Poison Ivy: summer is here!

Last summer, my husband was on a hike in beautiful Coyote Gulch in southern Utah. As he was filling up his water at a natural spring, he realized-- too late-- that he was standing in the middle of a poison ivy patch! His immune system over-reacted to the plant and he had a rash covering his legs, arms and shoulders for the next 6-8 weeks, until we realized that this wasn't a "poison," but rather an immune response, such as an allergy, and gave him the right remedy.

So up to 30% of people don't even react to poison ivy! In fact, my husband was with a group and no one else had a reaction, despite the fact that they all were standing amidst the poison ivy.

If we hadn't tried to get the "poison" out for several weeks before realizing it was an immune system issue, NOT a poison issue, perhaps his rash wouldn't have lasted so long. Dr. Christopher's makes a wonderful formula called Immu-calm, and this is great for any allergy, or situation where the immune system is over-reacting. Even having started it so late in the game, there was still a lot of improvement over the next few weeks until it finally disappeared.

I was biking with my boys just up our local canyon a couple days ago, and spotted, guess what?, a patch of poison ivy. It was a good opportunity to teach them about how to spot it. I snapped some photos of it:

It's a little hard to see, but surrounding the poison ivy plant are some other weeds that, at this time of the year anyway, have yellow flowers on them. I don't know what they are, I am going to take a closer look next time I go up there, because apparently Jewel Weed, which also has yellow flowers and often grows near poison ivy, is a natural antidote for the allergic reaction!

Pretty neat that mother nature provides a natural antidote for such a mean plant!