I’ve got a friend who gets it bad and he said wash off with dawn dish soap with grease remover.
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good info…natural remedies come in handy…I’m sure we’ve got plantain growing around here…
As someone who used to get really bad poison oak reactions, take it from me, you must avoid hot water touching your rash at all costs. Hot water causes the rash to spread. It also happens to bring temporary relief from itchiness, which makes it hard to give up. If you’re careful to only wash with cold water you’ll find the rash heals much faster.
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Hot water poses no risk of spreading the rash as long as the urushiol has already been washed off. Initial washing after potential exposure should definitely be with cold water but using hot water for symptom relief thereafter is totally fine (and feels so darn good).
Unfortunately this has never panned out in controlled studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9249283/. A shame because it is such a prevalant plant … a weed you might say.
I can’t validate the claim, but supposedly Mean Green power hand cleaner has the same active ingredient as Zanfel for those that have used it. I keep Mean Green around anyway because it is a great product and have used it anytime I suspect contact with poison ivy but I can’t say whether it actually works better than soap for removal of urushiol.
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I’m still going to hope it works next time I grab a handful of poison ivy by accident 
AIM OF STUDY:
This study aims to validate ethnopharmacological use of jewelweed in poison ivy (PI) dermatitis prevention and to refute scientific papers denying this efficacy. Additionally, the content of lawsone, the purported effective agent in jewelweed preparations, was measured to see if its concentration correlated with jewelweed preparation efficacy.
MATERIAL AND METHODS:
Poison ivy was brushed onto forearms of volunteers in 6 locations and exposed areas were treated with jewelweed extracts, fresh plant mashes, soaps made of plant extracts, water and Dawn® dish soap. Rash development was scored on a scale of 0-14.
RESULTS:
Jewelweed mash was effective in reducing poison ivy dermatitis, supporting ethnobotanical use. However, jewelweed extracts were not effective; and soaps made of these extracts were effective but no more so than jewelweed-free soaps. Lawsone content varied with harvest season and did not appear to affect rash development.
CONCLUSION:
Jewelweed is an efficacious plant for preventing development of dermatitis following poison ivy contact, but soap is more effective. Lawsone content does not correlate with PI rash prevention. Perhaps saponins, the soapy component of jewelweed are the effective agents.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22766473
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I knew someone would jump in and disagree with me on this, but my experience tells me you’re wrong. Hot water absolutely does spread the rash even after urushiol has been washed off. Somehow it is interfering with your skin’s ability to purge the urushiol that has already absorbed.
Several time I had poison oak that wouldn’t go away and during that time I was addicted to hitting it with hot water (which does indeed feel amazing). I would hit the hot water two or three times an hour - I couldn’t live without it - and my rash just kept spreading, even months later. I really do not want to take steroids but one time it got so bad I had to. Then a friend who works in landscaping (P.O. is an occupational hazard for him) warned me about hot water. The next few times I got a rash it healed in less than two weeks just by sticking with cold water.
There is a lot of conflicting information about urushiol on the internet. Building a new garden from a weedy poison oak filled backyard gave me more than enough opportunities to learn the facts the hard way.
I dabbed mine with rubbing alcohol. It seemed to soothe so I didn’t scratch it. I would just pat it , if necessary. I don’t know if it really helped, but it seemed comforting. I think alcohol is supposed to help dissolve the urushiol, too.
I am highly allergic to poison ivy. I spent 3 weeks bedridden as a child after helping my father burn off a field that had poison ivy in it. I turned red from head to to toe but did not develop symptoms of inhaling the poisoned smoke. One of the most miserable periods of my life. I have had my hands and arms swell so bad from clearing old roads that it was difficult to move my fingers from the blisters. Long story short - I am highly allergic to it and I get a rash easily from poison ivy.
My experience running hot water is on the rash is that it does not spread the rash but does increase the redness around the blister. You can tell me I am wrong but I spent my childhood in the woods and had multiple cases of poison ivy every summer and had more times than I care to admit as an adult. I have even gotten poison ivy from the $%#@ roots.
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My cottage has poison ivy everywhere, but I never have reacted to it, even after touching it. I still avoid it as one can react at anytime. My neighbor has it every year as we both live in the woods. he tries to avoid it and still manages to be exposed. Stinging nettles usually gets me every year, but that’s nothing, and only lasts an hour at best. It grows all over my garden.
I guess it is very personal - because I have bad reaction to PI - and it helps me!
Hair dryer. It will not make the poison ivy go away, but put it on the hot setting and run it at full force. It will give an intense itching sensation followed by relief (for 4-5 hours in my experience). It will keep you from scratching it and macerating the skin. Supposedly the dermatitis slowly releases histamine which causes the itch. The heat speeds up the process/uses the histamine more quickly until the histamine can reload again. However, if I have the severe weeping dermatitis, I get the steroids.
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Sorry to keep banging this drum, but for the sake of future poison oak/ivy sufferers finding this in Google, don’t do the hairdryer thing or the hot water thing. Heating up your skin on a regular basis can delay healing and spread the rash. Doing it once or twice is fine, but doing it every time you feel itchy is a bad idea. I’d love to see a medical study done on this.
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I’ve tried heating mine before and it made it blister and weep. It weeped so bad I had to hold a towel on my way to the clinic. Prednisone works great. I found that even one pill will make it go away. I have had it so many times that I have studied it. Now I spot it all the time on the back roads while driving. I watch carefully too when walking into unknown territory.
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When my hands and arms swelled they gave me a steroid shot.
We are all talking about our experiences with poison ivy here. I have explained mine. Likewise, I could say that there are no medical studies have demonstrated that heat (water or air) causes the spread of contact dermatitis. We all have “got a friend” that told us something… this discussion list is a bunch of friends sharing perspectives.
On the other hand, we do know that there is a laundry list of potential adverse effects that come around from the use of oral corticosteroids (particularly long term use). Yet every person must make decisions in the best interest of his or her quality of life. Despite the risks associated with corticosteroids I will use them to vastly improve my quality of life for a period of time when I have a significant bout of poison ivy.
Experience (with poison ivy or otherwise) is a great teacher. We would be foolish to ignore the lessons it provides. Even in well-designed randomized controlled studies, patients can have divergent individual outcomes to the same treatments. The outcome results in what is best for the “average” patient in the sample.
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Careful of clothing and dogs too. My grandma used to get it from my dad’s clothes when she did his laundry as a child. My mom has gotten it from her dogs in the past too, petting them after they went running through the woods.
