I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it
wsj.com
wsj.com
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...
Took me 30 years to find out that I have pollen allergies, and from that food allergies.
And because my body only produces very little diamin oxidase, that leads to heavy symptoms elsewhere in the body. I just recently got so far that diet and fenistil make things usually bearable, and when it gets heavy, only a little more fenistil fixes the symptoms. I don't think the symptoms are anaphylaxes, but overabundance of histamine. I had too many of them and I'm still here, never had to use the epi pen.
But from all the specialists I visited in my country, no one ever told me, that OAS exists, or oral therapy against them.
I can't say how thankful I am for the new ideas from your post and the child posts!
If you have frequent reactions, I'd say you should really consider immunotherapy. Even if they haven't been bad enough to kill you yet, the next one can always be worse. And if you have borderline anaphylaxis, waiting to administer the epi-pen can be fatal, as it can be less effective if you wait too long. Antihistamines will not save you from anaphylaxis, as while they reduce/mask some symptoms they do not treat the specific symptoms that kill you (hypotension, and/or airway swelling leading to suffocation). Only epinephrine does that.
That symptom matches my reaction to egg whites but the weird thing is, it's only some forms. I can eat hardboiled eggs no problem (probably because the allergen has denatured), but not most other forms itch while baked goods are very hit or miss. The worst are meringues and macaroons.
My wife eats a lot of avocado being from south america and that part went away, and the latex allergy seems to have reduced as well.
Allergies are often funny, at least for me. Exposed to a single allergen usually results in no reaction. But many, many small exposures to diverse allergens adds up and can trigger a disproportionate response.
I have a friend who's food-related allergies (non-anaphylactic) disappeared after removing carpet flooring in their home.
Yeah, that's a thing. Also you may notice higher sensitivity to allergens if your immune system is fighting off a cold (perhaps even before you're aware of being sick, or even if someone in your household is sick and you don't get it because your immune system successfully fights it off). If you are doing oral immunotherapy it is sometimes recommended to reduce your dose when you are sick to avoid reactions.
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
Again, not quite: starvation by not eating normal food is what kills you.
Urushiol is non-toxic at even massive doses; but vanishingly small doses will provoke painful/itchy allergic reactions in many people.
I must be overly sensitive or have a deficient BBB because 10 mg loratadine transform me into a lethargic zombie for about 48 hours while providing minimal relief. A double dose of vyvaanse and a few coffees are not enough to bring me out of that state.
Experience with those others makes me wary of using Allegra except when my allergy symptoms are really bad.
BTW: Benadryl (Diphenhydramine), which has the same ingredient in the same dose marketed as a sleep aid, is really good for Poison Ivy because of its ability to penetrate into tissues really well. 30 years ago you would get a prescription for a round of steroid pills that will have you feeling pretty messed up for a week if you got Poison Ivy but today you are likely to be told to go to the pharmacy and treat yourself with OTC pills. Poison Ivy is bad enough that most people will take the drowsiness.
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.
Science doesn't work like that, religion does. "Science" harmed itself with some people and an ideology heavily censoring opponents, and by shutting down any debate, including scientific one.
Even lying about how science works?
During COVID, most everybody was operating from an incomplete data set. Public officials were wrong about some things. You can choose to see this as a conspiracy set up by big pharma, or you can see it as imperfect people doing what they could to mitigate a public health crisis.
And yes, critique the peer review process all you want. It's flawed in many ways. But this "it's us versus science" narrative is extremely, insidiously damaging to society at large. It only serves powerful people who benefit from whipping an audience into a frenzy to buy their shitty supplements or bumper stickers or whatever.
You're only saying that because you happen to disagree with what is being said. Full stop.
it is empirical that means that you should be able to re-produce the results of a thing or assertion by following the details in a paper.
The public might be able to do it themselves. But the point is, its not about who says what, its about can it be reproduced.
scientist "A" says that the sky is blue because of "x". devises an experiment to prove that. writes up the experiment, publishes it, asserts that the sky is blue because of x, and that the experiment proves this.
Scientist "B" says it bollocks, reproduces the experiment, but also extends the experiment to show that the data also says that the sky is green. Paper is published with data and method.
The process repeats until a consensus is reached where everyone can reproduce the data, and no one can disprove the hypothesis that the sky is blue because of x.
None of that requires asserting bollocks on a chat show. Sure science outreach is great, but its not _really_ part of the method.
When scientists don't follow their own method, how should the public decide on which findings to trust?
As documented in Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" there are periods where little progress is made because scientists get tunnel vision. It takes someone to come along and push things in a different direction, perhaps to the detriment of people with decades or lots of money sunk into a different orthodoxy, and navigating that turmoil can be challenging.
Who do you think decides which research gets funded, or published? If you go too far outside of what's acceptable to the establishment, your career is over. When there are billions of dollars on the line and your opposition can literally fund a dozen studies to "discredit" your take, it doesn't matter if your results can be reproduced or not. It could be many years before the truth comes out, if it ever does.
>None of that requires asserting bollocks on a chat show. Sure science outreach is great, but its not _really_ part of the method.
If you want to get funding for research then sometimes it is necessary to engage the public. If you hope to buck the well-monied establishment with hot takes, you might even need legal support. Besides that it's just interesting to hear what people are working on. I think people like to know what scientists think, and it gets boring to hear just a single opinion about things nonstop.
Science doesn’t “vote.”
If one has good results and data, their academic pedigree theoretically shouldn't matter when it comes to publication. But we know it doesn't work like that generally. The real world does not live up to our lofty ideals.
Simply depriving these people of airtime does NOT quash their views and make them go away. It fuels conspiracy theories such as about how big pharma is censoring ideas about natural (or already highly-available) treatments in order to make billions on devoloping their vaccines and using government levers to force people to buy them. (They did try to do that too, though they got lucky in that none of the "natural" treatments seemed to really work. But had they worked, their reaction would have been the same.)
It also means the discussions people see are going to happen on shows/forums/podcasts where the host doesn't push back on them and offer challenges and critical thinking. This not only sets a terrible example for people by demonstrating through social proof that one should accept these things uncritically, but it makes it appear as though the case is very strong and there isn't a good counter-argument! This double effect makes a strong impression on people in the exact opposite way that we want.
I think Joe Rogan has done more to bring sanity to these things than most people. Have you ever watched those episodes? He is very conversational but if there is ever a claim that doesn't seem supported, he will ask Jamie (his assistant or producer or whatever) look it up, and they are highly skeptical and choosy of sources.
We should know by now that censoring information these days does not work. We're no longer living in the society where the average person only gets information from TV or books available at their library or local book store. If there's a quack theory out there, it will get to people through the internet. The answer is not to shut down the internet. We need to expose these ideas and defeat them using logical and scientific refutation, and we need to encourage and teach critical thinking skills. This is a new world we are living in, and the tried and true techniques or censoring and book burning do not work anymore. Embrace it and use it.
> We should know by now that censoring information these days does not work
This argument (repeated) is a bit of a red herring. I haven't seen anyone saying we can make pseudoscience go away forever. We're just questioning the wisdom of embracing and amplifying it to reach people it wouldn't have before.
> It fuels conspiracy theories
This is kind of a corollary to the above point: People are going to theorize conspiracies no matter what. There are undoubtedly conspiracy theorists who think the exact opposite: that including pseudoscience is a conspiracy to make people think it isn't being censored in other ways.
Thus, that a given action might strengthen or weaken the conspiracy theories of at least 1 pseudoscientist isn't enough to justify doing the action or not. Neither choice will make conspiracy theories go away.
You must not have been looking. There are government and media officials coming out against "mis-, dis-, and mal-information" on a constant basis. These same people are the biggest liars around.
>We're just questioning the wisdom of embracing and amplifying it to reach people it wouldn't have before.
"You can have free speech as long as you only speak quietly in your own closet." The power to curate information or "amplify" it as you say is practically very hard to distinguish from censorship when you choose to show only things you agree with, or show only the worst straw men for the other side.
>There are undoubtedly conspiracy theorists who think the exact opposite: that including pseudoscience is a conspiracy to make people think it isn't being censored in other ways.
There are some "conspiracy theories" designed to discredit anyone who is skeptical of authority. The people who complain the most about conspiracy theories really just want people to stop thinking independently, and start accepting whatever their establishment says.
>Thus, that a given action might strengthen or weaken the conspiracy theories of at least 1 pseudoscientist isn't enough to justify doing the action or not. Neither choice will make conspiracy theories go away.
Conspiring to suppress conspiracy theories sure won't make them stop. Being right and showing positive results to the contrary is what wins the day.
No platform owes you the right to amplify nonsense. The government can’t make you stop, but individual platforms or individuals themselves? They’re free to do whatever, just like you. Don’t like it? Start a Truth Social and go yell at your adoring fans all you want.
> Conspiring to suppress conspiracy theories sure won't make them stop. Being right and showing positive results to the contrary is what wins the day.
While that’s a cute thought, conspiracy theorists are exceptionally good at one thing: theorizing conspiracies. “Being right” doesn’t happen, ever, because any positive results can simply be walked back as “part of another conspiracy.”
The way you kill conspiracy theories is not amplifying them as truth. That’s it.
Governments of the world, including the US government, have repeatedly been shown to order these "private" platforms around. So this argument is cooked.
>While that’s a cute thought, conspiracy theorists are exceptionally good at one thing: theorizing conspiracies. “Being right” doesn’t happen, ever, because any positive results can simply be walked back as “part of another conspiracy.”
You should ask yourself why conspiracy theories make more sense to people than "the truth". Hint: It's because real conspiracies are commonfare.
>The way you kill conspiracy theories is not amplifying them as truth. That’s it.
Again this "not amplifying" is code for "censoring" or "burying". The truth inevitably shines through, even when it comes to this bullshit. You think the reality of censorship is a conspiracy, yet people have been censored heavily in this country for years now at the behest of the US government and some NGOs. Sometimes for strictly political reasons. You can call me a crackpot if you want but I've seen the censorship itself and the evidence of government involvement.
Who, pray tell, is qualified to judge what is worthy of "not amplifying"? That word makes me cringe every time because it was chosen to sound innocuous and appealing to young people. It is pure doublespeak.
Liberals even 10-15 years ago knew better than to argue for censorship. Now the left can't stop singing the praises of censorship, keep trying to redefine words to suit the agenda, and basically dragged the political dialogue into dangerous territory that was conclusively settled hundreds of years ago by brilliant philosophers.
While conspiracy theorists believe this to be the case, and they are people, they're a slightly-vocal minority, and thus it'd be disingenuous to represent what conspiracy theorists think as what "people" think, unless you clarify that you're using the term "people" to refer to 1+ persons, not any indicative majority.
As you and I both said upthread: there will always be greater than zero pseudoscience conspiracy theorists who view literally anything as confirmation of the conspiracy theory.
>> I haven't seen anyone saying we can make pseudoscience go away forever.
> You must not have been looking. There are government and media officials coming out against "mis-, dis-, and mal-information" on a constant basis.*
This is not evidence that they, or any significant amount of people, have said they can make conspiracy theories and pseudoscience go away forever. There's nothing wrong with "coming out against" disinformation.
Conspiracy theorists are everywhere. Just casually mention price fixing and you'll see endless speculation from just about everyone about how "they're out to get you". Mention politicians and lobbyists and they will readily speculate about who is on the take, based on stupid shit like physical traits of a person. These same people will then cry about a bunch of other conspiracy theories that don't jive with their preconceived notions.
>As you and I both said upthread: there will always be greater than zero pseudoscience conspiracy theorists who view literally anything as confirmation of the conspiracy theory.
This is true. Likewise, many "normies" regard the existence of nutty conspiracy theorists as evidence that any speculation about possible conspiracies is evidence of stupidity or even insanity.
>This is not evidence that they, or any significant amount of people, have said they can make conspiracy theories and pseudoscience go away forever. There's nothing wrong with "coming out against" disinformation.
First of all I didn't say that. Second of all, there is a lot wrong with trying to police speech, especially under the pretense of it being "disinformation". If you care about disinformation then you put out good information only, engage in debates, and so on. Basically stop treating your fellow citizens like children for merely disagreeing. Even if we want to suppress untrue information, it is extremely difficult to be 100% sure what is true, and the intellectual and popular discourse requires free expression of controversial ideas. If you don't want to have your worldview challenged, there are many ways to tune out the stuff you don't care for. The problem we have is that the authoritarians are threatened by the fact that someone out in the world disagrees with them. They can't handle that because their egos are too fragile. (Of course, some authoritarians do not care about the ideas at all. They just want power and the ideas are the tool they use to get it. We have this type in the West too.)
By the way, Rogan himself has a few entries on Quackwatch for promoting questionable supplements that he has a financial interest in. So he’s not, as you imply and he would love to have you believe “just asking questions”. He is actively engaged in the same bullshit his quack guests come on and peddle.
And vaccines do reduce transmission, which is all I ever heard about it. Not sure what side effects you're talking about.
Is there any research to indicate that a lack of urushiol has negative effects, similar to how we know that a lack of vitamin D has negative effects?
If not I don't really see the connection
NHS (UK) guidance:
> Government advice is that everyone should consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement during the autumn and winter.
> People at high risk of not getting enough vitamin D, all children aged 1 to 4, and all babies (unless they're having more than 500ml of infant formula a day) should take a daily supplement throughout the year.
(People at high risk = for example darker skin, or indoor jobs.)
Basically, we're spending far less time working out in the open so our body doesn't generate vitamin D on its own in sufficient quantities, and the trend towards highly processed, nutritionally inflexible diets on one side and vegetarianism/veganism on the other side leads to a whole host of malnutrition issues.
Unfortunately, the "malnutrition" levels in bloodwork are mostly calibrated on white European males... so similar to BMI [1] and a few medications and diseases [2], there is a "vitamin D paradox" in Black people who seem to not be that sensitive to lower vit-D levels than White people [3].
Human bodies and genetics are fascinating, even if you're not an expert in it.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9877251/
You're right about overdoing it. There is such a thing as vitamin D poisioning. I think it draws calcium out of your bones or something. On the other hand, not enough vitamin D is bad for your bones too.
Fortunately, there are tests for vitamin D. If you think you have a problem with it, you ought to get a test.
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.
This is not how the immune system is known to work.
Sensitivity does not downregulate. Increased exposure enhances detection and response. Recognition proliferates. Once you're allergic to something, it'll only worsen.
You can become allergic to new things, but you won't lose allergies unless the recognizer population dies off entirely. And even if it did, you're likely close enough to training your immune system to this sensitivity again. (You've already done it at least once.)
It's a failure mode of adaptive immunity.
I don't think that's correct. If it were, then allergy immunotherapy wouldn't work. Which... it does. Not perfectly, and not for everyone, but it does for many.
If you can't lose allergies, why is exposure therapy a thing?
One is correct in that repeated exposure to an allergen can upregulate IgE production, especially in cases of severe allergies like bee stings or peanuts. This is due to the immune system's sensitization process, where each exposure can lead to more intense reactions, driven by the Th2-mediated immune response that promotes IgE production and allergic inflammation.
However, one is also correct that controlled exposure through allergen immunotherapy (SCIT or SLIT) can downregulate IgE and mitigate allergic responses. This therapy works by gradually introducing the allergen in controlled doses, which shifts the immune response from a Th2-dominated profile to a Th1-dominated or regulatory T cell (Treg) profile. This shift reduces IgE levels and increases the production of blocking antibodies like IgG4, leading to long-term desensitization and reduced allergic reactions.
In particular environmental allergens (pollens, dust mites, animal dander, molds), insect venoms (bee, wasp) may respond well to immunotherapy but we’ve had poor success or disproportionate risk attempting to mitigate food allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, and shellfish), certain medications, and latex .
That's not true. Desensitization therapy often works.
The trick is to introduce the allergens into the bloodstream, bypassing the skin.
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 know next to nothing about these topics but there are some wildly opposite claims in this thread. Truth has the tendency, despite being complex, to generqlly favor one direction.
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.
One thing where I do not have a link is but I recall it happening is: quackery is impossible to kill with research. Someone does a double- blind study showing that peach pits are worthless against cancer, and the peach pit "doctors" just say "studied by legitimate science!" or "more research is needed!"
My colleague being dragged in front of the board for a similarly stupid situation. Knock on wood I haven't been, but there are far too many people that hear what they want to hear. The only safe course is to stick well within the non-ambiguous accepted medicine responses as much as possible.
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.