Speaker 1: Before we get started on this very fun episode, we
Speaker 1: have a couple of things that we want to announce.
Speaker 1: So we recorded this back in November of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and since that time, since we recorded it, there have
Speaker 1: been two very exciting developments as it pertains to Matt Candeas.
Speaker 1: Number one is that Matt candeis is now doctor Matt
Speaker 1: candeis PhD.
Speaker 2: Heck, you're not right.
Speaker 1: He successfully defended his PhD.
Speaker 2: Woohoo, congratulations, thrilling. And number two is that not only
Speaker 2: did he defend his PhD, but doctor Candeus wrote a dang.
Speaker 1: Book, a whole book while he was hosting an amazing
Speaker 1: podcast while he was working on his dissertation.
Speaker 2: I mean, like that's in will Stuck in Quarantine? Like
Speaker 2: what Yeah, it's called in Defensive Plants, an Exploration into
Speaker 2: the Wonder of Plants, And it's a val for pre
Speaker 2: order now. It's scheduled to be released on February sixteenth
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty one, so make sure you put in
Speaker 2: your pre order now.
Speaker 1: I can't wait.
Speaker 2: I've already ordered two copies.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and we will link to it on our website
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, now we'll get into the episode. Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh,
Speaker 2: and I'm Aaron Olman Updike.
Speaker 3: And I'm Matt can Dais.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a very special crossover edition of
Speaker 1: this podcast Will.
Speaker 3: Kill You And in defensive plants.
Speaker 1: What episode are we even covering today? What's the topic?
Speaker 2: Very stoked to be talking about poison ivy and like
Speaker 2: poison oak and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it'll be poison ivy, poison oak,
Speaker 1: poison sumac, lacquer tree, I'm sure lots of other stuff.
Speaker 1: I am super pumped. There's a lot more there than
Speaker 1: I thought in terms of the history. I have already
Speaker 1: so many questions for both of you two, so yep,
Speaker 1: sorry in advance, but yeah, so hopefully to make the
Speaker 1: question and answer aspect a little bit more palatable, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the quarantine for this week's let us. So,
Speaker 1: what are we drinking?
Speaker 2: M Itch cream crem Itch crem.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's so appropriate because what is in the krem
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 2: Of course, many different crems. We have crem to cacao, yep,
Speaker 2: and just regular crem, which is heavy cream and uh
Speaker 2: an almond liqueur and then some grenadine just to make
Speaker 2: sure that it looks like what Aaron, what's the look
Speaker 2: that we're going for here?
Speaker 1: I believe, Aaron, that we are going for the look
Speaker 1: of calamine lotion.
Speaker 2: We are.
Speaker 1: It's not the smell of calamine, which is maybe a
Speaker 1: good thing, but I kind of like the smell of
Speaker 1: calumin motion.
Speaker 3: It's oddly nostalgic.
Speaker 1: Oddly yeah, well, yeah, I mean it's a little too
Speaker 1: recent for me. Yeah, yeah, it is also nostalgic.
Speaker 3: I swear this Quarantini tastes better than it sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, it really does. It's a very like nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties quarantine for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll get on board with that.
Speaker 1: And also, I wonder for those who are dairy free
Speaker 1: out there. I would guess that coconut cream or coconut
Speaker 1: milk would work as well as heavy cream.
Speaker 2: I bet coconut cream would work really well.
Speaker 3: I bet it'd be pretty tasty too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, well, then, do we have business to take
Speaker 1: care of before we dive in? I feel like we should,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if we do.
Speaker 2: I can't think of any right now. Maybe we'll have
Speaker 2: to record something and splice it.
Speaker 3: In behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't be the first time.
Speaker 2: No, let's just dive right in. I'm really I can't
Speaker 2: wait to hear about the history of this. I also
Speaker 2: always forget that we do these episodes in a different order.
Speaker 1: I know, I know time this is our first rodeo,
Speaker 1: it is the very.
Speaker 2: First time in our sixty third episode or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who knows. Okay, well, let's take a quick break first,
Speaker 1: and then we'll dive into the history.
Speaker 3: Cool awesome.
Speaker 1: I feel like everyone, well maybe not everyone, but at
Speaker 1: least a lot of people who have spent any time
Speaker 1: in US forests have a poison ivy or a poison
Speaker 1: oak or a poison sumac story. Whether it happened to
Speaker 1: them or whether it happened to a friend or a cousin.
Speaker 1: These plants seem to have really left their mark in
Speaker 1: like a well I learned my lesson kind of a way,
Speaker 1: because is there any story that's not like and that's
Speaker 1: the last time I'll use an unidentifiable vine as toilet paper.
Speaker 3: I know a sad amount of those stories. Leaves of three, man,
Speaker 3: just let it be.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, I have I'm gonna put a pin
Speaker 1: in that because I have questions about the whole Leaves
Speaker 1: of three thing. But yeah, we'll get back to palid
Speaker 1: So my older sister and my mom would get poison
Speaker 1: ivy rashes like every summer, it seemed, and there would
Speaker 1: always be cursing about gardening, and the bathtub would be
Speaker 1: crusty with colloidal oatmeal scum, and then there would be
Speaker 1: smears of pink calamine lotion, like on the most unexpected
Speaker 1: surfaces like doorknobs and like you know, carpet whatever, just
Speaker 1: kid well, I would just sit there and be unbearably
Speaker 1: smug because even though I spent most of my childhood
Speaker 1: playing outside capture the flag or running to get the
Speaker 1: soccer ball after it dribbled off into the woods, I
Speaker 1: was always poison ivy free. I was like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not affected by poison ivy, you know, like it was unbearable,
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was me until this summer. And you guys
Speaker 1: know the story, or at least like bits of it
Speaker 1: in the picture. Yeah, the pictures are horrific, and I
Speaker 1: will post them. Yeah, I'll do like progress picks, because
Speaker 1: I did. I took them every day. Okay, But for
Speaker 1: our listeners, the long and short of it is that
Speaker 1: maybe don't brag about being immune to the to the
Speaker 1: effects of poison ivy at all, and also maybe know
Speaker 1: what the plants look like and avoid.
Speaker 3: Them, start with the ones that can affect you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great that's a great idea. This summer,
Speaker 1: I went to my mom's house in Kentucky for a bit.
Speaker 1: I helped out with gardening and cleaning up, namely around
Speaker 1: a fire pit, pulling tons and tons of viny plants
Speaker 1: off the rocks and bushes and then also burning it,
Speaker 1: which could have been a lot worse, I want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then a day or two later, everything on my
Speaker 1: body was itchy, like my A couple days after that,
Speaker 1: my arms, my legs, my torso was absolutely covered in
Speaker 1: the most painful, itchy rash I've ever experienced. I didn't
Speaker 1: get any sleep, and I went through like an entire
Speaker 1: bottle of calamine lotion legit, and I eventually was in
Speaker 1: such unbearable discomfort that I had to go to urgent
Speaker 1: care and they gave me steroids because wow, I couldn't
Speaker 1: just function. Yep, I still have the marks on my arms,
Speaker 1: like this is six months later and it's still there.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So Anyway, after I came out of the
Speaker 1: fog of this experience, I became super curious about this
Speaker 1: horrific plant, like it's history, why on Earth my body
Speaker 1: reacted so badly after years of complacency, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: to see if it served any ecological purpose so that
Speaker 1: I couldn't ethically go through my plan of ridding the
Speaker 1: earth of such a terrible substance.
Speaker 3: Please don't. We'll get into that, but please don't.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Fine, I knew it. I stink and
Speaker 1: knew it, all right. So that's when I texted you
Speaker 1: guys and was like, can we do an episode on
Speaker 1: poison ivy?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Please, because I don't want to have to do all
Speaker 1: the reading myself anyway. Okay, but this episode isn't specifically
Speaker 1: about poison. It's about the thing in it that causes
Speaker 1: this rash, erushiol, which I hope is the right way
Speaker 1: to say it. There are different pronunciations out there on
Speaker 1: the internet. It is spelled in case you are curious,
Speaker 1: you are U shiol erin. I'm sure that you'll talk
Speaker 1: a lot more about its structure and its effects. But basically,
Speaker 1: erushiol is an oily mix of organic compounds, and it
Speaker 1: can be found in a bunch of different species of plants. Matt,
Speaker 1: I'll leave it to you to get to those specific numbers.
Speaker 1: But the human history of urushiol goes back thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years. The erushil containing sap of the lacquer
Speaker 1: tree has been used as like this hard varnish or
Speaker 1: lacquer in Chinese, in Korean and Japanese lacquerware for around
Speaker 1: six thousand years, so like a really long time. And
Speaker 1: it's also like been used to coat wood. It's very
Speaker 1: very hard and durable, super cool. And the word erusiol
Speaker 1: actually derives from the Japanese word for the lacquer tree,
Speaker 1: which is erushi. Huh yeah. And the very first descriptions
Speaker 1: of the rash caused by exposure to erushiol they talk
Speaker 1: about how it appears in lacquer artists on their hands
Speaker 1: and arms, especially those just learning the art. And here
Speaker 1: in North America, poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.
Speaker 1: These plants were all used by some Native American groups
Speaker 1: for various purposes such as dyeing or writing on textiles.
Speaker 1: So apparently like the sap will be like a dark
Speaker 1: color that increases in darkness over time, and it kind
Speaker 1: of continues to bleed it's really interesting, Like there are
Speaker 1: pictures of this that you can see, and they were
Speaker 1: also used as materials for baskets, as medicinal treatments, including
Speaker 1: possibly hyposensitization, cooking, and also in some religious rites. So
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of different purposes for which these
Speaker 1: different erusial containing plants were used in North America. Prior
Speaker 1: to in North America by Native Americans, but the first
Speaker 1: written descriptions of the irritating effects of the actual poison
Speaker 1: ivy plant came from none other than John Smith. Like huh,
Speaker 1: like Pocahon, Pocahontas, Jamestown, John Smith. Wow, So he definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't the first European to observe the effects that the
Speaker 1: plant had, but he based his observations on someone else's
Speaker 1: unpublished manuscript, which is cool, don't take a threadlish. He didn't,
Speaker 1: at least from what I could read. He wasn't like,
Speaker 1: so I discovered this plant, like he wrote about it
Speaker 1: as if it had already been known. So yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: but he wrote that quote, the poisoned weed is much
Speaker 1: in shape like our English ivy, but being touched causeth redness, itching,
Speaker 1: and lastly blisters and which Housoever, after a while pass
Speaker 1: away of themselves without further harm. Yet because for the
Speaker 1: time they are somewhat painful, it hath got itself an
Speaker 1: ill name, although questionless of no ill nature. Huh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So he's like, these don't mean to do anything. It's
Speaker 1: not that bad like poison. That seems like at you,
Speaker 1: but I mean grow up. And so this description, which
Speaker 1: was written in the sixteen hundreds, of course, kind of
Speaker 1: sets the tone that a lot of early naturalists took
Speaker 1: towards the plant. They felt that it didn't deserve the
Speaker 1: name poison, but only a few of them dared to
Speaker 1: suggest that the plants held potential for commercial or medicinal use,
Speaker 1: despite having observed some Native American groups using the plants
Speaker 1: in these various ways. So throughout much of the sixteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and seventeen hundreds, the rusiol reducing plants of North
Speaker 1: America didn't receive much attention from the botanists or naturalists,
Speaker 1: mostly just being written about as a curiosity. I do
Speaker 1: want to read like a couple of excerpts from this
Speaker 1: description of poison IVY from the early seventeen hundreds, naturalist
Speaker 1: Paul Dudley of Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, Dudley. Okay, I have no idea who he is.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Okay, so here's here's a little bit of
Speaker 1: this description. So the inside of the wood is yellow
Speaker 1: and very full of juice, as glutinous as honey or turpentine.
Speaker 1: The wood itself has a strong unsavory smell, but the
Speaker 1: juice stinks as bad as carrion. Okay, the juice, the juice, Okay,
Speaker 1: a little bit more. First, it must be observed that
Speaker 1: it poisons two ways, either by touching or handling it,
Speaker 1: or by the smell. For the scent of it when
Speaker 1: cut down in the woods or on the fire, has
Speaker 1: poisoned persons to a very great degree. And then he
Speaker 1: talks about how it only affects some people, for I
Speaker 1: have seen my own brother not only handle it, but
Speaker 1: chew it without any harm at all, which is horrifying
Speaker 1: to think of, absolutely horrifying. And then the third thing
Speaker 1: that he mentions is that this sort of poison is
Speaker 1: never mortal, and will go off in a few days
Speaker 1: of itself, like the sting of a bee. But generally
Speaker 1: the person applies plantain water or salad oil, which is
Speaker 1: olive oil and cream okay, And then he talks about
Speaker 1: how his neighbor, who was so badly affected by it,
Speaker 1: said that from this point on he will always remember
Speaker 1: the touch of poison ivy because it is as cold
Speaker 1: as a piece of ice, and he could distinguish it,
Speaker 1: whether blindfold or in the dark, from any other wood
Speaker 1: in the world. And so in that description there were
Speaker 1: a few mentions of remedies like salad, oil and cream.
Speaker 1: But I also saw recommended to rub a mixture of
Speaker 1: charcoal and hog's lard on the affected areas. Could work,
Speaker 1: two knows. I don't know if it would smell grate.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, to throw back to our
Speaker 1: quarantiny calamine. So I was like, well, what is calamine lotion?
Speaker 1: What's the history of calamine lotion?
Speaker 2: Two histories for the price of one here, Eric, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, this is this is literally like a sentence.
Speaker 2: But yes, let's go with that.
Speaker 1: I did a tiny bit of digging because it's kind
Speaker 1: it was kind of hard to find a lot of
Speaker 1: like substantial information. But it goes way back. So calamine lotion,
Speaker 1: it's that pink liquidy lotion used to treat all kinds
Speaker 1: of itchy things. It's supposed to dry out the skin
Speaker 1: and relieve the itch. That way, It's made of zinc
Speaker 1: oxide and ferric oxide. And I found a mention in
Speaker 1: one book that calamine lotion has been used as far
Speaker 1: back as fifteen hundred BCE in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2: Whoa, yeah, so wait is it? How is it different
Speaker 2: than like sunscreen?
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, isn't like zinc and all that and sunscreen too?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, so zinc oxide and ferric oxide,
Speaker 1: and then there are some other things in there, like
Speaker 1: phenol and stuff. I can't remember what else is in
Speaker 1: there is like, but the zinc oxide and ferric oxide
Speaker 1: are the two active ingredients.
Speaker 3: That's wild interesting. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, Aaron, maybe you can tell us whether
Speaker 1: it does anything.
Speaker 2: Do you want me to just spoilers? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: it helps the edge?
Speaker 1: Okay, good, I mean I n of one, that's me. Yes,
Speaker 1: I can attest to that that it did help tremendously.
Speaker 1: I was coated. Okay.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Okay, little pink airon run into the woods.
Speaker 1: During this time. Unless you were living in areas where
Speaker 1: these plants flourished, you probably didn't know of its existence.
Speaker 1: Unless you were like a super enthusiastic botanist like Matt indeed,
Speaker 1: and in which case you could even get some seeds
Speaker 1: and have them grow in your own garden, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what people did. Poison ivy and poison sumac were
Speaker 1: grown in the English Royal gardens at Q, the gardens
Speaker 1: of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and also in
Speaker 1: the gardens of the Empress Josephine Bonaparte.
Speaker 3: That's red. Huh yeah good that good for them, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Good for them.
Speaker 1: It never reached super popularity status for reasons you can
Speaker 1: probably guess, but it did earn a super fan in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds by the name of Andre de Fresnoy.
Speaker 1: He was an army physician and a professor of medicine,
Speaker 1: and so during this time in Western medicine, a lot
Speaker 1: of medicinal treatments were derived directly from plants, and basically,
Speaker 1: if a plant produced some sort of strong effect on
Speaker 1: the human body after contact or ingestion, it was thought okay,
Speaker 1: in smaller doses this could be helpful. And this fine
Speaker 1: line between medicine and poison is something that we've definitely
Speaker 1: touched on in all of our poison crossover episodes. So
Speaker 1: like Rice and Belladonna Wolf Spain, this two facedness of
Speaker 1: these compounds, and so it totally makes sense that poison
Speaker 1: ivy and other related plants were looked at for their
Speaker 1: potential in medicine. This guy, Defresnoy, didn't start off as
Speaker 1: the world's biggest poison ivy fan. He was giving a
Speaker 1: lecture about various medicinal plants, which included poison ivy, and
Speaker 1: he was talking about the painful and itchy sores that
Speaker 1: it could cause, and there was some young dude in
Speaker 1: the audience who was like, all right, yeah, I'll believe
Speaker 1: it when I see it. And so after the lecture
Speaker 1: he went up and was like, can I have some
Speaker 1: of those leaves? I'm gonna see if this actually causes
Speaker 1: the horrible blisters you said it will. And it did horrible, horrible, painful,
Speaker 1: itchy blisters all over his hand and wrist, and he
Speaker 1: probably regretted his choice a little bit. But when the
Speaker 1: swelling finally went down, he noticed that an old sore
Speaker 1: that had been on his wrist for ages had finally disappeared,
Speaker 1: and so he went back to Defresnoy and was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this old sword disappeared. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that the poison ivy treated it, and so Defresnoy was like,
Speaker 1: I've discovered the next big thing in medicine. So he
Speaker 1: started like cultivating this thing like crazy. He began prescribing
Speaker 1: poison IVT, which he personally tested out and noted, Oh,
Speaker 1: it only causes mild stomach irritation and increased sweat and
Speaker 1: increased urine production.
Speaker 3: Oh great, I don't need to sweat anymore.
Speaker 1: Really, I don't think that would be a good idea.
Speaker 1: I'm horrified to think of drinking poison iv T, but don't.
Speaker 3: Also, I do want to rub poison ivy on anyone
Speaker 3: at a A Q and A that says really a
Speaker 3: comment more than a question. But I digress.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I love that beautiful. So he Defresnoy
Speaker 1: was still somehow encouraged by what he was seeing, so
Speaker 1: he claimed it could cure anything from skin maladies to paralysis.
Speaker 1: Whether he actually did any controlled trials is not.
Speaker 2: Known, and he was just making stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm didn't yep.
Speaker 1: But that didn't stop him from lovingly cultivating more and
Speaker 1: more and more of the plants and sending them to
Speaker 1: his botanist friends and his love for poison Ivy nearly
Speaker 1: got him killed, actually not by the plant, but for
Speaker 1: political reasons. So he had sent some plants to one
Speaker 1: of his friends because his friends wanted to or his
Speaker 1: friend wanted to like cultivate it, and then he wrote
Speaker 1: a follow up letter to ask how the plants were doing, saying,
Speaker 1: how are our dear ruths like RHUs because that was
Speaker 1: the genus back in the day. How I longed to
Speaker 1: see them, oh dear, And unfortunately for de FRESNOI, the
Speaker 1: letter got intercepted and the authorities accused him of working
Speaker 1: with the Russians, which like wo yep, But eventually he
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, I'm just a plant nerd. I
Speaker 1: really didn't mean it.
Speaker 3: Think I've almost been politically assassinated.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really feel like it might. It's a
Speaker 1: dangerous profession. So he explained himself out of it, and
Speaker 1: sadly his poison Ivy garden didn't outlive him by very much.
Speaker 1: After he died, his pharmacist brother dug up all of
Speaker 1: the plants into de stored them. These are terrible.
Speaker 2: Things, ye Look, I know about drugs and this is
Speaker 2: not We're not doing yes.
Speaker 1: I think it was described as his skeptical pharmacist brother
Speaker 1: cool skeptic, and Russiel producing plants never did really seem
Speaker 1: to find another champion for their use in medicine, but
Speaker 1: beginning in the early twentieth century, there was increasing attention
Speaker 1: paid to this group of poisonous plants as a whole.
Speaker 1: Botanists reclassified the plants from the genus roost to the
Speaker 1: genus Toxicodendron, while chemists began trying to pin down exactly
Speaker 1: what it was about these plants that caused such irritation.
Speaker 1: In the early days of germ theory, some researchers floated
Speaker 1: the idea that it was actually pathogenic microbes in the
Speaker 1: plant that caused the horrible reaction in humans. It was
Speaker 1: actually an affection, and the one that was shown not
Speaker 1: to be true. I kind of love the enthusiasm for microbes,
Speaker 1: so it was just like me to my crobes solve everything,
Speaker 1: Like every question we've ever had, it's microbes, Like.
Speaker 2: I really I think that's adorable and I really like it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it wasn't true. And then people were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a volatile oil exuded by the plant into
Speaker 1: the air, or maybe it's a carbohydrate. But finally the
Speaker 1: mystery was solved in the nineteen twenties when the Japanese
Speaker 1: scientist Rico Majima described the exact chemical structure of the toxin,
Speaker 1: which is really a mix of organic compounds like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and he named it arushiol. And from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, poison ivy and other urushiol producing plants
Speaker 1: have never really stood front and center in academic research,
Speaker 1: although there does seem to be lots of comparative studies
Speaker 1: with other organic irritating compounds, as well as some research
Speaker 1: into detecting tiny amounts of rousio using UV light. But
Speaker 1: poison ivy did earn its place in popular culture with
Speaker 1: the song Poison Ivy by the Coasters, recorded in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Do you guys know the song?
Speaker 3: Classic?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: Are you serious? We used to sing this, I think
Speaker 1: because my mom was so badly affected by poison ivy
Speaker 1: all the time. This was like a family favorite.
Speaker 2: I feel very weird thing. Maybe I would know it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not going to sing it because I won't
Speaker 1: subject people to that. However, I will read a few
Speaker 1: of the lyrics. Okay, this is from the middle of
Speaker 1: the song, but you should go and listen.
Speaker 2: I need to know how it goes, if I know,
Speaker 2: to know if I know it, because you know I'm right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. And maybe I have heard this. Come on,
Speaker 3: I've heard you do carry out.
Speaker 1: Come on, I'm so apologetic for that now and forever.
Speaker 1: Met Okay, you'll have to just you'll have to look
Speaker 1: it up. It's worth it, I promise, Okay, Okay. Measles
Speaker 1: make you bumpy, and mumps will make you lumpy, and
Speaker 1: chicken pox will make you jump in twitch.
Speaker 2: You know, I do not know. Just like a very
Speaker 2: Kentucky thing.
Speaker 1: This is not a Kentucky thing. I listened to this
Speaker 1: when I was in Florida. Okay, when I was a
Speaker 1: child in Florida. How dare you? Okay? Returning to it.
Speaker 1: A common cold of foolia and whooping cough can cool you,
Speaker 1: but poison ivy lord will make you itch. You're gonna
Speaker 1: need an ocean of calamine lotion. You'll be scratching like
Speaker 1: a hound the minute you start to mess around. And
Speaker 1: then it goes. Poison ivy, poison ivy. Late at night,
Speaker 1: when you're sleeping, poison Ivy comes a creeping around. You
Speaker 1: don't know that wows a creeping she did it.
Speaker 3: It's because two of us in this room have not
Speaker 3: grown up south of the Mason Dixon life. Gosh, okay, well,
Speaker 3: we don't have the kind of folk music in New
Speaker 3: England or California. That's not a slight. That is not
Speaker 3: a slight against you, But we didn't have.
Speaker 1: Missed out a big time free surfrock is what I
Speaker 1: would describe it as. It's like Buddy Holly esque, uh.
Speaker 2: Measles makes you bumpy, chicken pox makes you lumpy. That
Speaker 2: doesn't sound I swear.
Speaker 1: Okay's let's honestly right now, the three of us needs
Speaker 1: to take a pause and we need to all go
Speaker 1: to YouTube and type in poison ivy. Okay, we're doing it,
Speaker 1: We're doing it. Wow. I was just jamming on that
Speaker 1: for way too long. I miss you, guys.
Speaker 3: I think you need to get the rights to be
Speaker 3: able to use that in this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to do that. I mean, is
Speaker 1: it not a great song?
Speaker 3: No, that's great, And and I take back everything I
Speaker 3: said about it being a southern ditty. That is totally exactly,
Speaker 3: Buddy Holly Era updue thank you.
Speaker 1: I loved the song. And however, however, according to the songwriters,
Speaker 1: it's not about rush y'all, it's not about Poison Ivy.
Speaker 2: It's about a girl named poison Ivy.
Speaker 1: Well kind of, it's about an STI.
Speaker 3: Oh oh no.
Speaker 1: Late at night, when you're sleeping, Poison Ivy comes a
Speaker 1: cream and around, I mean.
Speaker 3: And it says you can look, but do not touch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you scratch it the minute you start to miss.
Speaker 2: So what's it about crabs? It's about crabs?
Speaker 1: Well, so the songwriter said the clappergn Rhea, I thought
Speaker 1: that was burned.
Speaker 2: What okay, they should listen to our episode that that
Speaker 2: doesn't that's not consistent with this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was the nineteen fifties. Do you really
Speaker 1: think messaging on Sti's was on point? This is how
Speaker 1: they had to get the info out, okay. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, in addition to that amazing song, there's also
Speaker 1: the Batman character Poison Ivy, and a movie titled Poison
Speaker 1: Ivy about a murdering teen basically like it became sort
Speaker 1: of this second code for an evil woman or like
Speaker 1: a sneaky evil, you know, villainous woman. But speaking of murder,
Speaker 1: I have one last story to tell you before passing
Speaker 1: the mic. Ooh, okay, so I definitely remember talking about
Speaker 1: an assassination attempt with Risin in that episode and a
Speaker 1: murder in I think the Belladonna episode about the guy
Speaker 1: who murdered his wife in the garden. He like served
Speaker 1: her gen and tonic or something. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah. So I wanted to continue that really
Speaker 1: depressing trend. Awesome, Okay, I found a news story forgive me,
Speaker 1: But I googled poison ivy murder and I found.
Speaker 3: In a news story I don't forgive you.
Speaker 1: I found a news story about a Baltimore County woman
Speaker 1: named Roxanne Ameck who was found murdered in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, and her body was discovered in a wooded
Speaker 1: area that was absolutely teeming with poison ivy plants. Detectives
Speaker 1: immediately suspected her husband, Michael Ammick, because it's always the husband,
Speaker 1: always the husband, but also because his arms were completely
Speaker 1: covered in poison ivy and there was other circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 1: but that was like one of their key points of
Speaker 1: evidence in the trial. But also they weren't able to
Speaker 1: charge him for ten years because they wanted to wait
Speaker 1: until they got better physical evidence, and so that's for
Speaker 1: some reason, that's it took them two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: What and so they finally got better DNA evidence and
Speaker 1: he was finally convicted of second degree murder in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, that's the very odd and jumbled history
Speaker 1: of poison IVY.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, not at all what I was expecting.
Speaker 1: It doesn't quite have the same, like you know, Janice
Speaker 1: two faced character nature as some of the other poisons
Speaker 1: that we've covered, but it has inspired great pop songs
Speaker 1: and annual Poison Oak show in California that I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention since since nineteen eighty two they have like wreaths.
Speaker 3: And stuff show A show.
Speaker 2: I knew that a show.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to meet the people that go to that show.
Speaker 2: Is it not like you are?
Speaker 3: You know? I would not hear that personally, not my jam,
Speaker 3: but I'll talk to him.
Speaker 1: I would like to go and just like wear a
Speaker 1: full body biohazard suit. Yeah, I'm so scared of poison.
Speaker 1: I may know. Okay, Erin, please tell us what on
Speaker 1: earth this plant does to us?
Speaker 2: I am thrilled to do so, but I'll take a
Speaker 2: quick break first. Okay, poison ivy, poison, oak, poison, sumac,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I'm really excited, and I won't tell you
Speaker 2: why yet, but we'll get to the point why I'm
Speaker 2: really excited to talk about this today. But first I
Speaker 2: have to give a huge shout out to this one
Speaker 2: paper that I found. It was by Gladman in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. It was like a single author paper,
Speaker 2: which never happens anymore, but it honestly was so comprehensive
Speaker 2: and straightforward and laid out all of the bay six
Speaker 2: of what somebody would want to know about the biology
Speaker 2: of poison ivy. And I haven't found a paper like
Speaker 2: that in a very long time, so I really want
Speaker 2: to give them a big shot out. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 2: so much. It made this research journey a lot simpler.
Speaker 2: So I will obviously link to that. Okay, So, the compound,
Speaker 2: like you already mentioned aaron that is found in all
Speaker 2: of these plants that causes us such distress is rushi.
Speaker 2: All let's go with that. So roushi al is like
Speaker 2: you mentioned aaron, it's so amalgamation of organic compounds. It's
Speaker 2: a phenolic lipid compound. Okay. That basically just means it's
Speaker 2: made up of fatty acids and a phenol ring, which
Speaker 2: is like one of those six carbon rings. Okay. And
Speaker 2: then the different specific forms of eruchiol that are found
Speaker 2: in different species of plant differ in their carbon side chains,
Speaker 2: which are called like catacols.
Speaker 3: I think vaguely remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please don't ask me any more organic chemistry questions
Speaker 2: than that, because even that was a challenge for me. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what it means for us, let's let's focus now
Speaker 2: back on like the biology side of this. The chemical
Speaker 2: that poison ivy produces this erusiol. It's a resin. You
Speaker 2: kind of already mentioned this, Aaron, So it's an oily substance.
Speaker 2: And what's important, and Matt, I know you'll talk more
Speaker 2: about this. This is a compound that's contained within the
Speaker 2: plant tissues itself. It's not something that's excreted by the plant.
Speaker 2: So you have to have damage to the plant to
Speaker 2: actually release this compound, Is that right, Matt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, totally.
Speaker 2: Okay. So if you just like touch an intact leaf
Speaker 2: just by like gently brushing it, you're not likely to
Speaker 2: come in contact with erushiol.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, that's my favorite thing to do in my
Speaker 3: floristics classes, to touch the leaf and go what is this?
Speaker 3: And they're like, law, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But if you're like pulling weeds erin or bushwhacking or
Speaker 2: cleaning brush out of your mom's yard eron, you're going
Speaker 2: to be exposed.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I am exposed right now. Actually, yea, all
Speaker 1: of this exposed very pointed language.
Speaker 2: Some other things that are important about this oil. It's
Speaker 2: non volatile, so it doesn't just like dissipate into the
Speaker 2: air like say ethanol or something like that. But it
Speaker 2: does dry very quickly onto surfaces, and once it's dried,
Speaker 2: it maintains its antigenic properties, which means that like if
Speaker 2: a deer came by and munched on a bunch of
Speaker 2: poison ivy, did deer eat poison ivy? Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I thought so, but I just made things up. So
Speaker 2: if a deer came by and much to a bunch
Speaker 2: of poison eyed, so a bunch of erusia was released
Speaker 2: and dried, and then you brushed past that vine, well
Speaker 2: now you can be exposed, okay. And what's important is
Speaker 2: that as little as two milligrams of erusia can cause
Speaker 2: a reaction. I have no idea how much a plant produces.
Speaker 3: A lot more than that, Okay, I guess you're a lot.
Speaker 2: And like you mentioned Aaron, it can be aerosolized in
Speaker 2: the smoke and then it can actually affect like your
Speaker 2: respiratory tract. So that's like pretty serious. It's estimated that
Speaker 2: anywhere from like fifty to seventy five percent of the
Speaker 2: US adult population is sensitive. And this goes really it's
Speaker 2: across all ages. It's just by the time you get
Speaker 2: to adulthood it's about fifty to seventy five percent. And
Speaker 2: there's some thought that like maybe there's a genetic link,
Speaker 2: because if you have two parents that are both sensitive,
Speaker 2: you have like an eighty percent chance of being sensitive.
Speaker 2: But it also depends a lot on exposure. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about the exposure, shall we.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I have a question, Oh, do you
Speaker 3: want to ask it now? Yeah, Actually, it'll probably be
Speaker 3: better if I do that now for everyone listening. So Dad,
Speaker 3: my dad not sensitive to it, Okay, my mom extremely
Speaker 3: sensitive to it. When she was like i'll just say,
Speaker 3: many months pregnant for me, she was doing what Erin
Speaker 3: was doing, weeding in the garden, sweating, going like this,
Speaker 3: wiping it all over, and there is the most tragic
Speaker 3: picture of her, like I'm guessing like eight months pregnant
Speaker 3: for me, in a chair covered in calamine and just blistery, crustiness,
Speaker 3: just looking very sad. And I'm wondering, I am not
Speaker 3: sensitive to it. Is it the genetic component for my
Speaker 3: dad not being sensitive or did I get some weird
Speaker 3: antibody resistance from being in the womb when my mom
Speaker 3: was fascinating?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating question, Matt.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: What an interesting question. In basically, I'm going to I'm
Speaker 2: going to I'm not going to guess. This isn't a
Speaker 2: full guess. This is an educated guess.
Speaker 3: I'll take it. I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Based on what I know about the path of physiology,
Speaker 2: which we're about to get into. It's you just you
Speaker 2: got lucky. This is not from your mom's exposure.
Speaker 1: Okay, I I have a question for Matt. It's actually
Speaker 1: more of a comment.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna rup poison ivy on you.
Speaker 1: No, My question was do you think your mom would
Speaker 1: be willing to share that photo?
Speaker 3: Ooh uh? For me? Her boy probably but if she
Speaker 3: knew how many people might see it, I won't tell
Speaker 3: her that, and I'll just get her to share it
Speaker 3: with me. How's that tell her? Matt, I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do that to my mom. No, I'll ask,
Speaker 3: I'll turn, I'll try. I love her to death and
Speaker 3: I don't want to take advantage of her. But she'll
Speaker 3: probably share it.
Speaker 2: It sounds like an amazing picture.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 3: It's it's so tragic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, everyone, everyone send us your worst poison ivy pictures.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yes, please do Yeah, we'll start a thread
Speaker 1: on like Twitter or.
Speaker 3: Insteads do it on Reddit so it can get weird.
Speaker 2: Oh good, good idea. Okay, so listen, let's talk about
Speaker 2: how this happens. Because this is the part, you guys,
Speaker 2: that I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1: Saying this is the moment.
Speaker 2: This is the moment, okay. And the reason I'm so
Speaker 2: excited is because we get to talk about hypersensitivity reactions,
Speaker 2: which I think are so fun and interesting. Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: So clinically, the rash that you get from poison ivy,
Speaker 2: everyone knows it causes a rash. Okay, right, if you
Speaker 2: don't we'll talk about it in a minute, So don't worry.
Speaker 2: The rash that you get from poison ivy, it's called
Speaker 2: an allergic contact dermatitis. Okay, So from that we already
Speaker 2: know a lot. It's inflammation in your skin derm itis.
Speaker 2: You get it from contact with the plant. We already
Speaker 2: talked about that. But it's caused by an allergic reaction
Speaker 2: to the plant. What the heck is an allergic reaction?
Speaker 2: Who fun?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: There are four different types of hypersensitivity reactions, okay, types
Speaker 2: one through four. Recently they were updated so that actually
Speaker 2: types two and four both have multiple subtypes, but we're
Speaker 2: just gonna go with one.
Speaker 1: Two, three, and four.
Speaker 3: Okay, I won't tell.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: And all hypersensitivity reactions have to do at least in
Speaker 2: part with antibodies being formed to something that stimulates an
Speaker 2: immune response, which is that's like what antibodies are supposed
Speaker 2: to do. We talked a lot about that in our
Speaker 2: vaccines episode. But in the case of hypersensitivity reactions, the
Speaker 2: amount of immune rescis sponse that ends up being generated
Speaker 2: is ott over the top. No, that's love island, okay,
Speaker 2: And that causes a problem in and of itself. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to very very briefly go through the
Speaker 2: four types and then we're gonna focus on the one
Speaker 2: that causes allergic contact dermatitis aka poison ivy Okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So Type one is an ig E, which is a
Speaker 2: specific type of antibody you have like I G G
Speaker 2: I G M. So ig E mediated reaction is type one,
Speaker 2: and this is what you probably think of when you
Speaker 2: think an allergic reaction. Okay. So like anaphylactic shock, that's
Speaker 2: type one. Okay, So like shellfish allergy, peanut allergy, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, even like hives that you get, Okay.
Speaker 2: These are basically what happens is this type of antibody
Speaker 2: binds to these cells called mass cells, and they release
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of histamine and then boom, you get
Speaker 2: a massive inflammatory reaction. Okay. That's type one classic allergies.
Speaker 2: Type two is called a cytotoxic or IgG or IgM,
Speaker 2: so it's a different type of antibody response, and it
Speaker 2: causes things like autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which is a type
Speaker 2: of anemia where your red blood cells go boom. Also
Speaker 2: good pasture syndrome, which is a kidney disease. Okay, and
Speaker 2: so this is like, you know, antibodies that are directed
Speaker 2: against our cell membranes. Uh. And then type three is
Speaker 2: what's called an immune complex mediated response. So it's the
Speaker 2: same type of antibodies as in type two IgG or IgM.
Speaker 2: But basically what happens is these these antibodies kind of
Speaker 2: glom onto each other and then deposit places that they
Speaker 2: shouldn't and then make you sick. So that's like a
Speaker 2: more complicated one.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: So something like serum sickness if you've ever heard of that,
Speaker 2: that's a type three response.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And then we get to type four.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're there, We're finally here.
Speaker 2: So the allergic contact dermatitis caused by erusiol is a
Speaker 2: type four hypersensitivity reaction. This is called a delayed or
Speaker 2: a T cell mediated response. And if you want to
Speaker 2: know like the specifics, it's a type four A response. Okay.
Speaker 2: So how does this one work? Okay, it's a little
Speaker 2: bit different than all the others.
Speaker 3: Exciting.
Speaker 2: So the first time that you're exposed to poison, ivy oils,
Speaker 2: the catacols, which are part of that erusiol compound, they
Speaker 2: bind to and penetrate through your skin cells. Okay, and
Speaker 2: then with like underneath the surface of your skin, they
Speaker 2: bind to the surface of these cells that are called
Speaker 2: antigen presenting cells in your skin. These are often called
Speaker 2: Langerhans cells, and their job is to internalize antigens, process them,
Speaker 2: and then travel back to our lymph nodes and present
Speaker 2: those antigens to T cells. Okay, basically, and that's like
Speaker 2: a normal thing that they would do. Okay, that's their job.
Speaker 2: They're an antigen presenting cell. So they travel back to
Speaker 2: your lymph node and they go, hey, T cells, I
Speaker 2: found this stuff, and I think it might be bad.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. I'm leaving this for you,
Speaker 2: and the T cells are like great, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Lang your Hans appreciate it. Thanks for bringing it. We're
Speaker 2: just gonna make a bunch of copies of it. We'll
Speaker 2: be on the ready. We'll have like a big army
Speaker 2: of cells back here just whenever we need it. Okay,
Speaker 2: we got you. And that's exactly what happens. So urushio
Speaker 2: causes a large amount of these T cells to be
Speaker 2: made kind of at the ready, and they just hang
Speaker 2: out in our body until the next time that you're exposed.
Speaker 2: So on subsequent contact with the routiol, those T cells
Speaker 2: happen to come in and they're like, oh, hey, I
Speaker 2: recognize this, calling me ORMI, right, and then they immediately
Speaker 2: get to work destroying skin cells, so killing cells wherever
Speaker 2: they find this antigen. Wow, and then also like upregulating
Speaker 2: your immune response, releasing all these other immune modulators that
Speaker 2: produce things like vasodilation to help increase blood flow, so
Speaker 2: you get further inflammation. And then you also have a
Speaker 2: response in your skin cells themselves, which are called your keratinocytes,
Speaker 2: that further this inflammatory response. They release more cytokines, they
Speaker 2: increase inflammation, and it's like this feedback loop. Huh cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's wild.
Speaker 1: Also horrible, but yes, yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 3: So they're they're they're recognizing it as something bad and
Speaker 3: trying to do everything possible to kind of like nuke
Speaker 3: that site exactly.
Speaker 2: And it's like the first time that your body is
Speaker 2: exposed to it, you just like make these T cells,
Speaker 2: these memory T cells, and they're just there like just
Speaker 2: to have on hand, right, And so that's part and
Speaker 2: because it's T cells that are being made and not
Speaker 2: just antibodies Okay, we're not just making antibodies against this compound.
Speaker 2: You're making T cells that are going to be able
Speaker 2: to come in and so because of that, this is
Speaker 2: a delayed type response because it's not like you're just
Speaker 2: immediately binding antibody and then like you know, decimating things
Speaker 2: right there. Like these T cells are not everywhere all
Speaker 2: the time. There's like a certain number of them that
Speaker 2: might be in your body, and then they just have
Speaker 2: to happen to come into contact with that erusial the
Speaker 2: second time. Does that make sense? Yeah, So that's why
Speaker 2: what the symptoms of this look like is that it's
Speaker 2: a delay after exposure. Okay, so generally around two days,
Speaker 2: about twenty four to forty eight hours, but usually about
Speaker 2: forty eight hours after exposure, that's when you first start
Speaker 2: to see the symptoms of poison ivy.
Speaker 3: Cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we can talk a little bit more specifically
Speaker 2: about the symptoms. Although Aaron, I feel like you told
Speaker 2: us them pretty well.
Speaker 1: Blister, the itching pain, don't run your arm or brash
Speaker 1: under hot water even though it feels really good, because
Speaker 1: it's horribly miserable afterwards. Oh, Like, it feels insanely like
Speaker 1: like such relief during it during during the hot water,
Speaker 1: and then and then after you're like, well cool.
Speaker 3: Bites. Yes, yeah, it came back to bite me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh but I'm I'm curious to know more of
Speaker 1: the other like especially the smoke inhalation.
Speaker 2: Well, so let's talk about kind of the general symptoms
Speaker 2: and what happens, and then I think we'll be able
Speaker 2: to understand what could happen if you get if you
Speaker 2: inhale it. Okay, Yeah, So, like I said, usually around
Speaker 2: two days, it can vary quite a lot. I think
Speaker 2: two weeks is like the highest end of when you
Speaker 2: could potentially still have symptoms after exposure, and at the
Speaker 2: low end it could be like a number of hours.
Speaker 2: You first get areas of redness, so it gets just
Speaker 2: kind of red, and then you would get some small bumps.
Speaker 2: They usually start out as bumps, and even just this
Speaker 2: redness and bumps are super super super itchy, super itchy.
Speaker 2: And then over time those small bumps develop into vesicles,
Speaker 2: which are basically like if you think of what a
Speaker 2: chicken pox rash kind of looks like little clear, fluid
Speaker 2: filled bumps. So these bumps like filled with fluid, and
Speaker 2: when it gets really bad, like what Aaron had. They
Speaker 2: can get all the way into what are called bullah.
Speaker 2: I think that's how you say it, or bulley, I
Speaker 2: don't know how you actually say it, which are ginormous
Speaker 2: fluid filled blisters, like kind of confluent, Like your whole
Speaker 2: arm could be one giant fluid filled blister. And if
Speaker 2: you get severe reactions, these bullet can get really really large.
Speaker 2: You can get really severe swelling or edema because of
Speaker 2: how much inflammation you're having just under the skin, and
Speaker 2: it's incredibly uncomfortable. So if you inhale it, then that
Speaker 2: exact same inflammatory reaction is happening in your respiratory tract
Speaker 2: because the epithelia, so the cells that lie in your
Speaker 2: respiratory tract are not very different from your skin cells,
Speaker 2: so the reaction is going to be essentially the same,
Speaker 2: except that it's a small space and so there's no
Speaker 2: room for inflammation to happen, So you could like close
Speaker 2: off your respiratory tract.
Speaker 3: I have heard of people dying from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. The other thing that can happen if you
Speaker 2: inhale it is that it can kind of more And
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure that pathophysiology of this specifically, but
Speaker 2: it can cause a more generalized dermatitis as well, where
Speaker 2: you get like that inflammatory reaction across your whole body
Speaker 2: rather than only where you were exposed. Huh weird, right,
Speaker 2: sounds awful. Yeah, without any treatment at all, it's a
Speaker 2: long course of disease. It's anywhere from like three to
Speaker 2: six weeks to completely resolve, which is a very long
Speaker 2: time to be miserable. Yeah, thanks, Yeah, there are a
Speaker 2: couple of other really uncommon things that you can get.
Speaker 2: There's something that's called black spot dermatitis, which causes like
Speaker 2: something that kind of can look a little bit like
Speaker 2: a melanoma, like literally like a black mark on your
Speaker 2: skin that is often permanent. But what I don't know
Speaker 2: about this is whether that it's not painful from what
Speaker 2: I understand, like it's just something that can happen as
Speaker 2: a result, but it's pretty uncommon. And then also what's
Speaker 2: really uncommon is you can get something called arithema multiform,
Speaker 2: which you can get from other things as well, but
Speaker 2: it's like widespread, super itchy bumps that can kind of
Speaker 2: come up all over your body, not just where you
Speaker 2: came into contact. So this would be like on top
Speaker 2: of just having this hypersensitivity. Your body's going like, well,
Speaker 2: let's go full fledged. And like everywhere I.
Speaker 1: Have heard about sort of like the rash spreading, which
Speaker 1: I know it's not contagious because like the oil you
Speaker 1: wash off your body, but I also heard that the
Speaker 1: rash can spread in the way that it's just like
Speaker 1: an inflammatory response.
Speaker 2: Do you want to know a little more about it?
Speaker 1: I do?
Speaker 3: I desperately?
Speaker 2: Do you are? You're totally right erin it's not contagious
Speaker 2: and like the fluid that's in those vesicles, it doesn't
Speaker 2: have any antigen in it. Okay, so you shouldn't open
Speaker 2: up blisters because you should not open up blisters. But
Speaker 2: if you did, like accidentally scratch open those blisters, you're
Speaker 2: not going to spread the rash by like itching it
Speaker 2: or anything like that, and you're not going to give
Speaker 2: it to anybody else. However, the oil itself can dry
Speaker 2: on surfaces and remain antigenic. So if you got the
Speaker 2: oil on your clothes or under your nails and then
Speaker 2: you itch it, no, you can spread it.
Speaker 1: Or if it's on your dog's first, if it's on
Speaker 1: your dog, exactly.
Speaker 3: Shout out to my friend Amy.
Speaker 2: And so that's why. Sometimes you can get new lesions,
Speaker 2: like a few weeks after initial onset, if it's just
Speaker 2: still somewhere, whether it's your clothes, your dog, your nails, whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can then continue to spread it.
Speaker 3: Yeah I didn't that happen to our dear friend Sam
Speaker 3: from a chair that she sat on that had sat
Speaker 3: on it with like poison ivy pants and then continued
Speaker 3: to sit on the chair.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yes, yeah, oh gosh awful, it's horrible. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then, like you said, Aaron, washing it off turns
Speaker 2: out that only helps if you do it like right away.
Speaker 2: Within thirty minutes, pretty much any oil that you've come
Speaker 2: in contact with has been absorbed. So and there's at
Speaker 2: least some research that suggests that using soap can actually
Speaker 2: spread the oil a little bit further. So just washing
Speaker 2: off with water if you can, Like if you you're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, I just touched poison ivy as quick as
Speaker 2: you can wash it off with just water, that can
Speaker 2: be helpful.
Speaker 1: So the best bet really is just learn what the
Speaker 1: plant looks like and avoid it.
Speaker 2: Avoid it. There have been what's really interesting and researching
Speaker 2: this is that I have found that there are a
Speaker 2: few barrier creams that exist that are supposedly effective at
Speaker 2: preventing a reaction, but some of them maybe actually make
Speaker 2: it worse, so I'm not sure, and they're not ones
Speaker 2: that I had ever heard of, so I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how widely available they really are. But Dial Ultra, which
Speaker 2: is like dishwashing soap, oh yeah, as well as a
Speaker 2: couple other like soaps, and one of these, like very
Speaker 2: specific creams I've never heard of, seem to help prevent
Speaker 2: the a rash even after you've been exposed. So it's
Speaker 2: not like they're it's not washing the oil off your skin,
Speaker 2: but somehow it's helping to prevent the rash. I don't
Speaker 2: know it's worth a try. Dial is cheap, so this is.
Speaker 1: Not what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But otherwise treatment like you said, Aaron, colloidal oatmeal, baths,
Speaker 2: calamine lotion, and then if it gets really bad like
Speaker 2: what you had, oral steroids are really the thing that
Speaker 2: you need. Topical steroids can be helpful, but topical you
Speaker 2: need like high pretty high dose, and you can only
Speaker 2: use those on certain parts of your body and only
Speaker 2: for a certain amount of time, so they're not all
Speaker 2: that helpful. Antihistamines this isn't a histamine response, guys, because
Speaker 2: that's a type one hypersensitivity reaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just learned that.
Speaker 2: So that's why antihistamines aren't super helpful in this case.
Speaker 1: Unless, like for me, it helped. It helped me sleep
Speaker 1: before I got before I was like resorted to steroids.
Speaker 1: But within like a few hours of steroids it everything
Speaker 1: was better, like it was Undel.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad to the doctor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Are you stubborn like I am?
Speaker 1: I'm very stubborn. I'm very bad about about being like
Speaker 1: accepting any sort of vulnerability and physic in my physical body.
Speaker 1: It's bad, real bad.
Speaker 3: Feel you, I feel you.
Speaker 1: I have questions for me or for Matt, for you, Aaron,
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Okay. So, first of all, fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: percent of people are sensitive.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Why what is the difference between sensitivity and insensitivity.
Speaker 2: It's a really good question, and it's not clear because
Speaker 2: it's across it's across all ages, it's across ethnicities, it's
Speaker 2: across races, it's across like everything. It's anyone could be sensitive.
Speaker 2: So in large part it's probably exposure. Is our one
Speaker 2: of adults in the US exposed No definitely not. So
Speaker 2: would it be one hundred percent if everyone was exposed
Speaker 2: a certain number of times? I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's a very interesting question that I could not
Speaker 2: fully find the answer to as to like what is
Speaker 2: it that makes one person specifically more sensitive than another person?
Speaker 2: Like you, Aarin, You went so much of your life
Speaker 2: not being sensitive, And it's not like you were only
Speaker 2: exposed twice in your life, right right, So I think
Speaker 2: a lot of it is repeated exposure. So people who
Speaker 2: have occupational exposures are at much higher risk of being
Speaker 2: sensitive if they're constantly coming in contact with it.
Speaker 1: Well, and that brings me to another question of about
Speaker 1: hypo sensitive, so like can you actually become desensitize yourself?
Speaker 2: So desensitization has not been shown to be effective for
Speaker 2: poison ivy the way it is for like beastings and
Speaker 2: things like that, Okay, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Well that leads me to thinking a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of other questions. But I think that this is where
Speaker 1: I need to direct them to Matt.
Speaker 2: So fair phew, thank goodness, because I know my answers
Speaker 2: are just like, maybe, Matt, what the heck tell us
Speaker 2: all about it? Okay, but let's take a quick break first.
Speaker 3: All right, So we've covered a lot of ground in
Speaker 3: this episode, but let's talk about the plants. And this
Speaker 3: is where things get really interesting. And this is why
Speaker 3: I always say it, but it's so true. I love
Speaker 3: doing crossovers because I learn so much. You send me
Speaker 3: down these weird, interesting roads, and they're never as simple
Speaker 3: or as straightforward of a narrative as I hope they are,
Speaker 3: or I think they are. I shouldn't say hope. I
Speaker 3: usually hope for more interesting things. And this is what
Speaker 3: we found. So let's back up. We talk a lot
Speaker 3: about poison ivy and poison oak and to some extent,
Speaker 3: poison sumac, because these are plants that people, at least
Speaker 3: here in North America have a chance of running into
Speaker 3: having encounters with, whether gardening or hiking or doing anything
Speaker 3: out that. But if you back up for a second
Speaker 3: and look at the family that these plants belong to,
Speaker 3: and a cardiac, do you know what common food that
Speaker 3: you've probably all eaten same degree or another, Yes, mango.
Speaker 3: But the name of this family is very specific to
Speaker 3: something that you would eat, say in trail mixe peanut,
Speaker 3: not peanut.
Speaker 2: Sunfire seed.
Speaker 3: Nope, eminem, it's very popular. You were closer with peanut,
Speaker 3: and it's very popular in some Asian foods. Cashews cashew, yes, oh,
Speaker 3: cash cashew yes. So the group of plants we're talking
Speaker 3: about all come from what they call the cashew family
Speaker 3: anacardiac and anacardiac I would normally not use the common name,
Speaker 3: but the etymology of anacardiac literally means upward heart, which
Speaker 3: is in complete reference to the seed of the cashew apple,
Speaker 3: which if you've ever seen, if you've ever been in
Speaker 3: Central or South America and seen a cashew growing, a
Speaker 3: cashi is a small nut attached to the bottom of
Speaker 3: a large apple like structure called the cashew apple, and
Speaker 3: that's what they're referring to with this. So Anacardiac is
Speaker 3: a large family of plants that's found all over the globe.
Speaker 3: We happen to know a lot of the temperate representatives.
Speaker 3: But if you've ever eaten mangoes or pistachios, you have
Speaker 3: also eaten members of this family. Now, urushiols are present
Speaker 3: in about a third of the family, so this is
Speaker 3: not something that's unique to any of the ones that
Speaker 3: we're familiar with. This is something that the family's pretty
Speaker 3: well known for, and I actually recently I'll probably be
Speaker 3: releasing the episode in conjunction with this one. Spoke with
Speaker 3: the Deputy Executive director of the United States Botanical Garden,
Speaker 3: doctor Susan Pell, who just happens to have devoted her
Speaker 3: entire career to understanding this family of plants. And it's
Speaker 3: absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh my gosh, we should have listened to that
Speaker 2: episode in prep for this, Matt.
Speaker 3: I was so happy I did the interview. It'll come
Speaker 3: out whenever this does, but yeah, it's fascinating and she
Speaker 3: can speak to any number of botanists that have only
Speaker 3: gotten more sensitive over time to repeated exposure. So some
Speaker 3: of the most famous ones besides the mango, the cashew, pistachio,
Speaker 3: we've already covered poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're a United States botanist or in North America
Speaker 3: doing botany, they are toxicodendron. But if you are a European,
Speaker 3: specifically certain people that work at Q they still lump
Speaker 3: them into russ. There's a lot of taxonomic uncertainty, but
Speaker 3: it would behoove you to familiarize yourself with some of
Speaker 3: the ones you're more likely to encounter. Nice, these quarantinies
Speaker 3: are doing a number on my vocabulary.
Speaker 2: I love that your vocabulary gets better after the quarantines.
Speaker 3: Mind is not I get more brave and trying to
Speaker 3: use those words. But as a group of plants, as
Speaker 3: you already mentioned, Rouchelle is a suite of compounds, not
Speaker 3: just one. And when you think about what is this
Speaker 3: doing for the plant, you know, the first thing I
Speaker 3: always go to is defense. You know, it's very easy
Speaker 3: to see why we would touch this, get a rash,
Speaker 3: and be like, I'm never messing with that plant again.
Speaker 3: But I want to go back to something Aaron said
Speaker 3: about the delayed reaction. Yeah, does it make sense for
Speaker 3: a plant to have an anti herbivore defense compound that
Speaker 3: takes a day or two to kick in?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Also, isn't it only like humans and some primates that
Speaker 2: have a response to this herbivores don't?
Speaker 3: Yes? Care, Yes, for all intents and purposes, this plant
Speaker 3: only affects us and some of the higher primates. Nothing
Speaker 3: else is affected by it. With the asallergy, it's it
Speaker 3: is by no means an anti herbivore defense In fact,
Speaker 3: everything from birds to goats, to deer, to mice and
Speaker 3: numerous insects will feed on the foliage and fruits of
Speaker 3: this plant, of all of these plants, with little to
Speaker 3: no problem. What the heck, Matt, Yeah, it's bizarre. We'll
Speaker 3: get there. It's it's very bizarre. And that's what's really
Speaker 3: interesting is to think about how bad our reactions can
Speaker 3: be to it, and and it's really just us. We're
Speaker 3: very much alone in this.
Speaker 2: It's just us, of course.
Speaker 1: I really name it poison ivy too, right, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: what a bird name it? What a deer name it?
Speaker 3: Delicious berries? Yes, exactly. So as you can imagine the
Speaker 3: complications with the human immune response, it makes it very
Speaker 3: difficult group of plants to study in a lot of
Speaker 3: great detail, at least for that third that produce the
Speaker 3: suite of compounds. So this is a woefully understudied sort
Speaker 3: of biochemical ecology, we'll say, But there has been enough
Speaker 3: interest in it, obviously because of how much it affects us,
Speaker 3: that there have been hints and insights gained over time,
Speaker 3: and some of the best hints as to what the
Speaker 3: function of these compounds are come from where they're produced
Speaker 3: and now it's a big family. It's a lot of
Speaker 3: plants that have it. But you've got to figure were
Speaker 3: really only look at the ones that you know, we
Speaker 3: either are more likely to come in contact with or
Speaker 3: that we have some sort of economic use for. So
Speaker 3: most of the work has been done in poison ivy mangoes, cashews,
Speaker 3: and pistachios. So if you look at at least poison ivy,
Speaker 3: most of the urusral is contained within the young leaves,
Speaker 3: the young stems, the bark, and the fruits. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: it's not found in the pollen, and poison ivy pollen
Speaker 3: happens to be a surprisingly common ingredient, or at least
Speaker 3: component of most commercial honey. Yeah, so we'll get into
Speaker 3: the ecological benefits of the species in a little bit.
Speaker 3: But when they looked at uryserral's function in poison ivy,
Speaker 3: they found that uruserols and its derivatives are really effective
Speaker 3: at killing certain types of pathenogenic fungi.
Speaker 1: Oh, hence the early growth or whatever, so young leaves,
Speaker 1: young stems, things that are really tender, very susceptible to infection.
Speaker 3: Now it's also been found but in a lab setting
Speaker 3: this is important. This is not found on the plant
Speaker 3: itself to be really good at preventing biofilms and killing
Speaker 3: a lot of bacteria. So you think about all the
Speaker 3: surface area of a plant is ripe for the taking
Speaker 3: in terms of being you know, a growth medium for bacteria.
Speaker 3: They don't wash themselves regularly, and you know they've got
Speaker 3: a lot of pores that are open to the environment.
Speaker 3: So anything that can be present in a plant that
Speaker 3: can help prevent detrimental microbes from finding their way into
Speaker 3: the plant is probably a good thing. Huh yeah. Now,
Speaker 3: in mangoes, it's really interesting because the userols are highly
Speaker 3: concentrated in resin ducts, specifically and most importantly around the fruits,
Speaker 3: which is why a lot of people will get a
Speaker 3: reaction to eating mangoes, especially if you're getting mangoes that
Speaker 3: have gone feral. Oh yeah, so there. It is present
Speaker 3: in the domesticated ones, but if you get them off
Speaker 3: the street from a sea that's just germinated, you are
Speaker 3: really risking it. I mean, your best bet is to
Speaker 3: avoid the skin because that's where it's concentrated. But even
Speaker 3: if you cut into a mango, what gets on the
Speaker 3: knife and then travels into the fruit can be enough
Speaker 3: to really mess your day up.
Speaker 1: Or I should say, I have a question, if you're ready,
Speaker 1: about distribution of the plants.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, we'll go there before I get into
Speaker 3: some of the interesting mango results.
Speaker 1: Okay, So does erusial or like the amount of erusiol
Speaker 1: or anything like that, Does that follow any sort of
Speaker 1: geographic distribution in terms of latitude or in terms of
Speaker 1: like rainfall, or in terms of like predator or herbivore
Speaker 1: density or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's a really cool question to ask, And I don't
Speaker 3: know the full picture of it, but I will say
Speaker 3: that it is very much present in both tropical and
Speaker 3: temperate representatives. But I will get into something in a
Speaker 3: little bit dealing with climate change and CO two that
Speaker 3: kind of lends to this, But no, I think overall,
Speaker 3: it's a compound that's very much found in varying degrees
Speaker 3: in different tissues, maybe by latitude and habitat. But you know,
Speaker 3: poison ivy is gonna affect you just as much as
Speaker 3: pistachios or mangoes are, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So like it's not like, oh, this poison oak
Speaker 1: is more contains more russio than poison ivy it could
Speaker 1: be this leaf on this plant contains more roushiol. Like,
Speaker 1: there's more variability within the plant that across plant species.
Speaker 3: So especially like Toxicodendron poison ivy. I don't know too
Speaker 3: much about poison oak, just because I grew up on
Speaker 3: the East Coast, but it is a highly variable species.
Speaker 3: And anytime you talk about plant chemistry, you know it
Speaker 3: varies with genetics in populations. So it's like, as my
Speaker 3: old botany professor you say, it's like good dope and
Speaker 3: bad dope. You never know what you're gonna get. Variation
Speaker 3: within a species, it's important. So in mangoes, a lot
Speaker 3: of the usherwols are concentrated in these resin ducts, so
Speaker 3: you can picture them as sort of like veins, vascular
Speaker 3: tissue that goes through the rind of the mango, and
Speaker 3: it's just chalk full of these compounds. And what they
Speaker 3: found is that in plantations or any sort of commercial
Speaker 3: production for mangoes, the more dense the resin ducts are
Speaker 3: in the tissue, the less the mangoes are affected by
Speaker 3: flies ovipositing flies looking to lay their eggs on the fruit.
Speaker 3: And what happens is when the female fly lands on
Speaker 3: and sticks her ovipositor into the tissue to lay her eggs.
Speaker 3: She ruptures those resin ducts and it just floods the
Speaker 3: egg chamber, killing the resulting eggs and larger and so on.
Speaker 3: Top of all of that, the other part of it,
Speaker 3: too is just antimicrobial. So really, I think the impetus
Speaker 3: the evolutionary pressures that really set usural on its trajectory
Speaker 3: and why we see so many different variations within this
Speaker 3: class of compounds. It has to do with antimicrobial properties,
Speaker 3: infectious you know, disease causing microbes from fungi to bacteria
Speaker 3: and everything in between.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, my brain is reeling. This is fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so absolutely has nothing to do with us. In fact,
Speaker 3: we were up in Indiana dunes over the summer and
Speaker 3: there was a poison ivy covered in softfly larva that
Speaker 3: were just devouring it and birds eat it like crazy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know they say leaves of three, Let
Speaker 3: it be. Let it be for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3: Let it be, because you probably don't want to get
Speaker 3: what Aaron came down with and just be itchy scratchy,
Speaker 3: having a horrible time. But it's also extremely ecologically important,
Speaker 3: at least toxickadendron radicans poison I. What we know is
Speaker 3: poison ivy, and I'm sure it extends to poison oak,
Speaker 3: and it definitely extends to poison sumac. Although you really
Speaker 3: have to work to find true poison sumac. They say
Speaker 3: you have to find a high quality bog. You have
Speaker 3: to trip and fall, and the first pint you will
Speaker 3: grab will be poison sumac. But they are ecologically extremely important.
Speaker 3: Their foliage feeds many different species of animal, especially insects.
Speaker 3: There's lots of leaf and stem boring insects. There's lots
Speaker 3: of caterpillars of numerous different species of butterflies and moths.
Speaker 3: The flowers are visited by a wide variety of insects
Speaker 3: for pollination, mainly by beetles. Actually it is primarily a
Speaker 3: beetle pollinated species, but bees will find it too. And
Speaker 3: the fruits, oh my god, are the fruits of poison
Speaker 3: ivy so extremely valuable. They're white. They're one of the
Speaker 3: few species that has a white fruit, and you can
Speaker 3: guarantee if it's a white fruit, at least in the east,
Speaker 3: you probably should leave it alone. But they're really high
Speaker 3: in fat, and they happen to appear around the same
Speaker 3: time that all of our migratory songbirds are making their
Speaker 3: way south, and so it is a vital component of
Speaker 3: their diet as they migrate south. And so if you
Speaker 3: have this plan on your landscape, it's not hurting you.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna come into contact with it easily, consider
Speaker 3: leaving it. It's got beautiful fall foliage. It turns very
Speaker 3: red and contrasted with the white berries. It's really really pretty.
Speaker 3: And you know, birds disperse the fruit, that's how it
Speaker 3: gets around. So it's really important for them. But one
Speaker 3: of the most interesting things is what's going on specifically
Speaker 3: with poison, ivy and climate change. And they used have
Speaker 3: you heard of the face experiments, the free air CO
Speaker 3: two enrichment, Yeah, where they basically set out all of
Speaker 3: this CO two enrichment stuff. It's waste products CO two
Speaker 3: from it was going to find its way into the
Speaker 3: atmosphere one way or another, but they concentrated in an
Speaker 3: area and look at how plants respond. So it's a
Speaker 3: way of trying to study what elevated CO two levels
Speaker 3: are going to do for plants. While someone got it
Speaker 3: in their head to see what was going to happen
Speaker 3: with poison ivy in the context of CO two enrichment,
Speaker 3: And what they found is that poison ivy really loves
Speaker 3: extra CO two hanging around in the atmosphere. So CO
Speaker 3: two enrichment increased photosynthesis and poison ivy by seventy seven percent.
Speaker 3: I just want you to sit with that. Seventy seven
Speaker 3: percent more photosynthesis.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So not only did that lead to better performance,
Speaker 3: it led to bigger plants. Overall, they made better seeds
Speaker 3: that were more likely to germinate and grow just is
Speaker 3: extreme or more than the parents that produce them. But
Speaker 3: the most alarming of all is the production of this
Speaker 3: triene congener of urysherol increased by one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: three percent. What which is the most allergenic form of usherol.
Speaker 1: As if we needed one more reason to slow climate change,
Speaker 1: to slow.
Speaker 2: Climate change, we're going to be taken over by mutant
Speaker 2: poison ie that makes the most allergenic.
Speaker 3: And it's sadly it's a double whammy because not only
Speaker 3: are we increasing the amount of CO two in our atmosphere,
Speaker 3: we're creating through habitat destruction, especially of forests, A lot
Speaker 3: of edge habitat. So when you fragment a forest into
Speaker 3: tiny little chunks, all of those edges suddenly present a
Speaker 3: ton of really perfect niches for poison ivy to grow.
Speaker 3: So it's this double whammy of we're increasing its niche availability,
Speaker 3: which increases its numbers on the landscape, but we're also
Speaker 3: making it extremely potent and vigorous in the process. Wow,
Speaker 3: which is good news for ecology in a lot of
Speaker 3: ways when you think about all of the ecological impacts,
Speaker 3: but in terms of like, you know, us being outside
Speaker 3: and enjoying being in the woods, which again I'm not sensitive,
Speaker 3: but I also don't want to push my luck for
Speaker 3: the reasons you mentioned. Uh, it's a really interesting thing.
Speaker 3: And and there is some speculation that it's because you know,
Speaker 3: with CO two enrichment you get warmer temperatures, you tend
Speaker 3: to get higher humidity spikes could result in more fungi,
Speaker 3: bacterial infections, those sorts of things. So fascinatingly, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's a really cool group of plants, but like I said,
Speaker 3: woefully understudied for obvious reasons, And in talking with doctor Pell,
Speaker 3: she desperately wants grad students to work on this stuff.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of hard sell.
Speaker 2: So if you're interested listeners, check out that's episode on
Speaker 2: in Defensive Plants, and then you can get all of
Speaker 2: that info.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and you know, in botany and in ecology,
Speaker 3: it's easy to think that like all the low hanging
Speaker 3: fruit have been taken, you know, all those early naturalists
Speaker 3: took all the fun easy stuff. There's this is proof
Speaker 3: that this is Yeah, there's areas that are ripe for exploring,
Speaker 3: so curious, brave minds.
Speaker 2: And then why in humans does that same compound produce
Speaker 2: this hyper sensitivity response.
Speaker 1: That's so Yeah, it's strange, and they're like analogues of it.
Speaker 1: Are are there compounds that are super similar where it's
Speaker 1: just sort of this coincidental like, oh, bad luck for humans,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's just kind of bad luck. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things that can be said of
Speaker 3: just kind of happenstance. Like people will talk like take
Speaker 3: THHC for instance, Cannabis is not producing that because it
Speaker 3: has the psychoactive effect on us. We just happen to
Speaker 3: have receptors that are receptive to it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so there's a lot of questions about sort of
Speaker 3: the happenstance of these evolutionary dynamics, this trajectory that takes
Speaker 3: a species or clative organisms in one direction, and humans
Speaker 3: are just so apt to try and experiment and move
Speaker 3: around the globe that we're bound to come into contact
Speaker 3: with this stuff on some point. And yeah, sometimes it
Speaker 3: affects us, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Evolution does not have a goal or an end point
Speaker 1: or a plan.
Speaker 3: There is no agency and and that's that's what's so
Speaker 3: cool to think about, is just when you talk to
Speaker 3: even experts on this, they're like, yeah, I think it's
Speaker 3: just unfortunate for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oops, how cool?
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh man, but yeah, uh my recommendation is don't
Speaker 3: eat anything you can't identify and learn learn the species
Speaker 3: that can affect you.
Speaker 2: Aaron, if these if these episodes don't convince people to
Speaker 2: learn at least the species around them that can affect
Speaker 2: them as I don't know what.
Speaker 3: Will nothing and nothing?
Speaker 1: Maybe what are my poison ivy rash We'll convince you.
Speaker 3: There you go, and hopefully my mother if she's feeling willing.
Speaker 2: Oh, this was a fun episode.
Speaker 3: This was this was so thank you for Thank you
Speaker 3: for your suffering erin that inspired it it it.
Speaker 1: I cannot say that there is anything that is worth
Speaker 1: that suffering, but this was a very nice little consolation.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, but no, I this was super fun. There's
Speaker 1: what a what a weird group of plants?
Speaker 2: What a weird group of plants?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, should we do sources? Let's sure? Okay, So,
Speaker 1: like you, Aaron, I found a couple of papers that
Speaker 1: were super great for the history that kind of like
Speaker 1: laid it all out. So one was called by Rostenberg
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty five and Anecdotal Biographical History of Poison ivy,
Speaker 1: and then from by Vogel from two thousand Oriental Lacquer
Speaker 1: Poison ivy and Drying Oils. And then finally there was
Speaker 1: an article on sciencehistory dot org called no Ill Nature
Speaker 1: The Surprising History and Science of Poison ivy in its Relatives,
Speaker 1: And that was actually a really interesting and great article.
Speaker 1: It had like tons of information in it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, awesome. Yeah, I already mentioned my main one
Speaker 2: by Gladman in two thousand and six was really great,
Speaker 2: but I do have a few others that I will
Speaker 2: certainly post on our website. This podcast will kill you
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I had a bunch of sources because I
Speaker 3: had to kind of search high and low for people
Speaker 3: that have braved this. But some of the bigger ones
Speaker 3: I pulled from I will obviously send you the links
Speaker 3: for all of the ones where resinducts in the Mango
Speaker 3: fruit a Defense System by Joel nineteen eighty. There was
Speaker 3: beetle interactions with poison ivy and poison oak by us
Speaker 3: in China two thousand and five, Insects feeding on poison
Speaker 3: oak Russ toxicodendron by Howden at All nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: And the climate change one was biomass and toxicity Responses
Speaker 3: of poison ivy to elevated atmospheric CO two by mohan
Speaker 3: at All two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: Nice, awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will post all of these references and links
Speaker 1: to them on our website. This podcast will kill you
Speaker 1: dot com, so if you want to do some continued reading,
Speaker 1: check it out there.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Matt so much for coming on and
Speaker 1: doing this really fun episode like this is just just
Speaker 1: like one of the most fun I think this was
Speaker 1: nice and relaxing.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, it was even though you had to relive your
Speaker 2: darkest days erin.
Speaker 1: I mean honestly, like time is meaningless at this point, you.
Speaker 3: Are the same.
Speaker 1: And also if my suffering can in some way alleviate
Speaker 1: the suffering of others and like prevent their exposure to
Speaker 1: poison ivy, that's great.
Speaker 3: That's great. Thank you both so much, as always for
Speaker 3: having me. It is a wonderful blast to talk with you,
Speaker 3: and I always learned so much. Check me out in
Speaker 3: Defensive Plants podcast and Defensive Plants and all major social
Speaker 3: media outlets. If you google it you will find me.
Speaker 3: Stay tuned a lot of good things over the horizon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. If you're not already following Matt on all
Speaker 2: the things, make sure that you are, because it's like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: The insta, I'll say again, is.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, incredible, just the best.
Speaker 1: Beautiful truth.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1: Oh you do agree.
Speaker 3: But thank you for what you two are doing. You
Speaker 3: are putting out just such wonderful and meaningful content, So
Speaker 3: thank you again. And your fans are just fantastic. I
Speaker 3: love interacting with them.
Speaker 1: So they put the fan in fantastic.
Speaker 3: Oh no, all right, I'm doing.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, Well, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the
Speaker 4: music for this episode in all of our episodes, and
Speaker 4: thank you to you fantastic listener, fantastic band.
Speaker 3: Oh I won't poison on any of you.
Speaker 2: Seriously, thank you so much for listening. We love getting
Speaker 2: to make this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Chess. Well, until next time, wash
Speaker 1: your hands you feel the animals.
Speaker 3: Sorry to step on your toes.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 3: You're gonna be itchy, kids, You're just gonna be itchy.