i found my perfect piece of land in northern california that i bought last year. i am now clearing brush & oaks for my road and building pad & there is lots of poison oak around. right now after working last week-end i'm pretty much covered with the stuff. other than painting yourself with caladryl or similar stuff can anyone give me a better remedy or suggestion? i would appreciate it..

-- bob mccaffrey (bobmccaffrey1@netscape.net), October 21, 2000

Answers

If I remember right, and I grew up in Northern California around the stuff, the same treatments that work for poison ivy will work. At different times, we've had threads and there were alot of responses. Check out the archives. That stuff is miserable.

-- Cheryl Cox (bramblecottage@hotmail.com), October 21, 2000.

The best that i know of is degreaseing dish soap put it on a little thick and let dry and then rinse off. more informatiom is posted an the posion ivy posting. as posion oak, ivy, and sumack are about the same. and it works on all of them.

-- nthony j. didonato (didonato@vvm.com), October 21, 2000.

If you have a really bad case you might consider taking benadryl the generic is called diphenhydramine hydrochloride they come in 25mg capsules. Thet should not be used unless you have a bad case but if you do they may help. gail

-- gail missouri ozarks (gef123@hotmail.com), October 23, 2000.

If you know you've gotten in the stuff, wash yourself with Fels Naptha Soap, available at most grocery stores, and ALL your clothes in hot water immediately. If it's too late for that, and you want a non-drug approach, try jewelweed tincture applied straight from the bottle sparingly (too late in the season to find fresh jewelweed), or, a half and half mixture of lemon juice (can be from a bottle) and cider vinegar applied 4 times a day, and wash twice a day with Aveeno oatmeal soap, the best soap for ANY skin affliction. Any drug store and most grocery stores carry it, as well as Wally World. Benedryl helps, but supppresses your immune system in doing so, something I don't like to recommend, would rather encourage the body to heal itself. Annie in SE OH.

-- Annie Miller (annie@1st.net), October 23, 2000.

I am treating a case right now. I am washing mine several times a day with alcohol (I read this in countryside) I don't remember which issue but is seems to be working. If takes a while for mine to finally go away, just keep applying.

-- Ronya Hammonds (surenuffbusted@juno.com), October 24, 2000.

Bob, I moved to a great piece of land here in northwest Oregon a year and a half ago. I soon discovered that about half of our 5 acres was covered with poison oak. We have some vines that are 3" in diameter and wrap around trees 50 ft. up. I am very prone to breaking out, seemingly by just walking near the stuff. I love the outdoors and I love our property, so I knew I had to do something. Within a month of moving here I began reading Countryside, there were several issues that contained info. on poison oak. One woman said she cut the leaves up in the spring, and put them into gel caps that you get from the health food store, and her entire family ingested one tablet daily for three weeks each spring! I read in one of the survival magazines about a guy who eats the leaves right off of the vine! So this spring I took the young leaves, and cut them with scissors, and stuffed them into gel caps with tweezers. I took one a day for three weeks! A lot of people said I was NUTS! This summer I came into direct contact with poison oak vines, on my face, legs and arms at least 2 dozen times. What happens now is that about three days after contact a small red patch appears, I DO NOTHING about it. Within a week the redness disappears. I have lost no sleep because of itching, I have taken no steroids (the only thing that would help me before), I have not applied any creams or ointments. Now there are several land owners where I work that are going to be eating the stuff also! It worked for me. Hope this helps.

-- Glynn Pennington (glynnpennington@yahoo.com), October 28, 2000.