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i learned from an herbalist that you can eat poison ivy as a vaccine against it, but i've been too afraid to try.
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.
i learned from an herbalist that you can eat poison ivy as a vaccine against it, but i've been too afraid to try.
i also learned this and have tried it. 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.
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Back when I had a really nasty run-in with poison oak, my friend’s father who was a doctor suggested the hot water trick. AMAZING. His explanation was that it depleted histamines that caused the itching. Appears to bear out: “ 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 product…
I'd like a better source for that information than an ad for a commercial product.
I have read that the urushiol is also present in the skin of the mango fruit. 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 res…
Once I had the brilliant idea to eat a mango in slices like a melon. Turns out that's a great way to get a face rash.
Does anyone know why desensitization works for some allergies but for other things, like latex, the more you are exposed to them the more likely you are to develop an allergy?
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.)
You don't need to eat it. A well-known phenomenon in the US military is that some of the sites for Basic Training of new recruits have prodigious quantities of poison oak/ivy/sumac as the local flora. As consequence of the military training, you are rolling around in those plants daily. Initially, a large percentage of people have the usual reaction but it quickly disappears after a few weeks and it never happens aga…
As an Army vet, this sounds ridiculous. You don't roll around anywhere daily, let alone on poison oak/ivy/sumac. What's your source on this?
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Not a week passes where I do not learn something interesting on hn! And this one may even be life altering! 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…
Glad to help! Just wanted to note that my immunotherapy for pollen/cat/mold allergy is not oral, but subcutaneous. That is, allergy shots. Oral (probably sublingual) immunotherapy can be done also, but for these allergens I believe subcutaneous is more common. I am not sure of the reasons but they may be related to efficacy, safety (eosinophilic esophagitis does not occur with shots), or convenience (while shots are…
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> This is so wrong, sorry 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.
Suggesting people forego blood pressure treatment is a pretty dubious suggestion. We have a whole lot of data that it reduces mortality and morbidity.
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Most osteopathic medical schools teach real medicine these days. They should drop the DO label.
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However, do you have the same opinion of MDs who went to the Caribbean or other international schools that have lower entrance requirements than DOs?
Also, are you aware of the following?
* The president of the United States Joe Biden has a DO as his personal doctor (Dr. Kevin O'Connor)
* The chief medical officer of NASA is a DO (Dr. James Polk)
* Very few DOs continue to practice anything related to osteopathy once they graduate
* DOs and MDs attend residencies together, eg, they are training at the same university learning their surgical subspecialty
* DOs exist in all medical specialties, including neurosurgery