The winner is...
Everybody has a personal favorite home remedy for Poison ivy. Here are my top four:
- Fels Naptha to get all the oil off. The allergen in poison ivy is urushoil oil. It is very potent and impossible to detect, and my impression is that why poison ivy seems to spread after you initially detect it. Fels Naptha is a pure soap that seems to actually work. The biggest issue is knowing you've been exposed and washing soon enough.
- Hot water to ease the itch. As hot as you can stand. Nothing hurts better, and when you're done it stops the itch for several hours.
- Claritin to help suppress histamine production. (May not be necessary with #4.)
- And the winner, the best of the best (drum roll please)... Floucinonide cream - a prescription-strength topical steroid. Thank God for modern medicine. Forget the home remedies. Get your doc to give you a prescription (unless you can, as I did, find a friendly neighborhood doc to give you some from his home medicine cabinet). Smear it on, and it starts working right away.
Sorry, J, but the Cream of Tartar just didn't make the list. Maybe if I had kept it up...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment