How to Treat Poison Ivy

Video Transcript

"It was a great walk in the woods until you realized that you encountered poison ivy along the way. My name is Beverly Bitterman, ARNP, Health and Wellness Consultant, with some tips and strategies for you. If you know that you're allergic to poison ivy, that you break out in a rash from that, and you know you encountered it in the woods, the first step would be prevention and that would mean washing yourself as soon as you can with lots of water and some soap to get rid of those poison ivy leaf oils that are the culprit here. If it's too late for that, it's a couple days later and you've already noticed that you've got some red bumps on your skin and they're itchy and you're thinking "Oh my, I've got poison ivy", well then here's some things that you can do. What you want to do with poison ivy is first of all to keep it clean and dry because you don't want to get a secondary infection on top of the allergic response. If the little bumps are bumps and they're not oozing and it's itching you can use a Benadryl cream on top of it to help with the itching. Once they turn into oozing or the little bumps break, then you don't want to use Benadryl cream on that. What you can do then is use a drying agent. You can mix up some baking powder or oatmeal even with some water and kind of put that on the spot and see if that will help dry it out. You can take, if the child or adult is over the age of two or three you can use antihistamines according to the package directions and that might help the itching. And the other thing, again, is just to make sure it doesn't get a secondary infection. So if it's oozing you may want to cover it up just to keep it clean and dry and prevent it from getting on your clothing, things like that, and it's just one of those things that will go away in due time. If you notice greater redness around the area like if the redness is spreading, that might indicate an infection and that would be a reason to make sure you see a healthcare provider. If the itching is keeping you awake at night there are stronger medicines that can be given and your provider could make that determination. My name is Beverly Bitterman, ARNP, Health and Wellness Consultant, and I hope that the rash does go away soon."