are you immune to poison ivy?
I’ve posted about this before, but now that I have my second-ever poison ivy rash in my 27 years on this earth, it’s come up again.
You see, I grew up in the woods, usually in shorts or a dress as a kid. I rolled around in the stuff, I could rarely be forced into socks and shoes, and while all my peers suffered the consequences of throwing caution to the wind in poison ivy patches, I never paid that price.
So I fairly assumed the same thing many people do, that I was among the lucky ones immune to Poison ivy.
The problem is: That’s Not A Real Thing.
To understand why, let’s just go over what immunity means like we’re reading a 5th grade text book. Immunity is defined as, “ the ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or toxin by the action of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells.”
When your body is exposed to an antigen, or, “ a toxin or other foreign substance which induces an immune response in the body,” your immune system will (hopefully) create antibodies which recognize and fight that antigen in the future should you be exposed again. That’s the basic concept behind vaccines.
Something harmful enters your body, and your immune system creates specialized soldiers to recognize it and fight it off better next time. Creating antibodies as an immune response to antigens that will harm your body means your immune system is functioning the way it should.
However, when your immune system overreacts to a foreign substance that WOULDN’T harm your body, that’s not an efficient way to run things. And that’s exactly what happens with Poison Ivy.
The plant (leaves, vines, and all) contain an oily substance called “urushiol.” Urushiol itself is technically harmless. It won’t hurt us. But when urushiol comes in contact with our skin, our immune systems sometimes identify it as a threat and attack it with VIGOR.
The reaction this causes is called “allergic contact dermatitis,” and we can get this same reaction from things like shampoos, laundry detergents, grass, and anything else that our body freaks out about on our skin for technically no good reason.
The reason this matters is to understand that an immune response to poison ivy is not the same as an immune response to a pathogen. Your immune system isn’t building any defense against Poison Ivy. The immune response is actually the thing making Poison Ivy a problem in the first place.
And the more often you’re exposed, the more you put that Urushiol into your immune system’s memory. Meaning, if you haven’t reacted to Poison Ivy before, when you finally do, the reaction (rash and itchiness) can be more dramatic than it is for people who react more frequently.
When I was 22 and had my first-ever reaction, my doctor said it was the worst he’d ever seen, and he explained it to me as my body “finally getting the memo.”
Basically, I’d exposed my immune system to Urushiol so many times for so many years that when my immune system finally responded, it was like, “THIS guy again? Alright. It’s time to REALLY teach him a lesson. Get out the Big Guns.”
So if you’ve never reacted to Poison Ivy before when you know you’ve been exposed, don’t take that to mean you’re immune. Take that to mean you’re trying your immune system’s patience, and it may only put up with you for so long.
Allergic reactions change over time, and at any given moment, a person can develop an allergic response to literally anything. I wasn’t allergic to penicillin until last year. It just happens. Mild childhood food allergies can worsen with age and become genuine threats.
Some people will go their entire lives without ever reacting to poison ivy. This is luck, not immunity. It is not possible to build immunity to something that is caused by an overactive immune response. You can’t put out a fire by setting it on fire. Plain as that.
At the end of the day, when it comes to your body, skin, and safety, it’s up to you what you do with this information. If you want to try your luck and continue to laugh in the face of that poison ivy vine between you and your favorite swimming hole (okay I’m speaking from experience right now), that’s your business. You may eventually have a reaction, or you may not. I’m suffering from my second-ever rash as I type this, but I’ve been exposed plenty of times between it and my first rash four years ago. I guess you could say that in the day-to-day exposure I get in my profession and hobbies, I like my odds.
BUT. Some pervasive myths about Poison Ivy immunity can put other people in danger, which is why this is all important information.
1. It’s popular practice where I grew up to feed a toddler a bit of poison ivy with the belief that they’ll develop an immunity.
Now you know that’s not possible. At best, you’re setting the child up for a stronger reaction in the future, and at worst, you give the child a rash on their lips, in their mouth, throat, and even their anus when the plant leaves their body. This can result in breathing issues and serious infections, because it’s hard to keep babies from scratching the rashes which can create open, dirty wounds.
2. I once had an argument that resulted in a manager being fired when he tried to send only the black members of our landscaping staff to clear out a Poison Ivy patch, because he believed black people are naturally immune.
Obviously, that’s a larger problem of race othering and dehumanization, but armed with the understanding of why Poison Ivy immunity is a myth in general, you’re more equipped to combat this dangerous belief if you ever run into it in order to protect yourself if you’re not white, and to protect other people if you are.
So now you know! Go forth. Protect others. Do what you will with yourself, but I recommend caution.
Read more about this here, and here, and here.
annaxmalina
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