Poison Ivy Home Remedies

Perhaps exposure to Poison Ivy (which leads to a Poison Ivy rash) is one of the more irritating conditions that you can experience. To some degree it may even cause serious effect on your health. It is important that once you get in contact with the Poison Ivy plant that immediate action to attempt to stop the streaks of rashes or minimize the effects must be taken. With this in mind, it is important to know some Poison Ivy home remedies that can help prevent the occurrence of an irritating systemic poison ivy rash. These treatments in a sense can be viewed as first aid measures and by no means should be considered as a replacement for medical attention especially in extreme cases.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one of the best Poison Ivy home remedies is to pay immediate attention to the condition within the first 10 minutes when it happens. The first thing to do is to clean the area exposed to the plant with alcohol. It is believed that since the sap of the Poison Ivy plant is an oil-like substance, it can be broken down by the alcohol and possibly prevent it from entering the skin. The next step is to completely wash the exposed area and adjacent portions of the skin with water, preferably cold. Make sure not to use soap when washing. This is because there is a possibility that the soap may allow the Poison Ivy oil to other parts of your body and worsen the condition.

After making sure that you have already watered down the affected areas, you can now shower off using warm water and soap. As one of the Poison Ivy home remedies, it is important to pay attention to possibly signs of rashes to determine other parts of the body which may have been exposed to the Poison Ivy plant. The next step after you have completely showered off is to get a pair of gloves. When talking about Poison Ivy home remedies it is important to consider all possible sources of allergic attack so once you have the gloves on get rubbing alcohol and wipe everything from your shoes, clothes, keys, and whatever. After the rubbing alcohol repeat the same process this time using tap water. This will ensure that any Poison Ivy sap that may have been transferred to your belongings is now removed.

The drawback to this remedy is that you cannot wait for over ten minutes because of the possibility of the urushiol seeping into your skin. Another thing is that you must have been aware that you got in contact with the Poison Ivy plant. Once the rash has already broken out, one of the handed down Poison Ivy home remedies is to get plain table salt and wet the affected areas. Make sure to rub it slowly to avoid irritating the skin with the rashes. As one of the Poison Ivy home remedies, this method is believed not only to relieve the person of the itchiness but also stops the rashes from spreading.