Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 207 posts

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#51

Post by beedeebeedee »

mmastrac wrote: post #39
skepticalmd wrote: post #14

Absurd that there is zero mention of Mithridates in the article. 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.

This is so wrong, sorry. 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.

> 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.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#52

Post by burnte »

AlbertCory wrote: post #40

Doctors are pretty much required to follow Establishment medicine. They're not going to tell you about folk remedies, because it could be malpractice for them. 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…

> Doctors are pretty much required to follow Establishment medicine. They're not going to tell you about folk remedies, because it could be malpractice for them.

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.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#54

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

corinroyal wrote: post #2

Please don't do this. It's a great way to get urushiol poisoning of your GI tract.

Urushiol soup is actually a common East-Asian folk remedy and you can order it in some restaurants -- I've actually had it.

It's not exactly a _toxin_, just sometimes trigger allergic reactions.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#55

Post by nashashmi »

skepticalmd wrote: post #14

Absurd that there is zero mention of Mithridates in the article. 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.

Fever happened and doctor thought it was virus. Fever hit 106. As I didnt take Tylenol. Fever turned out to be sepsis salmonella. Should have taken Tylenol.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#56

Post by HarryHirsch »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44

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…

That's the exact opposite to what happens with DCC in chemical labs. DCC reacts with amino groups in proteins, same as urushiol in poison {oak,ivy,sumac} and is a notorious sensitizer. It happens to some graduate students that they are unable to work in a lab any longer.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#57

Post by taurusnoises »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44

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…

This is not how it works with these plants. Prolonged, sustained exposure results in worse symptoms over time as your immune response increases in intensity. https://www.pbsnc.org/blogs/science/poison-ivy-and-its-pals-...

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#58

Post by mlyle »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #51
mmastrac wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so wrong, sorry. 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.

> 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.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#59

Post by mlyle »

rwmj wrote: post #6
PaulHoule wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard about it. 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…

Is it the same plant that was used for shokushinbutsu, the "self-mummification" practiced by Japanese monks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu 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

> which is what slowly kills you

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.

Re: I couldn't escape poison oak, so I started eating it

#60

Post by wakawaka28 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #32
freedomben wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most anti-science attitude I think I've seen in a very long time. It's also foolish and dangerous IMHO, because it greatly contributes to the very thing you want to prevent: amplification and creation of quack science to the gen pop. 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…

> Simply depriving these people of airtime does NOT quash their views and make them go away. > 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…

>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. 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.

Post reply on HN