scratching may have been what was working the oil into the skin and making the reaction worse. With out it, there wasn't that much in my system to cause problems.
There's poison ivy in my yard, (2 out of 4 sides have trees, enough of them that they can't be seen through) and I used to wonder those woods for hours as a kid.. I never once had it bother me. My dad went through my trails once and his legs were covered. 🤷🏼♀️
A very similar thing can happen here in Australia with on of our biggest native plants, Grevilleas,these plants contain a similar chemical to urushiol, but it takes decades of build up this allergy, all thought the symptoms are fare less extreme then poison ivy and oak, although still initiating
I have hypersensitivity to Urushiol oil. Mango skin, and cashew and pistachio shells also have the oil, but in tiny amounts that most people never react to. If I even look at those foods every inch of my body is covered in blisters for weeks.
as a kid in the santa monica mountains very few of the people I knew had reactions but those that did really got it bad. as we got older we would often challenge each other to eat poison oak with no reaction at all. it is said it can help provide a build up of resistance to leaves of three. I could never have the fear of having a good outdoor romp because of it but I have know a good few who have to think that way. the ooze is gross.
Stefan, there are NO benefits to getting older! 🤪😉🌿 (However, I had always RIDICULOUSLY allergic to poison ivy, etc. 😫 This one time when I was around age 13-15(ish), I somehow managed to step in the nasty stuff wearing sneakers but no socks. When my ankles and heels broke out in the all-too-familiar itchy, oozy, icky rash, I decided to literally take matters into my own hands. Sitting on the bathroom counter, I was able to run the HOTTEST water tolerable and use a WIRE bristled brush (and a little soap) to scrub the blisters open and clean the oil and other nastiness out. A couple hours of baking my heels in the sun afterwards dried up the mess and all I was left with was some good scabs. It was worth the pain 😢) AND hot water on itchy poison ivy feels incredible, BTW!
I'm one of the lucky ones. Used to maintain hiking trails and I was on the crew that always got to wade into the poison oak whenever we had to cut it back. Never did anything to me, but my cousin lend in for a hug one weekend and I didn't have the heart to insist he not do it... Yeah. I'm one of the lucky ones, not my cousin.
I'm deathly allergic to poison ivy (and I guess the others too). I got it once in my life as a kid and it spread across my entire upper body really fast. I have scars from it.
I'd have been interested in learning about how urushiol protects poison ivy from microbes? I mean, if it's not meant to repel us, what is it meant to repel? And how do these plants fit into the larger ecosystem? Are they just your average food plant to most animals?
Scratching the bumps feels amazing good. That is the best early detection system. Normally when you scratch an itch, it relieves the itch. When you scratch poison oak rash, it feels sooo good. Once I discovered this, I became much less susceptible to the rash. I'll get a few bumps and scratch them. It feels amazing. Red flags go off in my brain: why did that scratch feel so good. Upon inspection I recognised the bumps for what they are and avoid contact for a few days.
One time I went camping ran out of toilet paper and used some leaves to wipe. Turns out those leaves were poison ivy. So if you think running out of beer while your camping is bad. Just remember that worse things can happen.
the bad part about this event is that you would have a difficult time proving and convincing others where the poison ivy contact took place without there being a really awkward fireside reveal from taking place ...not a good time for selfies either....just sayin' but then if alcohol was involved the probability might actually increase...i wouldn't know since i don't drink...
Grew up with poison oak in California first exposure was very bad every exposure after that within short durations of time became very small itchy spots while living in the area with poison oak to almost no results at all. After moving away to the city with no exposure for about three years then came back to a visit to my town I grew up in my first exposure to poison oak was horrible like the very first time I caught it and then exposure levels went down to almost nothing more than what looked like several flea bites after living there a year again been exposed. Some people build immunity
I used to get rashes from it fairly often, then one summer I got it REALLY bad, whole body bad. After that I experienced one more mild rash after accidentally trimming a BUNCH of it before realizing that I was in the middle of a patch of it- my legs were basically SOAKED in the oil. I was about 14 at the time, maybe 13. The rash was extremely mild and lasted maybe a day or two. Since then I've never had a reaction again
I'm one of the people who is lucky enough to be immune. I used to be in poison ivy a lot as a Boy Scout... One time I was playing in a patch of poison sumac and didn't know it, and was apparently *covered* in the oils. Got back to the cabin later, was running around... Within half an hour everyone but me was itchy and had no idea. Then they realized I had been playing in the bushes... Let's just say my dad kept a closer eye on what plants I went near after that.
My little brother used to get poison ivy rashes all the time to the point where the over the counter medication didn’t work. So his doctor prescribed steroids. Still got poison ivy until the doctor told him “if you get the rash one more time, the strongest medication I can give you won’t get rid of it. So he had to start layering up when he wanted to go out. PS the only reason he got poison ivy was because he was too lazy to ride his bike on the street and he’d take a shortcut through about 200 feet of woods. And he didn’t stop even when the doc told him to.
As a child I ran around in the woods behind our house. And I went on camping trips in several different areas known for having one or the other of these plants. Never had a reaction. Could be luck but my luck's usually bad. Maybe good genes or the secondhand smoke that compromised my defense against asthma killed that reaction.
I have a cousin who is SEVERELY allergic to such plants (poison ivy, oak, sumac, etc) But neither she, nor anyone else knew how severe it was. When my Uncle was clearing out a patch of woods to build a house for my Grandma, He cut up what he could for firewood, and piled all the brush, limbs and smaller bits and burned them. Just so happened that there was a shitload of poison ivy in the pile too. My cousin, who was about 12 at the time, was playing nearby, climbing on the un-burned portion of the pile,, getting in the smoke, and just pretty much enjoying the giant bonfire. Later that night, she began having severe itching and trouble breathing. Soon she was at the ER and they found out that her airways were blistered. She was put on O2, and given extensive treatment. She nearly died. She broke out so bad that she looked like a burned version of Ben, that rock-man from Marvels' "Fantasic Four". Her skin blistered, swelled and cracked leaving her looking just like the dude. She recovered, and began to avoid the woods or even going outdoors. When she grew up, she moved to a large city and vows never to return to any rural area where vegetation grows naturally. I got itchy just remembering that.. * scratch scratch *
I remember my dad, unknowingly, cleared away a bunch of poison oak and his arm looked like the top of creme brulee for almost two months. He basically lost use of his arm until it healed.
(Warning for folks with photosensitive epilepsy: there's a scene with moving, repeated patterns starting at around 2:17) I really wish scientists were more invested in understanding allergic reactions; there's still so much we don't know about the internal processes that cause (and remove) them. :(
Poison ivy: Hi guys-
Immune system: *screaming*
Cockadoodle Doo Studios I have poison ivy reaction all over my arms rn
I like poison ive
run away!!!! run away!!!!
Batman: *stares menacingly*
They just trying to be friendly. We so defensive.
Also should be noted that if you’re extremely allergic to it, accidentally inhaling some smoke from wood that has the oil on it could kill you.
Friend got a good dose this way once. Bedridden with it for awhile with his mom needing to pry open some space to locate his eyes for the eye drops .
So inhale it intentionally to survive.
There was a 1,000 ways to die episode about some dudes that ran out of weed and smoked poison sumac accidentally and died
Oh you have no idea the misery I've lived through as I've accidentally discovered increasingly more and more interesting ways/places to catch poison ivy. I've had stripes of it across my face and arms because someone threw some into our campfire, and everywhere the smoke touched my skin erupted in lesions within hours. I swear I've caught it on the wind. I've had it in my ear canals and down my throat. The absolute worst was the time that I got poison ivy *on the insides of my eyelids*
Just think about that for a minute.
It puts me in the hospital every time. Gets into my bloodstream and I get it in my throat.
Just like capsaicin, we assumed the plant just hates us.
My favorite!
@@ThrashTillDeth83 I love radishes for their sharp but short lasting🔥
I thought capsaicin was proof that the plant loves us, because it gives us such tasty buffalo wings...
@@ThrashTillDeth83 Same here.
@Gustav That's allyl isothiocyanate in radishes.
@@lifeincolour09 I know. I just wanted to mention another nice anti-theft substance that failed so favorable 😋
Fun fact: Poison Ivy is closely related to mangos and cashews and mango and cashew plants also produce that itchy oil!
Additional fun fact. Children in Pakistan intentionally eat unripe mangoes (stolen from orchards) and bet about who will get the nosebleed first.
That's why you can't buy raw cashews at the supermarket. The urushiol must be extracted before they can be eaten or sold as foodstuff.
Anacardiaceae. Pretty sure I spelled that right. Also pistachios are in that family
You can add Brazilian Pepper Trees to that list as well.
Umm i didn't get itchy by picking mangoes before but i sometimes do got mango sap burn and it really hurts lol
As a human biologist and researcher (and someone who is allergic against dust mites), I think that allergies and hypersensitivity are highly interesting subjects to study. Over 50% of Europeans suffer from at least one allergy (which is a lot!). The reason for this could be the strong association between excessive hygiene and a higher risk in developing allergies or different autoimmune diseases (would love to make a video about that!). There are several reasons for this phenomenon including antibiotic use, the absence of helminth burden or good sanitation. Once again, but allergies are highly complex but fascinating to study!
It's like reading youtube comments. They harden you, creating a protective shell. People who don't read youtube comments are far more likely to be trolled.
SciShow has more than one video (all of them good) that address the so-called "hygiene hypothesis" of allergic reactions. They've also covered the newly approved treatment for peanut allergies that involves ingesting carefully metered teeny tiny doses of peanut in an attempt to teach the immune system not to go into berserker-mode any time the relevant proteins are detected.
@@huldu so true 👍
@lifelablearner
With it being a near universal strong allergen apparently could it be used as treatment in almost a targeted chemo way. If it triggers the killer T-cell to attack any cell after absorbing it could you use it to help your own body hone in on cancerous tissue by injecting it with the oil? In (assuming the oil is something the cancerous tissue would take in easy / be seen as fuel to the tissue)
You study this huh..
I am allergic to to any Cornus plant (like Cornus Alba, I don't know the English name) are there more ppl allergic to this bush?
"Leaves of three, let them be"
"Leaves of four, eat some more"
Lol
@Chris Russell leaves of seven, get higher than heaven 😁
Ok Homer
Clovers taste like slightly sour cucumber
@@liggerstuxin1 I'm glad somebody got that reference haha
"Leaves of five, seven, nine, or eleven, high heaven..." or something like that, lol
In a fit of cosmic irony, I’m allergic to almost every green thing from grass to trees to ragweed, but I’m not allergic to poison ivy.
Yep I have no reaction to poison ivy but you know what I do react to? Christmas trees (most fir and conifer variations tbh) and cinnamon the next 3 months are gonna be hella expensive for me in terms of prescriptions 😂
Same!
use your new found super power only for the good of humanity least misfortune befall you at a later date
Same here! I used to get crazy rashes from rolling around on the grass, yet would walk through trails with shorts on and never get the poison ivy rash that everyone else would.
Ragweed season is brutal as well.
@@rach_laze My parents had to stop using real christmas trees when I was an infant because they'd aggravate my allergies and asthma so bad. Even now I can't put them up for myself so I understand your pain!
"One benefit of getting older" Im not entirely convinced that becoming so weak that your body cant effectively hurt itself really qualifies as a benefit.
Right. Reminds me of the Bill Murray meme. I'm getting older and my immune system is getting weaker, but I won't react to poison ivy as bad, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
You've got a point
Well, it technically becomes more effective at hurting itself. Cause, you know...
...cancer
@@skbartistry2473
Cancer rates start going down at about age 90 for men and 85 for women.
Oh nice, you covered the whole "immunity" thing very well!
Both myself and my father spent most of our lives getting no reaction, then 20 years or so ago, dad started getting a traditional reaction with contact. About 10 years ago, I got a little bit of blistering, but thankfully, zero pain/itching. Since then, I've been super careful to avoid the stuff; I'm in no mood to tempt fate.
Agreed. I was a land surveyor for about 7 years and would go into fields full of poison ivy without a single itch. Just because I have never had a reaction doesn't mean I want to roll around in the stuff.
I'm one of those who are possibly "immune" as well. I am in absolutely no hurry to test whether it's still the case, though.
I'm 34 years old, and as far as I can remember, I've never gotten a reaction, either. In fact, a couple years ago, I was out near a river collecting milkweed leaves to feed to monarch caterpillars I was raising in my home. Took me an hour to realize the ground I had been walking on in flip-flops was completely covered in poison ivy. I freaked out, but nothing ever happened. That said, like you, I'm not going to tempt fate, as I'm well-aware of the the possibility of developing sensitivity, as described in this video. I've been lucky so far, but I may not be lucky the next time.
I love Stefan, he's just the right amount of cheesy for Scishow.
His bit at the end with the notification bell sounds like it should've been preceded by "let's do the fork in the garbage disposal"
*immune system encounters harmless urushiol*
MermaidMan Voice: "EEEEVIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!!
Never had a reaction as a child, despite walking through it regularly. Haven't been around it as an adult. My grandpa said he lost his immunity as he got older so I'm hesitant to try.
I was told people who have amount of gene of those who are defendants for those native to the Americas have high immunity.
@@dach829 cool, thanks, Dad.
I never had a reaction.
fun fact: "urushii" means "annoying" in Japanese...
fun fact: this word comes from Japanese indeed, but the root of the word is "urushi"(漆/うるし
), which is a kind of paint material and adhesive, and its main ingredient is, yes, urushiol.
Also, the word “annoying” in Japanese is "urusai"(煩い/
うるさい).
And please forgive my English grammar, since I am actually a Manderin speaker.
I was amazed that urushiol was the base ingredient in Japanese laquer. Apparently it causes the typical symptoms in liquid and dust form. One should get professional help when refinishing items coated with this laquer such as furniture, katana and wakizashi scabbards and Imperial Japanese rifles.
titan941234 Your grammar is almost perfect. Only thing I would change is “this word indeed comes from…”
Its annoying all
4:08
Nobody :
Not a single soul :
Stefan : ring a ding a ling!
"that's one advantage to getting older..." being old sucks hard.
ain't that the truth!
finding yourself being inert even more so
Especially when your students act like you're a grandpa when you're only 30 lol
Oh you only really have to start sucking when all your teeth fall out.
Only if you eat crap and don't stay fit, yeah. I knew this guy who was in his 70s and he still walked everywhere and didn't eat junk food. He was probably healthier than me.
I recently went hiking and got a little poison ivy on myself.
So I immediately went to the pharmacy to pick up some medication, I had to make a rash decision.
You're my hero
You should stop 🛑
Badum tss
Tempted to thumbs down for the bad pun...
Nah
👍
Sometimes you can have a delayed reaction! Touched a bunch, thought I was immune somehow, two weeks later was covered in poison ivy rash.
DOH!!! and remember streams can carry the residue from poison ivy for a very long way so you can have it all over your feet and legs if you wade through a stream and not know it until your feet become one massive blister miles and miles from the main road and your car... yeah the wonders of nature....
Orange-oil de-greasers, like Goo-Gone, followed by a wash of soap and water work wonders to reduce the poison oil on the skin. :)
Only cold water!!
Sorry I meant only cold water (not hot or warm) along with all the other things Karabetter suggested. Soap and/or degreaser is key.
@@tonylikesphysics yup
Fels-Naptha soap works well too
I actually use dish soap for this purpose. Normal anionic tensides are ok if you don't wash your skin with them daily.
Dawn works best
Thankfully, plants like poison ivy don't grow in my area...
I got 99 problems but an itch ain't one.
put on a band-aid and go about you business.
I am allergic to a lot of things, even severely allergic to cats, they have sent me into anaphylactic shock. But Everytime I have come into contact with any of these three strains of plants, I seem to be immune to them. 🤷♀️
Some people are immune naturalu
I'm an outdoors type of guy. I'm 47 years old and have been exposed to poison ivy many times, so thought, meh, I'm good. Then I had a little growing on the side of my house, so tore it down and had it in a pile. Nothing happened. About a week later I decided to mulch that pile of dead ivy with my mower. About 2 days later I noticed what I thought was insect bites on my legs. The next day, I had the worst rash I've ever had in my life, that just got worse over the next week. It was the most miserable experience of my life and lasted about 3 weeks total. The crazy thing about poison ivy is you're 100% ok with it until you're not, then it 100% sucks.
The ending almost made me spit my coffee...
Ive walked through poison ivy on accident multiple times with no reaction, yet I get allergic reactions to flea bites 😡
That sucks. If I had an allergic reaction to flea bites, I would probably be dead by now.
If you have fleas you've got bigger problems.
Trust me, the reaction to fleas is NOTHING compared to poison ivy rash. I know trust me Hahaha
Same here. Poison ivy doesnt affect me but I immediately get itchy from fleas and ticks leave blisters
Just us and.. hamsters?!
Oh hamsters, our long lost brethren!
The tree that grows cashew nuts is related to the urushiol-containing plants. The cashe nut itself is enclosed in an outer covering - not really a "nut shell" - that contains an oil which is very high in urushiol. That's why you can only buy processed cashes, not "cashews in their shells" like peanuts. The oil from cashews can be used to create industrial resins or paints. And the "cashew apple" fruit the nut grows from is sweet, and can be made into various desserts, including some very tasty preserves, and also as a base for the alcoholic beverage cachaça. I just ate diced chicken stir-fried with cashews for dinner
4:00 if a having a parasite is beneficial then is it still a parasite?
No could just be a parasite feeding off you and the benefit comes from your immune systems reaction.
@Opi-Rage I don't trust symbiotes - I've seen SG1
@@sac3528 what about trills from Star trek?
Ask Eddie Brock how he likes it
"Most people don't react to urushiol the first time they're exposed"
I must be supremely unlucky then. The first time I ever touched an (I assume) sumac plant, nearly my whole left arm broke out just from getting a small brush on it. Didn't realize what it was until the next day. Had a severe migraine from it, then another weaker one two days later. The rash took almost three weeks to fully go away and _hurt_ if it was touched. I needed to wrap my entire arm in bandages soaked in calamine lotion to even begin to cope with it. Never in my life had I been so happy to have a blister break on its own.
I've never had a reaction to poison ivy.(knock on wood). Though as I age I seem to be allergic to a new thing, each time the seasons change.
I've developed Cold Urticaria.
Don't knock on a tree with poison ivy, just in case.
@@michiwonderoutdoors2282 -If that's where you can't take in very cold air, I have that too.
@@christelheadington1136 Hives and itching in cold water mostly.
Yeah I watched this and I'm scared I might develop a reaction now that it's been years since I've encountered it. I used to hike thru patches of it all the time as a kid, lol. It really pissed my sister and friends off. One time one followed me, to their dismay, and got a bad rash... I have a terrible immune system thou, so maybe I'll stay immune cause it won't bother to fight some oil on my skin. It's not very hyperactive except with sulfates. Those seem to bother me to almost kill me XD fun times when I was shot with morphine sulfate IV.
I love it when a noted science narrator loses it at the end of an otherwise predictable presentation.
Whenever this happens I keep imagining the interaction between the presenter and director, where the director is pulling teeth to get science nerds to emote for the sake of viewership, and the nerd finally cracks and sarcastically overdoes it, but either the director loves it, or it's the best take they could get.
Stefan, your enthusiasm moves me
Take a shot every time he says "Urushioll" xD
Fun drinking game. Too bad I'm a lightweight. Fun drunk though.
*urushiol
No, no, eat a poison oak leaf every time...
So fun story, one of the snails I study lives in rock glaciers whose dominant understory vegetation is poison ivy. You do basically have to roll around in it to move all the boulders aside to find the snails underneath.Nothing made me happier than the day when I finally collected all the specimens I needed for the project....well I should say some day about three weeks later when the rash was finally, fully cleared up.
I have been tromping through the wood a lot when I was young. About three times, friends I was with had a reaction to Poison Ivy/"Urushiol". One friend was bandaged head to toe for two weeks. I never had any such reaction. Maybe I am one of those so called 10-15%.
I'm the same way only one time just last year started a little on my hand. But my hands have been sensitive from chemicals in cleaning supplies and etc.
Great remedy story:
I’ve only gotten a poison ivy breakout once in my life at a summer camp. They gave me calamine lotion and some other junk. I had rashes head to toe. I was young and embarrassed so I called mom to come get me. She couldn’t come until the next day. All the kids went in a trail hike and the counselors let me hide in my room all that day. I was miserable, crying, and sooooo itchy! But during the hike, the cook from the mess hall told the counselor to let me jump in the pool while the others were out. The counselor did just that. She took me to the pool, alone and let me have the whole pool to myself for about an hour. When I got out almost all of the rashes and redness was gone except where I scratched excessively. I was stumped. So was the young counselor. She took me back to the mess hall and asked the cook if he know that would happen. He said, “of course, didn’t you?” Lol that poor lady has been dealing with my whimpering all day. She got every remedy and bit of advice that she could muster up and all the had to do was throw me in the pool! We called my mom back that evening and told her I was better and stayed there. Apparently chlorine is a fast way to get rid of it.
-the next day at camp they let us do wood burning projects and passed out templates and nice wooden boards. I didn’t care for the template options and made my very own Ouija board. Apparently they weren’t as impressed as I was since it was a southern Christian camp. No one told me!
I also flipped over our canoe, intentionally, right after the counselors instructed us how to prevent them from being tipped over. Pfft. At least I was listening! That’s more than I could say for all the those sheeple kids that were busy trying to whack fish that weren’t there while the counselors talked safety. They should’ve appreciated my abstract reasoning skills, my ability to reverse engineer sentences, and of course, showing initiative. Those were exemplary leadership skills in the making! I knew I was predestined for a leadership role, the moment I plunged into that icy river and two other girls followed immediately after without the slightest hesitation... as the canoe toppled over us, trapping us within.
Poison oak, a part of my childhood and now I can spot it with fair certainty and avoid it.
"increased exposure is thought to increase the likelihood of developing sensitivity" 3:16
I will have words with Dwight Shrute.
4:20 nice.
I worked surveying many years ago and there is not always a port-a-john in the middle of the woods. One co-worker grabbed a handful of poison ivy to clean himself and wished he hadn't by the next day.
I assumed parents named their daughters Ivy cause they were gonna grow up to be poison.
Best short documentary research. I have always wanted to know about poison ivy and poison oak. Thanks.
Some plants should be loved at arms length.
I never knew people could be so allergic to it until I was hospitalized for 3.5 weeks from it in July.
urushiol is in mangos. They used to be my favorite fruit:(
Whaaaaaat?
@@XxGamerGurlxX google mango mouth
Yep. Mango mouth suuuuucks. :/ It's mostly in the peel, but I guess there's enough in the fruit to still give me a bit of a rash. Not cool, delicious plant. Not cool.
I was very sensitive to it when I was young. In my teens I developed a resistance to it, to the point that I have to have a significantly large exposure to have a mild, limited reaction. Likely simple repeated exposure is what helped, being that I spent a lot of time wandering around in wooded areas as a kid.
There have been times in my life where I would have extreme reaction to poison ivy and other times when I could even rub it on my skin and not get any reaction at all. What's causing this variation?
Probably because the plant wasn't damaged, so there wasn't any oil on it at the time
Squirm_ Definitely not that because I tested it. I grabbed some leaves and rubbed them vigorously over my arm. Nothing! The leaves were green and definitely juicy.
Rather than being static and unchanging your immune system is sensitive to circumstances in a way and to a degree that we have only just begun to understand.
Anything you come into contact with, sometimes weeks beforehand, can prime or deaden your immune system's reactions, especially to general threats. Exposure therapy can deaden allergies through slowly increased exposure to the point that your body makes anti-antibodies because it's tired of all the false alarms. These can vanish over time if regular exposure is not maintained.
Between this and the fact that illnesses can severely alter your immune balance (Measles for example can 'erase' up to 3/4 of a person's immune memory.) varying reactions to various things are common, if poorly understood.
my dad went camping with the boy scouts, and he asked them to collect wood for their fire. they brought back a lot, he stripped it and they had a nice fire. when he went to bed, he used his fleece jacket he was wearing as a pillow. obviously, they had brought back poison oak. they all woke up COVERED in rashes. his jacket was saturated with the smoke from the fire, and one half of his face was SWOLLEN like crazy. he said it was hell. it took most of them ages to fully heal from it lol
I count him saying urushiol 20 times :)
I love poison ivy it’s so amazing I really love plants there just so interesting and amazing 🌱
“Poison ivy is innocent”
my systemic autoimmune reaction and several patches of severe scars would like a word with Scishow.
The best way to get rid of the rash. Pour white vinegar on a towel or cotton ball and also pour a little vinegar on the rash and then scrub the rash for a minute with the soaked towel or cotton ball. The rash will be gone in a few hours. This will also get rid of the itch. Reapply again the next day if needed
What do teenagers and poison ivy have in common?
They’re both misunderstood
LOL but highschoolers are always the worst people whether if you misunderstood them or not
I’m a high schooler, people definitely misunderstand us
You misspelled (They're both) "people, but without the maturity or depth of character that makes them enjoyable to be around".
Don't worry, they'll gain said maturity and depth (Provided they're not one of the unlucky ones) between ages 20 and 30.
Wen Dong 98% of them are bad
Athrun OOF
When I was a kid in cub scouts I knew another kid who was convinced he was immune to poison ivy. Mainly because of a previous encounter with it where he didn't get a rash. To prove his immunity, he rubbed a leaf of it on his arm, and to no one's surprise he got a nasty rash. He was mercilessly picked on for the rest of the time we were all in that troop for it.(He was fine though) We always just figured he made an awful mistake, but now I wonder if it was the first time encounter immunity mentioned at 3:00.
ah so that's what they look like
I've never had to be concerned about it because I'm not allergic to the plants and have never been affected by it.
@@ipissed its not something to try and aggrivate. Like they say in the video even if your immune your immunity is very likely to end from repeated exposure.
That said, my bum was very pleased to learn that my first and seconed camping.. Toiletry encounter did not trigger any reaction when I learned that I was using poison oak.
That was good enough for me.
I'm 47 years old. I'm an outdoors type of guy, in pretty good shape, and have never had a problem with poison ivy. . . until I did. I had some growing on the side of my house, tore it down and placed it in a pile. I took precautions just in case and scrubbed myself down really well right after. All was well. About a week later I decided to mulch the pile of dead ivy. Big mistake. About two days later I thought I had some insect bites on my legs. Nothing unusual for me. Then it became the most angry rash I have ever endured. Most of it was on my legs, but a bit was also on my arms. This all lasted for about 3 weeks until it was completely healed, and was one of the most miserable experiences of my entire life.
The moral of this story is just because you've been OK with exposure to poison ivy, oak or sumac in the past, don't assume that you always will be. And it doesn't go from no reaction to slight reaction. It can go from no reaction to horrible reaction in an instant. If you think you've been exposed, even if you've been good in the past, scrub down as soon as you can just as a precaution.
The Mandela effect is telling me this oil is called Uroshiol.
The enthusiasm for the dings people! I loved them personally.
Theory: does someone with HIV (less T-cells) have a higher chances of being poison-ivy-resistant???
out of all the fall plants in america, poison ivy produces sone of the most beautiful colors.
poison ivy is that misunderstood plant at the school forest school lunch
Poison ivy is consumed by a large number of wild game animals. The leaves and berries are included in the diet of everything from deer and rabbits, to bears and ducks. If you’re sensitive enough to urushiol, a diet heavy in these game animals can result in a skin rash. (Trust me). Vengeance from the grave. Thanks for the content.
Here at 69 views and 69 likes. Nice...
Poison ivy type plants are kinda like a plant STD - but it's only after - you find out you've been screwed.
Ivy: WHY CAN'T YOU BE NORMAL!?!?
Body: screams and gets rashes*
I've been messed up by poison ivy once.
I went into anaphylactic shock. When my vision went tunnel and my hearing started to go I dialed 911. I hate that stuff.
Growing up on a farm tends to put you in contact with these plants. Mom always made a point of teaching us to head straight to the kitchen sink to scrub thoroughly with a softened mixture of Fels-Naptha soap. Did it work? It seemed to. One summer I got a decent sized patch on my left arm. The MD directed me to take a sewing pin, pierce every blister, and use the side of the pin to drain the juice from the blisters. He said to stop on the way home, to get a large bottle of cheap aftershave, which was to be scrubbed over the area with a cotton ball.
I was horrified about the instructions violating all of my teachings about poison ivy. I did what he said, and in two days, it was gone! This has been my standard action plan since. Another grass plant, Orchard Grass used for pasture and a hay crop, will create a similar reaction.
I love how we just blindly assume that plants "evolved" these properties or that we are one big "cosmic accident". That's like saying that my house evolved a roof to keep the weather out.
You mean that a divine creator made poison ivy just to irritate the skin of some but not all humans? This creator sounds like a sociopath.
Why would anyone worship a sociopath?
My dad's a nurse and had a handful of firefighters come in because they were fighting a small brush fire but the fire burned through a poison oak patch and they inhaled it.
I am eat up with it on my arms bc ive been cleaning up my yard(that I neglected for several years). Mild itching, broke out with scabs. Calamine lotion helps. Its all good. Preparing my yard to grow food instead of grass/weeds. Its worth the discomfort.
Last winter I got in a patch of poison oak vines and little bushes and had to got to the doctor to get shots to get rid of it. My face was covered and swollen in blisters.
Thank you for the ending... ing ing ing
What hes not saying is there are a small ammount of humans that are infact immune to poison what ever plants and can 100% roll around in it to show off to their friends with no side effects what so ever in the slightest. Its just very rare
Glad I'm one of the 10% because my province is made of PI. I never knew what PI looked like until way later in life and realized I've been in contact with it a lot. Never had a rash, but I still avoid it as a precaution. My son on the other hand had to go on prednisone because of a brutal case. Slipped off a log while on a hike and fell into a huge patch. I went in picked him and took him back to the path. Not even a slight itch. Unfortunately I lost the food allergy lottery☹
Interesting video. Good update on this subject. I grew up in the woods around a lot of poison ivy, spent a lot of my adult years around poison oak. Never a problem. (I did once get a nasty case of contact dermatitis from scratches on my arm and something in the Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power auditorium???) I'd always been told I wasn't allergic because I have some Native American ancestry and others who are more Indian than me have told me stories, "We were naked and I was on the bottom. Everyone but me got it. One of them spent a week in the hospital." I once asked a geneticist about this, and she reacted as if I'd said something racist.
A ranger had a larger 'data set.' He would work with summer crews clearing brush. The first week everybody got some reaction, a lot of calamine lotion. After a couple of weeks though no one would get a reaction for the rest of the summer. An open cut though? No immunity. Always a rash.
I got another urban interior case of contact dermatitis a couple of months after the first one. This time I sprayed on Dermaplast antiseptic spray. It seemed to seal it off and it cleared up within a couple of days. If a case wasn't too bad I'd recommend giving this a shot, it seemed a lot more effective than calamine lotion. Of course one-time is an anecdote not proof.
And your last advice is rock solid: Avoid it if at all possible. When I wanted to post a brag photo of a poison oak leaf in my hand? I used Photoshop. (Although I have a photo where the entire foreground is poison oak. I was standing in it when I set-up the tripod and took the photo, knew it at the time. I'm pretty sure I was wearing shorts. No reaction.
You can get the rash just by touching the leaves. You can get it by burning the plant and getting in the smoke. You can also get it if it's growing in a tree and you sit under the plant on a real humid day.
Fun fact: Cashew and Mango are in the same family as poison ivy, oak, and suamac. In fact, the cashew nut’s shell has a large concentration of urushiol (significantly more concentrated than poison ivy) that actually makes it toxic.
I'm definitely immune. I have been since I was a kid, and I've had repeated exposure thru camping and hiking. Lol, maybe I should be studied 🙂
I used to get a lot of contact with poison ivy when I was younger. First exposure caused nasty blisters. After that, it just caused a rash that went away in a few days. With enough exposure, the plant didn't seem to effect me at all. The trick is, it turns out, is not to scratch. It only got worse when I would scratch and if I used the power of mind over matter and did not scratch, it only caused temporary and minor irritation. I think scratching may have been what was working the oil into the skin and making the reaction worse. With out it, there wasn't that much in my system to cause problems.
There's poison ivy in my yard, (2 out of 4 sides have trees, enough of them that they can't be seen through) and I used to wonder those woods for hours as a kid.. I never once had it bother me. My dad went through my trails once and his legs were covered. 🤷🏼♀️
A very similar thing can happen here in Australia with on of our biggest native plants, Grevilleas,these plants contain a similar chemical to urushiol, but it takes decades of build up this allergy, all thought the symptoms are fare less extreme then poison ivy and oak, although still initiating
I have hypersensitivity to Urushiol oil. Mango skin, and cashew and pistachio shells also have the oil, but in tiny amounts that most people never react to. If I even look at those foods every inch of my body is covered in blisters for weeks.
Fun fact: cashew and mango plants also defend themselves with urushiol! I feel pretty fortunate to be one of the 'immune' minority.
as a kid in the santa monica mountains very few of the people I knew had reactions but those that did really got it bad. as we got older we would often challenge each other to eat poison oak with no reaction at all. it is said it can help provide a build up of resistance to leaves of three. I could never have the fear of having a good outdoor romp because of it but I have know a good few who have to think that way. the ooze is gross.
Stefan, there are NO benefits to getting older! 🤪😉🌿 (However, I had always RIDICULOUSLY allergic to poison ivy, etc. 😫 This one time when I was around age 13-15(ish), I somehow managed to step in the nasty stuff wearing sneakers but no socks. When my ankles and heels broke out in the all-too-familiar itchy, oozy, icky rash, I decided to literally take matters into my own hands. Sitting on the bathroom counter, I was able to run the HOTTEST water tolerable and use a WIRE bristled brush (and a little soap) to scrub the blisters open and clean the oil and other nastiness out. A couple hours of baking my heels in the sun afterwards dried up the mess and all I was left with was some good scabs. It was worth the pain 😢) AND hot water on itchy poison ivy feels incredible, BTW!
I'm one of the lucky ones. Used to maintain hiking trails and I was on the crew that always got to wade into the poison oak whenever we had to cut it back. Never did anything to me, but my cousin lend in for a hug one weekend and I didn't have the heart to insist he not do it... Yeah. I'm one of the lucky ones, not my cousin.
I'm deathly allergic to poison ivy (and I guess the others too). I got it once in my life as a kid and it spread across my entire upper body really fast. I have scars from it.
ouch...
Yikes, same here. Not fun...
I'd have been interested in learning about how urushiol protects poison ivy from microbes? I mean, if it's not meant to repel us, what is it meant to repel? And how do these plants fit into the larger ecosystem? Are they just your average food plant to most animals?
Scratching the bumps feels amazing good. That is the best early detection system. Normally when you scratch an itch, it relieves the itch. When you scratch poison oak rash, it feels sooo good.
Once I discovered this, I became much less susceptible to the rash. I'll get a few bumps and scratch them. It feels amazing. Red flags go off in my brain: why did that scratch feel so good. Upon inspection I recognised the bumps for what they are and avoid contact for a few days.
One time I went camping ran out of toilet paper and used some leaves to wipe. Turns out those leaves were poison ivy. So if you think running out of beer while your camping is bad. Just remember that worse things can happen.
the bad part about this event is that you would have a difficult time proving and convincing others where the poison ivy contact took place without there being a really awkward fireside reveal from taking place ...not a good time for selfies either....just sayin' but then if alcohol was involved the probability might actually increase...i wouldn't know since i don't drink...
Grew up with poison oak in California first exposure was very bad every exposure after that within short durations of time became very small itchy spots while living in the area with poison oak to almost no results at all.
After moving away to the city with no exposure for about three years then came back to a visit to my town I grew up in my first exposure to poison oak was horrible like the very first time I caught it and then exposure levels went down to almost nothing more than what looked like several flea bites after living there a year again been exposed. Some people build immunity
I used to get rashes from it fairly often, then one summer I got it REALLY bad, whole body bad. After that I experienced one more mild rash after accidentally trimming a BUNCH of it before realizing that I was in the middle of a patch of it- my legs were basically SOAKED in the oil. I was about 14 at the time, maybe 13. The rash was extremely mild and lasted maybe a day or two. Since then I've never had a reaction again
How does that relate to insect bites, specifically mosquitos and fleas? I'm literally itching to find out more...
Thanks!
I'm one of the people who is lucky enough to be immune. I used to be in poison ivy a lot as a Boy Scout... One time I was playing in a patch of poison sumac and didn't know it, and was apparently *covered* in the oils. Got back to the cabin later, was running around... Within half an hour everyone but me was itchy and had no idea. Then they realized I had been playing in the bushes... Let's just say my dad kept a closer eye on what plants I went near after that.
My little brother used to get poison ivy rashes all the time to the point where the over the counter medication didn’t work. So his doctor prescribed steroids. Still got poison ivy until the doctor told him “if you get the rash one more time, the strongest medication I can give you won’t get rid of it. So he had to start layering up when he wanted to go out.
PS the only reason he got poison ivy was because he was too lazy to ride his bike on the street and he’d take a shortcut through about 200 feet of woods. And he didn’t stop even when the doc told him to.
As a child I ran around in the woods behind our house. And I went on camping trips in several different areas known for having one or the other of these plants. Never had a reaction. Could be luck but my luck's usually bad. Maybe good genes or the secondhand smoke that compromised my defense against asthma killed that reaction.
Rash, oozing blisters and relentless itching. Reminds me of my prom date.
Get tested my friend
Hey now, your mother is a very nice woman.
I have a cousin who is SEVERELY allergic to such plants (poison ivy, oak, sumac, etc) But neither she, nor anyone else knew how severe it was. When my Uncle was clearing out a patch of woods to build a house for my Grandma, He cut up what he could for firewood, and piled all the brush, limbs and smaller bits and burned them. Just so happened that there was a shitload of poison ivy in the pile too. My cousin, who was about 12 at the time, was playing nearby, climbing on the un-burned portion of the pile,, getting in the smoke, and just pretty much enjoying the giant bonfire. Later that night, she began having severe itching and trouble breathing. Soon she was at the ER and they found out that her airways were blistered. She was put on O2, and given extensive treatment. She nearly died. She broke out so bad that she looked like a burned version of Ben, that rock-man from Marvels' "Fantasic Four". Her skin blistered, swelled and cracked leaving her looking just like the dude. She recovered, and began to avoid the woods or even going outdoors. When she grew up, she moved to a large city and vows never to return to any rural area where vegetation grows naturally.
I got itchy just remembering that.. * scratch scratch *
Could someone please get this 4:08 notification bell imitation into a video that loops it a few dozen times? Thanks.
Ahaha, thanks for that.
Totally immune from the "poison" vines. Doesn't bother me at all.
I remember my dad, unknowingly, cleared away a bunch of poison oak and his arm looked like the top of creme brulee for almost two months. He basically lost use of his arm until it healed.
(Warning for folks with photosensitive epilepsy: there's a scene with moving, repeated patterns starting at around 2:17)
I really wish scientists were more invested in understanding allergic reactions; there's still so much we don't know about the internal processes that cause (and remove) them. :(