Some essential facts about poison ivy and poison oak rashes:

• Identifying: Poison ivy is found in forested areas across the much of the United States and Canada. Poison oak is common in southern states. Both plants can be identified by their distinctive sets of three leaves on a stem. Poison ivy leaves have pointy ends, while poison oak has oak-like scalloping at the leaf edges. While more commonly recognized as shrubs, both plants can also grow up trees as vines.

• Poison ivy and oak release a resin called urushiol, and it’s contact with that resin that leads to the rash. Experts say more than half the population of the U.S. and Canada are susceptible to reacting to poison ivy’s urushiol.

• Signs: A poison ivy rash typically occurs within 24 hours, though sometimes it will develop as late as 3 days after exposure. (An old wives’ tale is that the rash appears immediately – not so.) Unfortunately, the symptoms can last for 2 to 3 weeks.

• The rash: in most people, the rash looks like strips of tiny pimple-like blisters and is irritating and uncomfortable. But for some who are highly sensitive to poison ivy, the rash can turn into large, liquid-filled blisters and is extremely itchy and painful.

• Myths: Contrary to what you may hear or see on the Internet, the rash is not contagious and it does not spread. It just seems as if spreading is occurring, since resin absorbed by the skin may slowly cause increasing blistering.

Next: Treatment and Prevention

But Dr. Douglas Leavengood, an allergist based in Biloxi, Mississippi, swears by a simple treatment found readily in the pantry: sea salt.

About 20 years ago, Leavengood noticed that many of his child eczema patients saw an improvement in their condition after spending lots of time in the ocean in the summer. Then Leavengood’s daughter tried it out. She began giving daily sea salt baths to her own kids with eczema, and their skin became less red and irritated.

Leavengood now recommends daily sea salt baths (about a handful in the tub) for all of his young patients, and commonly sees an improvement in redness, itchiness and dryness in as little as a week to 10 days. “It’s the most impressed I’ve ever been with a home therapy for anything,” he tells Allergic Living.

Scientific study would be necessary to conclusively prove that the treatment really works, as well as how it works. (Leavengood wonders if the salt may somehow help the skin to stay moist, or if perhaps it acts as an antibacterial agent.) What’s more, Leavengood’s patients often have severe cases, so they still require prescription creams and antihistamines.

Still, he says, “for a lot of mild cases, try this and a good moisturizing cream, and you’re good to go.”

See also: Bleach Bath for Eczema

From the Fall 2011 issue of Allergic Living magazine.

Prolonged cell phone use is leading to nickel sensitivity and reactions on an increasing number of faces, according to a key presenter at the ACAAI conference in Phoenix in November.

“Patients come in with dry, itchy patches on their cheeks, jaw lines and ears and have no idea what is causing their allergic reaction,” Dr. Luz Fonacier, head of the allergy section of Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., told the gathering of about 1,600 allergists.

Nickel contact dermatitis now affects up to 17 per cent of women and 3 per cent of men. Common culprits causing reactions range from nickel-containing coins to eyeglasses, brassiere and jeans fasteners, to watches and jewellery. And now, given the widespread, daily use of portable phones, the cell has been added as major nickel trigger. Dr. Fonacier cited statistics that 6.1 billion minutes per day are racked up on Americans’ cell phones.

“Some researchers suggest that there should be more nickel regulation in the U.S. like there is in some European countries,” noted Dr. Fonacier. (The same issue applies in Canada.)

She has seen patients whose cell phone reactions range from redness, itching and swelling to blistering and skin lesions that sometimes ooze and leave scarring. Those who have eczema are often susceptible to such nickel rashes.

The allergist recommends avoiding phone-to-skin contact. Potential solutions are finding a phone without metal surfaces, using an earpiece cellphone (with plastic covering) or at least getting a plastic cover for an existing cell phone. If you have a rash that may be caused by your cellphone, it’s best to get this looked at by an allergist or dermatologist for diagnosis.

Next: Reactions to hair dyes and temporary tattoos. Plus an outgoing president’s controversial stand against peanut “bans”.

SCRATCH, scratch, scratch. It’s a sticky summer evening and I’m absently rubbing some tiny red bumps under the clasp of my watch.

Poison ivy, perhaps? I apply calamine lotion and think no more of it until I notice the same rash on my abdomen, where my jeans button happens to sit. I’d known for 20 years that earrings made my lobes itchy, but why were my watch and jeans suddenly a problem?

The culprit is nickel, the most common metal allergen. It turns out that because I’m sensitized to it in one place, I’m likely to react to it elsewhere on my body.

It’s a chronic condition, so I’m stuck with it for life. But at least I am in good company: nickel allergy affects up to one in seven women. That means I have around two million Canadian sisters suffering along with me. Of course, nickel allergy affects men as well, but in smaller numbers.

A nickel reaction generally shows up as an itchy, red, bumpy rash where something containing the metal, such as a necklace, a watch, a ring or a pair of earrings, sits against the skin.

The incidence of nickel allergy shot up in the 1990s; it used to hover at about 10 per cent of women, but has grown to 14 per cent. That’s because of the popularity of body piercing, the most common cause of the reaction.

When the wrong type of piercing tool is used, corrosion causes the release of nickel ions, which can leach onto the skin. The same goes for studs used while the ear lobes are healing.

For those of us contending with the allergy, earrings, other piercings and rings are obvious triggers. But like my jeans fastener, other nickel encounters are less apparent.

A glasses wearer may not initially make the connection between a line of red bumps and contact with a pair of nickel-laden spectacles, while a woman may wonder what is happening to her as an underwire bra rests against her irritated skin.

Nickel allergy sufferer Kathy Weber of Stroudsburg, Pa. recalls her also-allergic 9-year-old daughter’s reaction to a more obscure object. “She brought home her new trumpet – an instrument she’d been excited to play since kindergarten – and played it frequently over the next few days,” Weber says.

Her daughter soon developed itchy, blistering lips. Some quick Internet research uncovered a high nickel content in that particular mouthpiece. Kathy bought a poly-carbonate mouthpiece for her daughter and gave the nickel one to her trumpet-playing husband.

If you’re getting skin eruptions, you may wonder if nickel allergy is the cause. According to Dr. James Bergman, a Vancouver pediatric dermatologist and allergist, if it’s nickel allergy, the rash will typically show up as a well-defined, red area.

The recipe? All it took was half a cup of bleach in a tub of water twice a week to see dramatic improvement.

The children taking the bleach baths saw a 24 per cent reduction in the amount of eczema on the body, compared to a 3 per cent reduction among those taking regular baths.

Bleach has an anti-bacterial effect, explains Dr. Jennifer Huang, the lead author on the study. (Huang is currently a dermatology resident at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.)

Many people with moderate to severe eczema are infected with the staphylococcus aureus bacteria. At first, it colonizes on the body, often in the nose. But when the skin starts to break down because of the eczema, the staphylococcus aureus then causes infection.

The 22 children in the study, aged six months and up, all had clinical signs of infection with their eczema. They were all given two-weeks of oral antibiotics.

Then one-half of the group was given the bleach baths and an antibiotic cream used in the nose to get rid of the staph colonization, and the other group was given regular baths and a placebo ointment.

See also: Sea Salt and Eczema

Huang believes the bleach would probably work without the antibiotic in the nose, but that hasn’t been studied yet.

While the study didn’t find any risks or side effects from the bleach, she cautions that those who want to try this treatment should speak to their doctors first.

“They should make sure that there are signs of infection, that the patient truly does have eczema, and that this treatment is the right treatment for them,” she says.

Related:
• Could sunlight prevent eczema in kids?
• Daily eczema prevention routine
• A surprising bath ingredient to help eczema

From the Summer 2009 issue of Allergic Living magazine.
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