Treatments for Poison Oak

My husband is currently recovering from a nasty case of poison oak. He got it at the local archery range when he went into the brush looking for his arrows that missed the target. The rash started a few days after the archery outing. At first he thought the itching was caused by a bug bite, but after a few days it turned into a pretty bad, bright red rash. He went to see the doctor who seemed to correctly diagnose it as poison oak, and prescribed a steroid cream. Unfortunately, the cream spread the poison oak oil around on his leg and made the rash spread and turn even more red than it had been.

Tonight I went to the drug store and bought every poison ivy remedy in sight. My husband ended up using something called Tecnu. What he didn't realize until tonight was that he had never really washed off the oil properly after the initial contact, so it just kept spreading around and creating new, little satellite rashes. Poison oak oil doesn't seem to wash off from daily showers, and evidently not even from multiple washings with Palmolive dish washing soap (a home remedy treatment I got off the Internet).

One other product he found that was really helpful was called ProtectX. It came with a first aid kit I bought at Sam's Club. ProtectX came in towelette form and immediately stopped the itching and some of the redness. Unfortunately there were only two towelettes in the kit and we could not find any place else to buy it, online or off. Too bad. It seemed like a great product.

The Tecnu is supposed to actually get the oil off for good. So tonight we rewashed all of his clothes he has worn over the last couple of weeks and he washed his skin everywhere with the Tecnu. He said this made the itching stop, unlike the steroid cream which made the itching worse.

Even though the Tecnu helped, he still ended up getting oral steroids from the doctor. Steroid aren't very alternative health oriented, I know. But in his case the common home treatments, like Calamine lotion and washing with Palmolive just weren't helping him. When I was young I lived near woods and used to get poison plant rashes on a fairly regular basis, but I don't remember them looking anywhere near as bad as the pictures above. We have a friend who isn't allergic at all to poison oak. He can literally rub it on himself with no adverse reaction. My husband must just be one of the people on the opposite, highly sensitive, end of the spectrum.

Updates on My CTDS Site Regarding IBS

I've added updated my pages to my Connective Tissue Disorder Site on irritable bowel syndrome and the links to diet and fungal infections. In general, the tips I personally found helpful are to: 1) eat mainly cooked foods; 2) cut out sugar; 3) cut out most dairy except for yogurt with active cultures; 4) eat a lot of soup with nonstarchy vegetables, beans and meat; 5) cut buck on grains; 6) eliminate spicy foods; and 7) take probiotic supplements when needed.

I don't always stick to this diet mainly due to a lack of willpower, but when I do stick to it I feel much better. My husband and I used to enjoy going to a local French restaurant, but I've realized now that while the rich sauces and sweet desserts taste great, I just don't feel well afterwards. So instead now we often go out for Mexican foods with cooked meat beans and veggies dishes and feel much better afterwards. Whenever I eat sugar I've noticed it is not only hard on my stomach, but I also get more congested, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep.

Can Diet Changes to Increase Magnesium Help Tourette Syndrome Symptoms?

One of my sons had the beginnings of Tourette Syndrome when he was little - eye blinking, facial twitching, eye tics, etc. Our regular doctor didn't have any advice for us, so I researched my son's condition using the book library at the local health food store. The indications were that he was low in magnesium, so we changed his diet to get more magnesium rich foods and give him magnesium supplements for a few days crushed in yogurt. It worked great. The tics, twitches and eye blinking all stopped within a few days. We made the diet changes permanent, and for years I never gave the tics another thought. The only other time my son developed tics and twitches was when he was older and went on vacation with friends (without mom around to remind him to eat his vegetables!) and ate junk food for a few days, but the tics and twitches cleared up after he got home and ate healthier foods, including vegetables and nuts, for for a few days.

Then when my children were older they would come home from school and tell me about class mates with tics and twitches similar to the ones our one son experienced as a preschooler. That prompted me to put up a web page on my connective tissue disorder site about tics from magnesium deficiency a few years ago. The response to that one web page has been very positive. While one mom wrote that magnesium did not help her child, I think about 8 or so reported positive results, sometimes a complete recovery and often symptoms were alleviated within a few days. One parent emailed me that her child's vocal tics improved with increased magnesium. Many of these kids had been seeing a variety of medical specialists. Some were on prescription medications, yet no one was asking about their diets, which were often described by the parents as very low in healthy foods, especially nuts, beans and vegetables, and foods high in magnesium.

I find it odd that kids with tics, twitches and other signs related to Tourette Syndrome do not seem to be regularly checked for magnesium deficiency. A web page on magnesium in diet from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health's web site clearly notes that muscle twitching is a sign of magnesium deficiency. Yet based on my experience with my son and the experiences of parents who write to me, children with symptoms of tics and muscle twitching who are taken to the doctor are unfortunately not usually asked about their diets or checked for low magnesium levels.