I Couldn't Escape Poison Oak. So I Started Eating It

>I firmly believe any vessel can be opened with my teeth. I would rather get stung in the face countless times teaching myself how to beekeep than take lessons. And I usually settle debates about whether food has gone bad by eating it.

It is refreshing to see the WSJ’s inclusivity here. While some may scoff at them it can be helpful to understand the rich lives led by dumb guys

I spent many of my days in the woods as a kid and would get terrible poison ivy/oak (I'm not really sure which one affects me the most, if not both) every year. I felt like I have kinda had "grown out of it" as I still spend quite a bit of time in the sticks, but I get it much less or it's less serious. Until last year when I had it all over my hands for about a week and it was absolutely brutal.

I first heard about this solution a few years ago from a tree service owner who said he was allergic but cured his allergy by eating young leaves. (One of his new workers had just gotten exposed for the first time and his reaction was so bad he had to be taken the the ER.) Living on the California central coast, poison oak shows up on my property every year. Two or three times in the last couple of decades I've managed to make contact and get a rash, but it seemed to be less severe with each exposure. (I do remember my mother saying my sister would have a much worse reaction then me when playing outdoors as kids.) As an adult, I'm not sure if I'm building up immunity, or just getting better at avoiding prolonged contact.

Grew up on the east coast, poison ivy barely has an effect on me. Poison oak has me begging for steroids it’s so bad. I probably won’t try eating it.

If you search YouTube for the channel Extreme Deer Habitat and the video How to Never Get Poison Ivy again the presenter asserts that hard scrubbing with a cloth will remove the urushiol oil after contact and that it will prevent a rash.

caladryl clear is really nice if you get poison oak/poison ivy/poison sumac(?) exposure. Haven’t seen it on shelves so much though since moving west