# Eating poison ivy will make you immune to it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 19, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-poison-ivy-will-make-you-immune-to-it/255818 "2004-07-19T14:14:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2016, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-poison-ivy-will-make-you-immune-to-it/255818/21 "2016-03-28T18:23:42Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Note to **Lyme:** This thread is 12 years old, but Evidence-Based Medicine hasn’t changed. > > **Evidence-Based Medicine** means your anecdotal story is worthless. > > But if it works for you, go for it. Just don’t expect anyone else to care about your personal experience, because, uh…it’s worthless. > [@Melbourne](#): > > Level 5 evidence. Used in the absence of higher level evidence. “worthless” only for certain values of “worthless”. Just FTR Lyme joined on the day of that post and has posted exactly one time. I don’t know about levels of evidence but his is not only an anecdote but it’s an unconfirmed anecdote. As evidence, I would rank it with alien abduction accounts. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-poison-ivy-will-make-you-immune-to-it/255818/22 "2016-03-28T19:31:59Z")
> [@Jake](#): > > QtM, When I was a teen I had a job offered me ( In Marin County CA ) to do some lumber cutting work. As a kid I was VERY allergic to Poision Oak. Always seemed to settle in the groin area. 🙂 > I couldn’t turn down the Job so I went to my doctor, who gave me a " Poision Oak" shot. To this day I don’t know what it was, but it worked for me. Finished the job even while working among the three leaf bitch witout even an itch! I’m not a doctor, but I do have more allergies than any three people collectively should have. I’m going to _guess_ he gave you some sort of steroid shot, maybe something like prednisone which pretty reliably tamps down allergic reactions. But, as I said, I’m not a doctor and I wasn’t there, it’s just a wild-assed guess. > [@Lyme](#): > > Wow, evidence, huh? So like what exactly? You want to get a hundred people together, who are not you, and tell them to eat poison? Good luck with that. Please let us know if you ever convince a hundred people to eat poison while you periodically rub even more poison on their skin every week and measure the size of the heinous rashes that break out as a result of your experiment. Good plan there. Just how do you think they test new drugs? They do pretty much that - ask for volunteers to take something that may well be poison and monitor the results. Anyhow - QtM wasn’t advocating anyone actually doing that, just saying that that is definitive proof of the effectiveness (or not) of a proposed medical treatment. > [@Jake](#): > > Or you could just eat it yourself and find out that way. That’s fair, right? He who wants the knowledge should take the risk. That’s what I did…_[snip anecdotal account]_ Despite what I said about being a walking collection of allergies, poison ivy is, in fact, one of the things I _DON’T_ react to (so far). This is actually a family trait, most of the people I’m related to don’t readily react to it, either… except for that one uncle who never, ever had a problem with it until that one day when he was in his 50’s when he had an epically bad reaction, spent a couple weeks in the hospital unable to eat, drink, and barely able to breathe. Yes, you can suddenly develop a sensitivity to it, without warning. Which is why, when my landlord occasionally employs me to rid a location of the “three leaf bitch” (great name) I don’t get stupid. I cover up my body, after I’m done the clothes, including gloves, are bagged until I get get them properly washed and decontaminated, and all tools used in the extirpation are thoroughly cleaned as well. Sure, my immunity _might_ last a lifetime, but it might not. It’s more likely to last, though, if I don’t keep testing it. This is particularly important as my landlord is highly sensitive to the stuff, to the point if, after I do a clearance operation, I merely sit in his truck he can (and has) subsequently get the rash from the traces of oil I leave behind while doing such a thing (this is also why a drop cloth is spread on my truck seat if I need to transport myself to a jobsite, and I take myself in my truck instead of going with the landlord). When he does get it he usually winds up on a course of steroids. It’s his only allergy. Let’s just say he’s got some empathy for why I won’t touch tomato plants (which give me quite a nice rash due to my allergy to them). He didn’t use to react to poison ivy, but developed the sensitivity after adulthood. ---
**Author:** ![GO\_FOR\_JOE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/90db22/32.png) [@GO\_FOR\_JOE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GO_FOR_JOE)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-poison-ivy-will-make-you-immune-to-it/255818/23 "2016-03-30T01:27:47Z")
Firsthand a couple years ago, I watched a deer eat some poison ivy with no hesitation whatsoever. Myself eating it is a completely different story, if I see it I break out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-poison-ivy-will-make-you-immune-to-it/255818.md?page=1)