Natural Remedies for Poison Ivy | Summer Camping Wild and Herbal Medicine and First Aid

Description

These 3 wild plants are fantastic for curing any sort of skin irritation, be it a poison ivy rash or bug bites. Here's where to find them and how to identify them, and some information on identifying poison ivy.

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All of the music and footage in this video is original, and was composed, recorded, and captured by Andrew Lin, Bryan Lin, and Robby Huang

All content and music is copyright Adventure Archives/Team Scoog Production (c) 2014

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Tags: poison ivy,remedies,natural remedies,wild medicine,wild remedies,wild,natural,herbal,cure,cures,rash,bug bite,nature,wilderness,camping,bushcraft,plant id,plant identification,flora,backpacking,survival,first aid,emergency,Toxicodendron Radicans (Organism Classification),Alternative Medicine (Medical Specialty),holistic medicine,holistic,medicine,natural medicine,native american,Summer,Health

Video Transcription

so we recently went to manitou island which is a in the northwest side of Michigan there's two small islands north Manitou Island in South Manitou Island absolutely beautiful it was really beautiful one of the interesting things about the island though is that uh it's overrun by mosquitoes and poison ivy neither of which you want to have to deal with unfortunately while we were there I got some poison ivy on my knees not sure how exactly you can take a look here and it's really itchy and obviously there's some over-the-counter stuff that you can get you obviously want to keep it clean you don't want to scratch it either but fortunately there's some natural remedies you can use you can go to just any old lawn or any old Park and you can find these so Andrew and I are we're going to take a look at these right now so one of the first plants is this guy here which is called rib work plantain and the best way to use this is to either chew it up or mash it up with some water but you can also just rub it straight on to the bites or rash and we actually use this a lot during our trip last time because there was lots of it growing just all over lawns and stuff that were near the park of course if you do chew it up it is quite bitter so be prepared for that and try not to swallow too much of it I'm sure your natural instinct will be not to swallow it so there's another plant that grows commonly in these sort of big fields and lawns this is called common plantain also known as greater plantain and people used to call it white man's footprint because when the Europeans came over they introduced it here and wherever they would walk it would compact the dirt and it grows really well there but you can also use this well first you can use it in the same manner as the other plantain but you can also use these as sort of a bandage wrap if you've got an open cut or something like that now the easy way to identify these is notice these very parallel sort of veins and on the back of the leaves these are really pronounced and you can feel the texture this is the true for both of these plants and another common identifying characteristic are these long stalks that grow out of them and again you can find these in your lawn yard

big parks things like that jizz all over I first learned about this actually when I was watching Ray Mears and I realized I had been seeing this just all over you know the University campus and on the lawns and things like that and I was curious and I looked it up and the compound that is in this is an anti-inflammatory compound I think called alat Owen but that's sort of what helps with the itchiness actually my neighbor she told me that one of the best cures for the itching at least is to put ice on and actually that'd be my number one recommendation is to get some ice and put it on there it will relieve the itching so fast so if you're at home use the ice if you're not use the plants now there's one more plant that can help with itching but it's in those woods so let's go take a look so the third plant that you can use to treat your rashes or bug bites is here something called drool weed or spotted touch-me-not actually sitting next to some poison ivy here which is funny because lots of times nature it'll give you both the problem and the remedy in very close proximity so what you want to do with this plant is uh just take the juices from the stem and just rub it on whatever rash you've got really you can just crush the whole plant and do that but uh it's the juices in the stem that helps neutralize the rash in the itching and things like that so the way to identify this plant is these leaves have these very sort of round soft servations on them and the leaves are arranged in sort of the spiral pattern it's very common pattern you find in everything in nature from like seeds in a flower to the spiral of a pinecone that's sort of how these leaves are organized and later on they'll have these orange sort of parrot shaped flowers and also seed pods that will pop in your hands when you touch them lightly so you can find this growing usually on the edge of a forest where transitions from forest to field or something like that really useful so right here we've got the poison ivy and it's literally just a few steps away from the jewel weed and of course everybody when their kid they learned that leaves a three leave them be leaves at four eat some more and that might just be a simpsons quote and i didn't learn that when i was kid Lisa watch out for poison ivy remember leaves of three let it be leaves of four eat some more hey but I do distinctly remember three leaves is a good indicator of poison ivy and you can see right here that the bottom two leaves they have these deep serrations so that it's almost like the bottom leaves have another little growth coming out of it and then a in the center there you can see that the branch is actually a little bit red and that's a good indicator as well and also the two leaves on the side often come directly off of the main stem or they'll have much shorter stems than the middle leaf which usually has a longer stem and so the the resin on the leaf is actually what causes the irritation the leaf does look perfectly benign but there is resin on there and then when that gets on your skin it irritates the skin and causes inflammation if you're allergic to it it's obviously much worse and I think I might be allergic to it I know my father is so yeah actually I'm luckily I've never been affected too badly by poison ivy but even if you are not affected by it you can develop an allergy later on in life so just be careful anyway and it's also worth mentioning that there are some poison ivy where they don't have serrations they sort of have round leaves and those generally grow on these big hairy vines that climb up trees the vines are also very very bad do not touch the vines or you get severe poison ivy that's happened before and for the love of God don't eat the berries did they produce bears the finds one actually there was my neighbor was telling me a story that her sister when they were younger they were but they're both really allergic to poison ivy and so they were trying to get rid of it in their backyard so somebody had the genius idea to burn the poison ivy and the younger sister ended up getting poison ivy in her lungs had to go to the hospital she didn't elaborate on how exactly they cured that and it was when she was younger so that might be just completely like fudge memory but still can you imagine inhaling poison ivy juice birds actually eat the berries though so I guess they're not effective I did for them it's probably like good micro nutrients for them it's like delicious ip man it just at one level there's chaos and another level is order that is the nature of life will help you enjoy the video hope you will stay safe from poison ivy I know my itching is a lot better and if you can't identify it just wear long pants or something we can do the vine no but I was holding no no I know just you know it's been a writer I know whatever you do that's not what I meant okay okay I'm just gonna hand this to use whatever I mean I was holding no no I know I know but that's not what I started room that's not what I meant I know but I'm just saying for continuity I should probably be wholly not know cuz i was talking about the vines when I oh you are right hahahaha Jesus grace okay