I must share something that has helped me tremendously. An elderly neighbor told me how to get rid of poison ivy, of which I had known the horrors of. She said to me, the old timers would pick a leaf of the plant each spring and eat it. I now pick a small leaf and eat it each spring, and I can pick wild blackberries with my hands all in the poison ivy and never have a reaction. Most folks are scared of this when I tell them, but blessed be my neighbor, it works for me.
By Rexe from Junction City, Arkansas
Editor's Note: Warning! Eating poison ivy can be very dangerous and can cause shock and severe breathing problems. Advice similar to Rexe's can be found all over the internet and in some cases, this may be an effective way to increase your immunity to poison ivy. But I would strongly recommend against trying this approach.
This is an example of homeopathics taken to a dangerous extreme. With a hompathic, the remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water. Chewing on a poison ivy leaf is a recipe for disaster and not a true homeopathic because it's not diluted. This could kill someone who is highly allergic to poison ivy as I am.
Do not even think of doing this! My husband's aunt used to say she was immune to poison ivy, that she could even eat it and it wouldn't bother her. She did it on a dare, and was sick for weeks. She was fortunate to live.
Along the same lines, some health food stores carry a brand of teeny sugary pills that have a minuscule amount of poison ivy extract that seems to be safe. All the local landscapers and park service people around here use them to make them immune to poison ivy. A good friend told me about it a few years ago and it's worked for me on the seasons I remember to use it. I think it's about $8.95 a bottle, but the bottle of teensy pills lasts for months. I'm so allergic to poison ivy that I'd be terrified of eating a leaf, but I've never had any problem with the little pills and I'm taking them again this year. Still, if we touch poison ivy and know it, we wash in Dawn Foaming dish liquid and that removes the oil. It seems to work as well as the ivy remover from Walmart. Before I started the pills again, I got blistered from ivy a little higher up than I washed on my arm. Now I tell people to take the Dawn pump bottle into the shower instead of the sink, lol...
Please do not try this. One of my dear friends was on a camping trip and one of the scouts put poison ivy into the food not knowing what it was. 17 people had to be rushed to the hospital with severe breathing problems and shock. Her reaction was so severe that she can no longer be outdoors if there is any poison ivy near her.
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