This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 63 Poison Ivy: It's Just Us

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Our first crossover episode this season with Dr. Matt Candeias of In Defense of Plants stars everyone’s favorite irritating plant-originated substance: urushiol! Join us for a light-hearted deep dive into urushiol, aka the stuff in poison ivy that makes you soooo itchy/burny/scratchy. Have you ever wondered why popping a benadryl doesn’t relieve those oozing, raised welts all over your gardening arms? Or whether a poison ivy rash has ever been used as evidence in a murder case? Or why poison ivy and other plants produce this substance in the first place? Don’t worry, just like a poison ivy rash after a summer gardening sesh, we’ve got you covered. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com slash terms for more information. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistake. opened its fault of secrets.

Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit.

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe. Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt the case of Lucy Lettby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get started on this very fun episode, we have a couple of things that we want to announce. So we recorded this back in November of 2020. And since that time, since we recorded it, there have been two very exciting developments as it pertains to Matt Candace. Number one is that Matt Candace is now

Dr. Matt Candace, Ph.D. Heck yeah. He successfully defended his PhD. Woo-hoo. Congratulations, thrilling. And number two is that not only did he defend his PhD, but Dr. Candace wrote a dang book. A whole book. While he was hosting an amazing podcast, while he was working on his dissertation. I mean, like, that's incredible. And while stuck in quarantine. Like what? Yeah.

It's called in defensive plants and exploration into the wonder of plants. And it's available for pre-order now. It's scheduled to be released on February 16th of 2021. So make sure you put in your pre-order now. I can't wait. I've already ordered two copies. Absolutely. And we will link to it on our website as well.

Okay. Now we'll get into the episode. Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh. And I'm Aaron Alman Updike. And I'm Matt Kandaius. Yay! And this is a very special crossover edition of This Podcast Will Kill You and In Defense of Plants.

What episode are we even covering today? What's the topic? Very stoked to be talking about poison ivy. And like poison oak and stuff. Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, it'll be poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, lacquer tree. I'm sure, lots of other stuff. I am super pumped. There's a lot more there than I thought in terms of the history. I have already so many questions for both of you, too. And so, yep, sorry in advance. But yeah, so hopefully to make the question and answer aspect a little bit more palatable,

let's talk about the quarantini for this week. Let's do it. So what are we drinking? Itch cream? Itch cream. Itch cream. Itch cream. Itch cream.

Itch cream. Creme to itch. Crem to it's so appropriate because what is in the crem to itch? Well, of course, many different creams. We have crem de cacao. And just regular cream, which is heavy cream. And an almond liqueur and then some grenadine just to make sure that it looks like what, Erin. What's the look that we're going for here?

I believe, Aaron, that we are going. for the look of calamine lotion. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. We are. It's not the smell of calamine, which is maybe a good thing. But I kind of like the smell of calamine lotion. It's oddly nostalgic, oddly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a little too recent for me. Yeah, that's true. It is also nostalgic. I swear this quarantini tastes better than it sounds. Yeah, it really does.

It's a very like 1950. 50s quarantine for sure. Yeah, I'll get on board with that. And also I wonder, for those who are dairy-free out there, I would guess that coconut cream or coconut milk would work as well as heavy cream. I bet coconut cream would work really well. I bet it'd be pretty tasty too. Yeah. Hmm. Well. Let us know. Let us know. Well, then. Do we have business to take care of before we dive in? I feel like we should, but I don't know if we do. I can't. think of any right now. Maybe we'll have to record something and splice it in. Behind the scenes.

Wouldn't be the first time. No, I think let's just dive right in. I'm really, I can't wait to hear about the history of this. I also always forget that we do these episodes in a different order. I know. I know. Every time. This is our first rodeo. It is the very first time. Totally. on our 63rd episode or something. Yeah. Who knows? Okay, well, let's take a quick break first,

and then we'll dive into the history. Cool. Awesome. Dinner shows up every night, whether you're prepared for it or not. And with Blue Apron, you won't need to panic order takeout again. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients, so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip. There, assemble and bake meals take about five minutes of hands-on prep. Just spread the pre-chopped ingredients on a sheet pan, put it in the oven, and that's it. And if there's truly no time to cook, dish by Blue Apron meals are fully prepared. Just heat them in the oven or microwave, and dinner is ready. And here's the exciting news. Blue Apron no longer requires a subscription. You can order meals when you want them and skip when you

don't without adding another recurring charge. Order now at blueapron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with code this podcast 50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com slash terms for more information. Anyone who works long hours knows the routine. Wash, sanitize, repeat. By the end of the day, your hands feel like they've been through something. That's why O'Keefe's working hands hand cream is such a relief. It's a concentrated hand cream that is specifically designed to relieve extremely dry, cracked hands caused by constant hand washing and harsh conditions. Working hands creates a protective layer on the skin that locks in moisture.

It's non-greasy, unscented, and absorbs quickly. A little goes a long way. Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh conditions because it actually works. O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winter.

when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking. It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside. We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keefs. Just visit O'Keef's Company.com slash this podcast and code this podcast at checkout. I'm Clayton Neckard, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him.

If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like everyone. Well, maybe not everyone, but at least a lot of people who have spent any time in U.S. forests have a poison ivy or a poison oak or poison sumac story. whether it happened to them or whether it happened to a friend or a cousin,

these plants seem to have really left their mark in like, well, I learned my lesson kind of a way. Is there any story that's not like, and that's the last time I'll use an unidentifiable vine as toilet paper? I know a sad amount of those stories. Leaves of three, man. Let it be. Let it be.

I mean, okay. I'm going to put a pin in that because I have questions about the whole leaves of three thing, but we'll get back to valid. So my older sister and my mom would get poison ivy rashes like every summer, it seemed, and there would always be cursing about gardening, and the bathtub would be crusty with colloidal oatmeal, scum, and then there would be smears of pink calamine lotion like on the most unexpected surfaces, like doorknobs and like, you know, carpet, whatever. Kind of upbringing. I'm just kidding. Well, I would just sit there and be unbearably smug because even though I spent most of my childhood playing outside, capture the flag,

or running to get the soccer ball after it dribbled off into the woods, I was always Poisoned Ivy free. I was like, no, I'm not affected by Poisoned Ivy. You know, like it was unbearable, I'm sure. So yeah, that was me. until this summer. Oh, no.

And you guys know this story, or at least like bits of it. But for our listeners, yeah, the pictures are horrific and I will post them. Yes. I'll do like progress picks because I did. I took them every day. Okay. But for our listeners, the long and short of it is that maybe don't brag about being immune to the effects of poise. and ivy at all. And also maybe know what the plants look like and avoid them.

Plant ID 101. Start with the ones that can affect you. Yeah, it's a great, that's a great idea. This summer, I went to my mom's house in Kentucky for a bit. I helped out with gardening and cleaning up namely around a fire pit, pulling tons and tons of viny plants off the rocks and bushes, and then also burning it, which could have been a lot worse, I imagine. Yeah. And then a day or two later, everything on my body was itchy. Like a couple days after that, my arms, my legs, my torso was absolutely covered in the most painful, itchy rash I've ever experienced.

I didn't get any sleep. And I went through like an entire bottle of calamine lotion, legit. it. And I eventually was in such unbearable discomfort that I had to go to urgent care and they gave me steroids because I couldn't just function. Yep. I still have the marks on my arms. Like, this is six months later and it's still there. Yeah. So anyway, after I came out of the fog of this experience, I became super curious about this horrific plant. Like it's history, why on earth my body reacted so badly after years of complacency, and most importantly, to see if it served any ecological purpose so that I couldn't ethically go through my plan of ridding the earth

of such a terrible substance. Please don't. We'll get into that, but please don't. Okay. All right, fine. I knew it. I stink and knew it. So that's when I texted you guys and was like, can we do an episode on Boys and Ivy? Yes, please. Because I don't want to have to do all the reading myself. Anyway, okay. But this episode isn't specifically about poison ivy. It's about the thing in it that causes this rash. Eruciol, which I hope is the right way to say it. There are different pronunciations out there on the internet. It is spelled, in case you are curious, U-R-U-S-H-I-O-L. Erin, I'm sure that you'll talk a lot more about its structure and its effects, but basically Ehrushial is an oily mix of organic compounds, and it can be found in a bunch of different species

of plants. Matt, I'll leave it to you to get to those specific numbers. But the human history of Ehrushiel goes back thousands and thousands of years. The Ehrushel containing sap of the lacquer tree has been used as like this hard varnish or lacquer in Chinese, in Korean and Japanese lacquerware for around 6,000 years. So like a really long time. And it's also been used to coat wood. It's very, very hard and durable.

So super cool. And the word Eruciel actually derives from the Japanese word for the lacquer tree, which is Eruci. Yeah. And the very first descriptions of the rash caused by exposure to Erucceol, they talk about how it appears in lacquer artists on their hands and arms, especially those just learning the art. And here in North America, poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, these plants were all used by some Native American groups for various purposes, such as dyeing or writing on textiles. So apparently, like, the sap will be like a dark color that increases in darkness over time, and it kind of continues to bleed.

It's really interesting. Like, there are pictures of this that you can see. And they were also used as materials for baskets, as medicinal. treatments, including possibly hyposensitization, cooking, and also in some religious rights. So there are a bunch of different purposes for which these different Ehrushiel-containing plants were used in North America prior to, in North America by Native Americans. But the first written descriptions of the irritating effects of the actual poison ivy plant came from none other than John Smith.

Huh. Like. Huh. Like Pocahontas and Like Pocahontas, James Town, John Smith. Wow. Okay.

So he definitely wasn't the first European to observe the effects that the plant had, but he based his observations on someone else's unpublished manuscript, which is cool. Just take it. Citing unpublished manuscripts left and right. He didn't, at least from what I could read, he wasn't like, so I discovered this plant.

Like he wrote about it as if it had already been known. So, yeah, anyway. But he wrote that, quote, The poisoned weed is much in shape like our English ivy, but being touched, causeth redness, itching, and lastly blisters, and which, howsoever, after a while, pass away of themselves without further harm. Yet because for the time they are somewhat painful, it have got itself an ill name, although questionless of no ill nature.

Huh. Huh. Yeah. So he's like, these don't mean to do anything. It's not that bad. Like, reason that seems a little bit extreme. Like, come on. Come on.

But I mean. Grow up. And so this description, which was written in the 1600s, of course, kind of sets the tone that a lot of early naturalists took towards the plant. They felt that it didn't deserve the name poison, but only a few of them dared to suggest that the plants held potential for commercial or medicinal use, despite having absorbed. served some Native American groups using the plants in these various ways.

So throughout much of the 1600s and 1700s, the Ehrushial producing plants of North America didn't receive much attention from the botanists or naturalists, mostly just being written about as a curiosity. I do want to read like a couple of excerpts from this description of poison ivy from the early 1700s naturalist Paul Dudley of Massachusetts. Oh, yes, Dudley. Okay. Mr. Dudley. I have no idea who he is. Let's see. Okay, so here's a little bit of this description. So the inside of the wood is yellow and very full of juice, as glutinous as honey or turpentine. The wood itself has a strong unsavory smell, but the juice stinks as bad as carrion.

Okay. The juice. The juice. Okay, a little bit more. First, it must be observed that it poisons two ways, either by touching or handling it or by the smell, for the scent of it when cut down in the woods or on the fire, has poisoned persons to a very great degree. And then he talks about how it only affects some people, for I have seen my own brother

not only handle it but chew it without any harm at all, which is horrifying to think of. Absolutely horrifying. And then the third thing that he mentions is that this sort of poison is never mortal and will go off in a few days of itself, like the sting of a bee. But generally, the person applies plantain water or salad oil, which is olive oil, and cream. Oh, okay. And then he talks about how his neighbor, who was so badly affected by it, said, that from this point on, he will always remember the touch of poison ivy

because it is as cold as a piece of ice. And he could distinguish it, whether blindfold or in the dark, from any other wood in the world. And so in that description, there were a few mentions of remedies like salad oil and cream. But I also saw I recommended to rub a mixture of charcoal and hogs lard on the affected areas. Okay. Could have worked, who knows. I don't know if it would smell great.

And of course, you know, to throw back to our quarantini, Calamine. So I was like, well, what is Calamine lotion? What's the history of Calamine lotion? Two histories for the price of one here, Aaron? I mean, this is literally like a sentence. But yes, let's go with that. I did a tiny bit of digging because it was kind of hard to find a lot of like substantial information. But it goes way.

back. So calamine lotion, it's that pink liquid liquidy lotion used to treat all kinds of itchy things. It's supposed to dry out the skin and relieve the itch that way. It's made of zinc oxide and ferric oxide. And I found a mention in one book that calamine lotion has been used as far back as 1500 BCE in ancient Egypt. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah. So wait, is it, how is it different than like sunscreen? Like. Yeah, isn't like zinc and all that and sunscreen too? I don't know. I mean, so zinc oxide and ferric oxide, and then there are some other things in there, like phenol and stuff.

I can't remember what else is in there. But the zinc oxide and ferric oxide are the two active ingredients. That's wild. Interesting. Yeah. So anyway. Aaron, maybe you can tell us whether it does anything. Do you want me to just spoilers?

I mean, yeah, it helps the edge. Okay, good. I mean. Dang, I was holding out for that. N of one, that's me. Yes, I can attest to that that it did help tremendously. I was coded. Okay.

Anyway, okay. A little pink air and run into the woods. During this time, unless you were living in areas where these plants flourished, you probably didn't know of its existence unless you were like a super enthusiastic botanist like Matt. Indeed. And in which case, you could even get some seeds and have them grow in your own garden. And that's exactly what people did. Poison Ivy and Poison Sumac were grown in the English Royal Gardens at Q, the gardens of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and also in the gardens of the Empress Josephine Bonaparte.

That's red. Huh? Yeah. Good for them. Good for them. Yeah. Good for them. It never reached super popularity status for reasons you can probably guess, but it did earn a superfan in the late 1700s by the name of Andre de Fresnoi.

He was an army physician and a professor of medicine. And so during this time in Western medicine, a lot of medicinal treatments were derived directly from plants. And basically, if a plant produced some sort of strong effect on the human body, after, contact or ingestion, it was thought, okay, in smaller doses, this could be helpful. And this fine line between medicine and poison is something that we've definitely touched on in all of our poison crossover episodes, so like rice and belladonna, wolf spain, this two-facedness of these compounds. And so it totally makes sense that poison ivy and other related plants were looked at for their potential in medicine. This guy, de Fresnoid, didn't start off as the world's

biggest poison ivy fan. He was giving a lecture about various medicinal plants, which included poison ivy, and he was talking about the painful and itchy sores that it could cause. And there was some young dude in the audience who was like, all right, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. And so after the lecture, he went up and was like, can I have some of those leaves? I'm going to, I'm going to see if this actually causes the horrible blisters you said it will. And it did. horrible, horrible, painful, itchy blisters all over his hand and wrist. And he probably regretted his choice a little bit. But when the swelling finally went down, he noticed that an old sore that had been on his

wrist for ages had finally disappeared. And so he went back to de Fresnoi and was like, oh, my gosh, this old sore disappeared. I'm pretty sure that the poison iv treated it. And so DeFresnoi was like, I've discovered the next big thing in medicine. So we started like cultivating this thing like crazy. He began prescribing poison ivy tea, which he personally tested out and noted, oh, it only causes mild stomach irritation and increased sweat and increased urine production. Oh, great. I don't need to sweat anymore.

Only. I don't think that would be a good idea. I'm horrified to think of drinking poison ivy tea, but don't do it. Also, I do want to rub poison ivy on anyone at a Q&A that says really a comment more than Ivey. question, but I digress. Oh my God. I love that. Beautiful.

So he, de Fresnoe was still somehow encouraged by what he was seeing. So he claimed it could cure anything from skin maladies to paralysis. Whether he actually did any controlled trials is not known. He was just making stuff up. Highly unlikely. Yeah, I'm going to go on a lim to see. He probably didn't. Yep.

But that didn't stop him from lovingly cultivating more and more and more of the plants and sending them to his botanist friends. And his love for poison ivy nearly got him killed, actually. Oh dear. Not by the plant, but for political reasons. So he had sent some plants to one of his friends because his friends wanted to, or his friend wanted to like cultivate it. And then he wrote a follow-up letter to ask how the plants were doing.

doing saying, how are our dear ruse, like R-H-U-S, because that was the genus back in the day, how I long to see them. Oh, dear. And unfortunately, forward to Fresnoi, the letter got intercepted, and the authorities accused him of working with the Russians, which like Rusces. Oh, wow. Yep. But eventually he was like, no, no, I'm just a plant nerd.

I really didn't mean it. Thinking of all the times I've almost been politically assassinated. I mean, I really feel like it might, it's a dangerous profession. So he explained himself out of it. And sadly, his poison ivy garden didn't outlive him by very much. After he died, his pharmacist brother dug up all of the plants and destroyed them. These are terrible things. Yeah, to hell with this garden.

He's like, look, I know about drugs and this is not, we're not, doing that. We have medicine now, bud. It was described as his skeptical pharmacist brother. What a skeptic. And Ehrushiel producing plants never did really seem to find another champion for their use in medicine, but beginning in the early 20th century, there was increasing attention

paid to this group of poisonous plants as a whole. Botanists reclassified the plants from the genus roost to the genus toxicodendron, while chemists began trying to pin down exactly what it was about these plants that caused such irritation. In the early days of germ theory, some researchers floated the idea that it was actually pathogenic microbes in the plant that caused the horrible reaction in humans. It was actually an infection. And the one that was shown not to be true, I kind of love the enthusiasm for microbes. So it was just like, microbes solve everything. Like every question we've ever had.

it's microbes. Like, I really, I think that's adorable and I really like it. But yeah, it wasn't true. And then people were like, okay, maybe it's a volatile oil exuded by the plant into the air, or maybe it's a carbohydrate. But finally, the mystery was solved in the 1920s when the Japanese scientist Riko Magima described the exact chemical structure of the toxin, which is really a mix of organic compounds, like I mentioned earlier.

And he named it Arushia. And from what I can tell, poison ivy and other erushial producing plants have never really stood front and center in academic research, although there does seem to be lots of comparative studies with other organic irritating compounds, as well as some research into detecting tiny amounts of erushal using UV light. But Poison Ivy did earn its place in popular culture with the song Poison Ivy by the Coasters recorded in 1959. Do you guys know this song? Classic. No, I have no idea. I've never heard that. Are you serious?

We used to sing this. I think because my mom was so badly affected by Poison Ivy all the time, this was like a family favorite. I feel very weird. It did not stick with you, apparently. Maybe I would know it. Okay, I'm not going to sing it because I won't subject people to that. However, I will read a few of the lyrics. Okay, this is from the middle of the song.

But you should go and listen to it. But I need to know how it goes to know if I know if I know it. Because you know I'm bad at names. That's true. Maybe I have heard you do karaoke. Come on. I've heard you do karaoke. Come on. I'm so apologetic for that now and forever, Matt. Okay.

You'll have to just, you'll have to look it up. It's worth it, I promise. Okay. Measles make you bumpy and mumps will make you lumpy and chicken pox will make you jump in Twitch. Yeah, no, I do not know this song. That sounds like a very Kentucky thing. This is not a Kentucky thing. I listened to this when I was in Florida, okay, when I was a child in Florida.

How dare you? Okay, returning to it. A common cold of folia and a whooping cough can cool you, but poison ivy lord will make you itch. You're going to need an ocean of calamine lotion. You'll be scratching like a hound the minute you start to mess around. And then it goes, poison ivy, poison ivy. Late at night when you're sleeping, poison ivy, a creepin around.

You don't know that? No. No. You know why? When you're sleeping boys and Ive comes a creepin. Oh, she did it. It's because two of us in this room have not grown up south of the Mason Dixon life. Oh my gosh.

Okay. Well. We don't have the kind of folk music in New England or California that you do. This is not a lot. That is not a slight against you. But we didn't have. We missed out. We didn't have big time.

Pre-surf rock is what I would describe it as. It's like. Buddy Holly-esque. Measles makes you bumpy. Chickenpox makes you lumpy. That doesn't sound like surf rock. Let's honestly, right now the three of us needs to take a pause and we need to all go to

YouTube and type in poison ivy. Okay? We're doing it. We're doing it. Wow, I was just jamming on that for way too long. I missed everything that you guys said. I think you need to get the rights to be able to use that in this episode. Yeah.

I would love to do. that. I mean, is it not a great song? No, that's great. And I take back everything I said about it being a Southern Diddy. That is totally exactly Buddy Holly era updo. Thank you. I loved the song and

however, however, according to the songwriters, it's not about Roushiol. It's not about poison ivy. It's about a girl named Poison Ivy? Well, kind of. It's about an STI.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Late at night when you're sleeping, poison I becomes a creeping around. And it says you can look, but do not touch? Yep, you'll be scratching like a hound the minute you start to mess around. So what's it about crabs? It's about crabs? Well, so the songwriter said the clapagoneria.

I thought those burned. What? Okay, they should listen to our episode. That doesn't, that's not consistent with this. I mean, it was. the 1950s do you really think messaging on STIs was on point? This is how they had to get the info out. Okay.

And of course, you know, in addition to that amazing song, there's also the Batman character Poison Ivy and a movie titled Poison Ivy about a murdering teen. Basically, like, it became sort of the second code for an evil woman or like a sneaky evil, you know, villainous woman. But speaking of murder, I have one last story to tell you before passing the mic. Ooh. Okay. So I definitely remember talking about an assassination attempt with ricin in that episode.

Yep. And a murder in, I think, the Belladonna episode about the guy who murdered his wife in the garden, he, like, served her gin and tonic or something. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. that really depressing trend. Awesome.

Okay, I found a news story. Forgive me, but I googled poison ivy murder. And I found a news story. I don't forgive you. I found a news story about a Baltimore County woman named Roxanne Amick, who was found murdered in 2006. And her body was discovered in a wooded area that was absolutely teeming with poison ivy plants. Oh, no.

detectives immediately suspected her husband, Michael Amick, because it's always the husband. It's always the husband. But also because his arms were completely covered in poison ivy. And there was other circumstantial evidence. But that was like one of their key points of evidence in the trial. But also they weren't able to charge him for 10 years because they wanted to wait until they got better physical evidence. And so that's, for some reason, it took them in 2000. 2006, what?

And so they finally got better DNA evidence, and he was finally convicted of second-degree murder in 2018. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the very odd and jumbled history of poison ivy. All right. All right. Not at all what I was expecting. It doesn't quite have the same, like, you know, Janus' two-faced character, nature as some of the other poison.

that we've covered, but it has inspired great pop songs. An annual Poison Oak show in California that I forgot to mention. Because of a show? Since 1982, they have like wreaths and stuff. A show, a show for that. I never knew that. A show. Yep. I want to meet the people that go to that show. Is it not like you?

No, I would not. I would not. Personally, not my gym, but I'll talk to them. I would like to go and just like wear a full body. Tyvex suit. I don't know. Biohazard suit. Yeah. I'm so scared of poison ivy now.

Okay. Erin, please tell us what on earth this plant does to us. I am thrilled to do so, but I'll take a quick break first. Anyone who works long hours knows the routine. Wash, sanitize, repeat. By the end of the day, your hands feel like they've been through something. That's why O'Keeffe's working hands hand cream is such a relief. It's a concentrated hand cream that is specifically designed to relieve extremely dry, cracked hands

caused by constant hand washing and harsh conditions. Working hands creates a protective layer on the skin that locks in moisture. It's non-greasy, unscented, and absorbs quickly. A little goes a long way. Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh

conditions because it actually works. O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winters when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking. It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside. We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keefs. Just visit O'Keefscom.com. This Podcast and code this podcast at checkout. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final Rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton, at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here.

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I have to give a huge shout out to this one paper that I found. It was by Gladman in 2006. It was like a single author paper, which like never happens anymore. But it honestly was so comprehensive and straightforward. And laid out all of the basics of what somebody would want to know about the biology of poison ivy. And I haven't found a paper like that in a very long time. So I really want to give them a big shot out. Thank you so much. It made this research journey a lot simpler. So I will obviously link to that. Okay, so the compound, like you already mentioned, Aaron, that is found in all of these plants that causes us such distress is Urushial. Let's go with that. Good job. So, Arushial is, like you mentioned, Erin, it's an amalgamation of organic compounds. It's a phenolic lipid compound, okay? That basically just means it's made up of fatty acids

and a phenol ring, which is like one of those six carbon rings, okay? And then the different specific forms of urushial that are found in different species of plant differ in their carbon side chains, which are called like catacalls, I think. Vaguely remember that. Yeah. Please don't ask me any more organic chemistry questions than that, because even that was a challenge for me. Okay.

So what it means for us, let's focus now back on like the biology side of this. the chemical that poison ivy produces, this erushial, it's a resin. You kind of already mentioned this, Aaron. So it's an oily substance. And what's important, and Matt, I know you'll talk more about this. This is a compound that's contained within the plant tissues itself. It's not something that's excreted by the plant. So you have to have damage to the plant to actually release this compound.

Is that right, Matt? Yeah, correct. Totally. Okay. So if you just like touch an intact leaf just by like gently, brushing it, you're not likely to come in contact with Ehrushial, right? Yeah, that's my favorite thing to do in my floristics class is to touch the leaf and go, what is this? Throws them. And they're like, blah. Yeah. I don't know. But if you're like pulling weeds,

Aaron, or bushwhacking or cleaning brush out of your mom's yard, Erin, you're going to be exposed. Okay. I am exposed right now, actually, by all of this. So exposed. Very pointed language. Some other things that are important about this oil, it's non-volatile, so it doesn't just dissipate into the air, like, say, ethanol or something like that. But it does dry very quickly onto surfaces. And once it's dried, it maintains its antigenic properties, which means that if a deer

came by and munched on a bunched on a bunch of poison. Ivy. Did deer eat poison ivy? Oh yeah. Okay. I thought so, but I just made things up. So if a deer came by and munched a bunch of poison ivy, so a bunch of erushial was released and dried, and then you brushed past that vine. Well, now you can be exposed, okay? Mm-hmm. And what's important is that as little as two milligrams of erushial can cause a reaction. I have no idea how much a plant produces. A lot more than that. Okay, that's what I guessed. A lot.

And like you mentioned, Aaron, it can be aerosolized in the smoke, and then it can actually affect like your respiratory tract. So that's like pretty serious. It's estimated that anywhere from like 50 to 75% of the U.S. adult population is sensitive. And this goes, really, it's across all ages. It's just by the time you get to adulthood, it's about 50% percent. to 75%. And there's some thought that, like, maybe there's a genetic link because if you have two parents that are both sensitive, you have like an 80% chance of being sensitive. But it also

depends a lot on exposure. So let's talk about the exposure, shall we? Yeah. And then I have a question. Oh, do you want to ask it now? Yeah. Actually, it'll probably be better if I do that now for everyone listening. So dad, my dad, not sensitive to it. My mom. My mom. extremely sensitive to it. When she was like, I'll just say many months pregnant for me, she was doing what Aaron was doing, weeding in the garden, sweating, going like this, wiping it all over.

And there is the most tragic picture of her, like, I'm guessing like eight months pregnant for me, in a chair covered in calamine and just blistery crustiness, just looking very sad. And I'm wondering, I am not sensitive to it. Is it the genetic component from my dad not being sensitive? Or did I get some weird antibody resistance

from being in the womb when my mom was fascinating. Yeah. Fascinating question, Matt. Thank you. What an interesting question. Basically, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm not going to guess. This isn't a full guess. This is an educated guess.

I'll take it. I'll take it. Based on what I know about the path of physiology, which we're about to get into, You just you got lucky. This is not from your mom's exposure. Okay. I have a question for Matt. It's actually more of a comment.

I'm going to rub poison heavy on you. No. No, go ahead. My question was, do you think your mom would be willing to share that photo? Ooh. For me, her boy, probably. but if she knew how many people might see it, I won't tell her that and I'll just get her to share it with me. How's that?

Tell her, Matt. No, I'll tell her. I wouldn't do that to her. I wouldn't do that to my mom. No, I'll ask. I'll try. I'll try. I love her to death and I don't want to take advantage of her, but she'll probably share it.

It sounds like an amazing picture. It does. It's so tragic. Yeah. So tragic. Everyone send us your worst poison ivy pictures. Oh, gosh. Yes.

Please do. Yeah. We'll start a thread on like Twitter or Instagram. Do it on Reddit so it can get weird. Good idea. Okay, so listen, let's talk about how this happens because this is the part you guys that I'm really excited about. This is the moment. This is the moment.

Okay. And the reason I'm so excited is because we get to talk about hypersensitivity reactions, which I think are so fun and interesting. Okay. All right. So clinically, the rash that you get from poison ivy, everyone knows it causes a rash. Okay. Right? If you don't, we'll talk about it in a minute, so don't worry. The rash that you get from poison ivy, it's called an allergic contact dermatitis. Okay. So from that, we already know a lot. It's inflammation in your skin, dermitis. You get it from contact with the plant. We already talked about that. But it's caused by an allergic reaction to the plant. What the heck is an allergic reaction? Ooh, fun. Okay.

There are four different types of hypersensitivity reactions. Okay. Types one through four. Recently, they were updated so that actually types two and four both have multiple subtypes, but we're just going to go with one, two, three, and four. Okay. I won't tell. Thank you.

And all hypersensitivity reactions have to do, at least in part, with antibodies being formed to something that, stimulates an immune response, which is, that's like what antibodies are supposed to do. We talked a lot about that in our vaccines episode. But in the case of hypersensitivity reactions, the amount of immune response that ends up being generated is OTT over the top. Is that a medical acronym? No. That's what I was like to love island. Okay. And that causes a problem in and of itself. Okay. So I'm going to very, very briefly go through the four types. And then we're going to focus on the one that causes allergic contact dermatitis, aka poison ivy. Okay. Cool. So type one is an IGE, which is a specific type of antibody. You have like IgG, IGM. So IGE mediated reaction is type one. And this is what you probably think of when you think an allergic reaction. Okay. So like anaphylactic shock, that's type 1. Okay.

So like shellfish allergy, peanut allergy, that kind of thing. Even like hives that you get, okay? These are basically what happens is this type of antibody binds to these cells called mass cells and they release a whole bunch of histamine and then boom, you get a massive inflammatory reaction. Okay. That's type 1, classic allergies. Type 2 is called a cytotoxic or IGG or IGM. So it's a different type of antibody response.

And it causes things like autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which is a type of anemia where your red blood cells go boom. Also good pasture syndrome, which is a kidney disease. And so this is like antibodies that are directed against our cell membranes. And then type 3 is what's called an immune complex mediated response. So it's the same type of antibodies as in type 2, IGG or IGM. But basically what happens is these antibodies kind of glom onto each other and then deposit places that they shouldn't and then make you sick. So that's like a more complicated one.

Okay. So something like serum sickness, if you've ever heard of that, that's a type 3 response. Okay. And then we get to type 4. Okay. We're there. We're finally here. So the allergic contact dermatitis caused by Eruciol is a type 4 hypersensitivity reaction.

This is called a delayed or a T-cell mediated response. And if you want to know like the specifics, it's a type 4A response. Okay. So how does this one work? Okay. It's a little bit different than all this. the others. Exciting.

So the first time that you're exposed to poison ivy oils, the catacalls, which are part of that Ehrushial compound, they bind to and penetrate through your skin cells, okay? And then with, like underneath the surface of your skin, they bind to the surface of these cells that are called antigen presenting cells. In your skin, these are often called Langerhans cells. And their job is to internalize antigens, process them, and then travel back to our lymph nodes and present those antigens to T cells. Whoa. Basically, and that's like a normal thing that they would do.

Okay. That's like, that's their job. They're an antigen presenting cell. So they travel back to your lymph node and they go, hey, T cells, I found this stuff and I think it might be bad. I don't know what to do. I'm leaving this for you. And the T cells are like, great. Thank you so much.

Langerhans. Appreciate it. Thanks for bringing it. We're just going to make a bunch of copies of it. We'll be on the ready. We'll have like a big army of cells back here just whenever we need it. Okay? We got you.

And that's exactly what happens. So Ehrushiel causes a large amount of these T cells to be made kind of at the ready. And they just hang out in our body until the next time that you're exposed. So on subsequent contact with Erucceol, those T cells happen to come in and they're like, oh, hey, I recognize this. Call in the army, right? And then they immediately get to work destroying skin cells. So killing cells wherever they find this antigen. Wow.

And then also like upregulating your immune response, releasing all these other immune modulators that produce things like vasodilation to help increase blood flow, so you get further inflammation. And then you also have a response in your skin cells themselves, which are called your keratinocytes, that further this inflammatory response. They release more cytokines. They increase inflammation. And it's like this feedback loop. Huh.

Cool. Yeah. Well. That's wild. Also horrible, but yes. Yeah. Fascinating. So they're, they're recognizing.

It's recognizing it as something bad and trying to do everything possible to kind of like nuke that site. Exactly. And it's like the first time that your body is exposed to it, you just like make these T cells, these memory T cells and they're just there, like just to have on hand. Right. And so that's part. And because it's T cells that are being made and not just antibodies, okay, we're not just making antibodies against this compound. you're making T cells that are going to be able to come in. And so because of that, this is a delayed type response because it's not like you're just immediately binding antibody and then like, you know, decimating things right there.

Like these T cells are not everywhere all the time. There's like a certain number of them that might be present in your body and then they just have to happen to come into contact with that Ehrushial the second time. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah. So that's why what the symptoms of this look like is that it's a delay after exposure. Okay? So generally around two days, about 24 to 48 hours, but usually about 48 hours after exposure,

that's when you first start to see the symptoms of poison ivy. Cool. Dang. That's awesome. Yeah. So we can talk a little bit more specifically about the symptoms, although Aaron, I feel like you told us them. pretty well blister the itching

pain don't run your arm or rash under hot water even though it feels really good because it's horribly miserable afterwards oh that sounds bad insanely like such relief

during it during the hot water and then after you're like well cool I learned that lesson with bug bites yeah it came back to bite me yeah

But I'm curious to know like more of the other, like especially the smoke inhalation. Well, so let's talk about kind of the general symptoms and what happens. And then I think we'll be able to understand what could happen if you get, if you inhale it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, usually around two days. It can vary quite a lot.

I think two weeks is like the highest end of when you could potentially still have symptoms after exposure. and at the low end it could be like a number of hours. You first get areas of redness, so it gets just kind of red, and then you would get some small bumps. They usually start out as bumps, and even just this redness and bumps are super, super, super itchy. Super itchy. And then over time, those small bumps develop into vesicles,

which are basically, like if you think of what a chickenpox rash kind of looks like, little clear fluid-filled bumps. So these bumps, like fill with fluid. And when it gets really bad, like what Aaron had, they can get all the way into what are called Bula. I think that's how you say it. Or Bola, I don't know how you actually say it, which are ginormous fluid-filled blisters, like kind of confluent. Like your whole arm could be one giant fluid-filled blister. And if you get severe reactions, these boule can get really, really large. You can get really severe swelling or edema because of how much inflammation you're having just under the skin. And it's incredibly uncomfortable. So if you inhale it, then that exact same inflammatory reaction is happening

in your respiratory tract because the epithelia, so the cells that lie in your respiratory tract, are not very different from your skin cells. Oh. So the reaction is going to be essentially the same, except that it's a small space. And so there's no room for inflammation to happen. So you could, like, close off your respiratory tract. Oh, that's horrible. I have heard of people dying from that.

Yeah. Right. The other thing that can happen if you inhale it is that it can kind of more, and I'm not exactly sure the pathophysiology of this specifically, but it can cause a more generalized dermatitis as well, where you get like that inflammatory reaction across your whole body rather than only where you were exposed. Huh. Weird.

Right? Sounds awful. Yeah. No good. Without any treatment at all, it's a long course of disease. It's anywhere from like three to six weeks to completely resolve, which is a very long time to be miserable. Yeah.

No thanks. Yeah. there are a couple of other really uncommon things that you can get. There's something that's called black spot dermatitis, which causes like something that kind of can look a little bit like a melanoma, like literally like a black mark on your skin that is often permanent. But what I don't know about this is whether that it's not painful from what I understand. Like it's just something that can happen as a result, but it's pretty uncommon. And then also what's really uncommon is you can get something called erythema multiform, which you can get from other things as well. But it's like widespread super itchy bumps that can kind of come up all over your body, not just where you came into contact.

So this would be like on top of just having this hypersensitivity, your body is going like, well, let's go full-fledged. And like everywhere. I have heard about sort of like the rash spreading, which I know it's not contagious because like the oil you wash off your body. But I also heard that the rash can spread in the way that it's just like an inflammatory response. Do you want to know a little more about it? I do. I desperately do. Mostly because of the faces you're making.

You're totally right, Aaron. It's not contagious. And like the fluid that's in those vesicles, it doesn't have any antigen in it. Okay? So you shouldn't open up blisters because you should not open up blisters. But if you did like accidentally scratch open those blisters, you're not going to spread the rash by like itching it or anything like that. And you're not going to give it to anybody else. However, the oil itself can dry on surfaces and remain antigenic.

So if you got the oil on your clothes or under your nails and then you itch it, you can spread it. Or if it's on your dog's fur? If it's on your dog. Exactly. Shout out to my friend Amy. Yeah. And so that's why sometimes you can get new lesions like a few weeks after initial onset. If it's just still somewhere, whether it's your clothes, your dog, your nails, whatever.

Yeah. You can then continue to spread it. Yeah. Didn't that happen to our dear friend Sam from a chair that she sat on that had, she sat on it with like poison ivy pants and then continued to sit on the chair? Yes. Oh no. Yes.

Oh gosh. Awful. It's horrible. Yep. And then like you said, Aaron washing it off, turns out that only helps if you do it like right away. Within 30 minutes, pretty much any oil that you've come in contact with has been absorbed. Yep. And there's at least some research that suggests that using soap can actually spread the oil a little bit further.

So just washing it off with water if you can. Like if you're like, oh no, I just touched poison ivy as quick as you can wash it off with just water. That can be helpful. So the best bet really is just learn what the plant looks like and avoid it. Avoid it. There have been what's really interesting in researching this is that I, have found that there are a few barrier creams that exist that are supposedly effective at preventing a reaction. But some of them maybe actually make it worse. So I'm not sure,

and they're not ones that I had ever heard of. So I'm not sure how widely available they really are. But Dial Ultra, which is like dishwashing soap. Oh, yeah. as well as a couple other like soaps and one of these like very specific creams I've never heard of, seem to help prevent the rash even after you've been exposed. So it's not like they're, it's not washing the oil off your skin, but somehow it's helping to prevent the rash. I don't know. It's worth a try. Dial is cheap.

So this is not an ad. But otherwise treatment, like you said, Aaron, colloidal oatmeal, baths, calamine lotion, and then if it gets really bad, like what you had, oral steroids are really the thing that you need. Topical steroids can be helpful, but topical, you need like pretty high dose, and you can only use those on certain parts of your body and only for a certain amount of time,

so they're not all that helpful. Antihistamines, this isn't a histamine response, guys, because that's a type one hypersensitivity reaction. I just learned that. So that's why antihistamine. aren't super helpful in this case. Unless like for me, it helped me sleep before I got, before I was like resorted to steroids. But within like a few hours of steroids, everything was better.

Like it was unbelievable. I'm so glad that you finally went to the doctor. Yeah, I know. Are you stubborn like I am? I'm very stubborn. I am very bad about, about being like accepting any sort of vulnerability and in physical, in my physical body. It's bad, real bad. I feel you.

I feel you. I have questions. For me or for Matt? For you, Erin. Oh, gosh. Okay. So first of all, 50 to 70% of people are sensitive. Yep.

Why? What is the difference between sensitivity and insensitivity? It's a really good question, and it's not clear, because it's across all ages, it's across ethnicities, it's across races, it's across like everything. It's anyone could be sensitive. So in large part, it's probably exposure. Is our 100% of adults in the US exposed? No, definitely not. So would it be 100% if everyone was exposed a certain number of times? I don't know. I don't know. But it's a very interesting question that I could not fully find the answer to as to like, what is it that makes one person specifically more sensitive than another person? Like you, Erin,

you went so much of your life not being sensitive. And it's not like you were only exposed twice in your life, right? Right. So I think a lot of it is repeated exposure. So people who have occupational exposures are at much higher risk of being sensitive if they're constantly coming in contact with it. Well, and that brings me to another question about hypo. sensitive. So like can you actually become desensitize yourself? So desensitization has not been shown to be effective for poison ivy the way it is for like bee stings and things like that. Okay. Which is really interesting. Well, that leads me to thinking a lot of other questions, but I think that this is where I need to direct them to Matt. So. Fair enough.

Phew, thank goodness, because I know my answers were just like, well, maybe. Matt, what the heck? Tell us all about it. Okay. But let's take a quick break first. All right. So we've covered a lot of ground in this episode, but let's talk about the plants.

And this is where things get really interesting. And this is why I always say it, but it's so true. I love doing crossovers because I learn so much. You send me down these weird, interesting roads, and they're never. as simple or as straightforward of a narrative as I hope they are, or I think they are. I shouldn't say hope. I usually hope for more interesting things. And this is what we found. So let's back up. We talk a lot about poison ivy and poison oak and to some extent poison sumac because these are plants that people, at least here in North America, have a chance

of running into having encounters with whether gardening or hiking or doing anything out that. But if you back up for a second and look at the family that these plants belong to and a cardiacee, do you know what common food that you've probably all eaten to some degree or another? Yes, mango. But the name of this family is very specific to something that you would eat, say, in trail mix. Peanut? Not peanut. Sunflower seed.

Nope. M&Ms. Grapes. It's very popular. You were closer with peanut and it's very popular in some Asian foods. Cachews. Cashu, yes. Oh, cashews.

Cashies. Cachew nuts. Yes. So the group of plants we're talking about all come from what they call the cashew family, Anacardiace. And Anacardiacee, I would normally not use the common name, but the etymology of Anacardiaceae literally means upward heart, which is in complete reference to the seed of the cashew apple, which if you've ever seen, if you've ever been to Central or South America and

seen a cashew growing, a cashew is a small nut attached to the bottom of a large apple-like structure called the cashew apple. And that's what they're referring to with this. So Anacardiasi is a large family of plants that's found all over the globe. We happen to know a lot of the temperate representatives, but if you've ever eaten mangoes or pistachios, you have also eaten members of this family. Now, Eurushials are present in about a third of the family. So this is not something that's unique to any of the ones that we're familiar with.

this is something that the family's pretty well known for. And I actually recently, I'll probably be releasing the episode in conjunction with this one, spoke with the deputy executive director of the United States Botanical Garden, Dr. Susan Pell, who just happens to have devoted her entire career to understanding this family of plants. And it's absolutely fascinating, yes. Oh, my gosh. We should have listened to that episode in prep for this, Matt. I was so happy I did the interview.

It'll come out whenever this does. But, yeah, it's fascinating. and she can speak to any number of botanists that have only gotten more sensitive over time to repeated exposure. So some of the most famous ones, besides the mango, the cashew, pistachio, we've already covered poison ivy,

poison oak, and poison sumac. Now, if you're a United States botanist or in North America doing botany, they are toxicodendron. But if you are European, specifically certain people that work at Q, they still lump them into ruse. There's a lot of taxonomic uncertainty, but it would behoove you to familiarize yourself

with some of the ones you're more likely to encounter. Behoove, nice. Behoove, yeah. These quarantinis are doing a number on my vocabulary. I love that your vocabulary gets better after the quarantini's, because mine does not. I get more brave in trying to use those words. But as a group of plants, as you already mentioned, Eurasia is a suite of compact. not just one.

And when you think about what is this doing for the plant, you know, the first thing I always go to is defense. You know, it's very easy to see why we would touch this, get a rash, and be like, I'm never messing with that plant again. But I want to go back to something Aaron said about the delayed reaction. Yeah. Does it make sense for a plant to have an anti-herbivore defense compound that takes a day or two to kick in? Well, also, isn't it only like humans and some primates that have a response to this? So like herbivores don't care. Yes.

For all intents and purposes, this plant only affects us and some of the higher primates. Nothing else is affected by it with this allergy. It is by no means an anti-herbivore defense. In fact, everything from birds to goats to deer to mice and numerous insects will feed on the full. foliage and fruits of this plant of all of these plants with little to no problem. What the heck, Matt? Yeah. It's bizarre.

We'll get there. It's very bizarre. And that's what's really interesting is to think about how bad our reactions can be to it. And it's really just us. We're very much alone in this. It's just us. Of course you would name it poison ivy too. Right.

Yeah, exactly. What would a bird name it? What a deer name it. Delicious berry. Yes, exactly. So as you can imagine, the complications with the human immune response, it makes it a very difficult group of plants to study in a lot of great detail, at least for that third that produce the suite of compounds.

So this is a woefully understudied sort of biochemical ecology, we'll say. But there has been enough interest in it, obviously, because of how much it affects us. us that there have been hints and insights gained over time. And some of the best hints as to what the function of these compounds are come from where they're produced. And now it's a big family. It's a lot of plants that have it, but you've got to figure we're really only look at the ones that, you know, we either are more likely to come in contact with or that we have some sort of economic use for. So most of the work has been done in poison ivy, mangoes, cashews, and pistachios. So if you look at at least poison ivy, most of the eurycheral is contained within the young leaves, the young stems, the bark, and the fruits.

And interestingly enough, it's not found in the pollen, and poison ivy pollen happens to be a surprisingly common ingredient, or at least component of most commercial honey. Oh. Yeah. So we'll get into the ecological benefits of the species in a little bit. But when they looked at Eurisurals function in poison ivy, they found that Eurisurals and its derivatives are really effective at killing certain types of pathogenic fungi. Oh, awesome. Hence the early growth or whatever.

Exactly. So young leaves, young stems, things that are really tender, very susceptible to infection. Now, it's also been found, but in a lab setting, this is important. This is not found on the plant itself to be really good. good at preventing biofilms and killing most a lot of bacteria. Oh. So you think about all of the surface area of a plant is ripe for the taking in terms of being, you know, a growth medium for bacteria.

They don't wash themselves regularly and, you know, they've got a lot of pores that are open to the environment. So anything that can be present in a plant that can help prevent detrimental microbes from finding their way into the plant is probably a good thing. Huh. Yeah. Now, in mangoes, it's really interesting because the Eurals are highly concentrated in resin ducts specifically and most importantly around the fruits, which is why a lot of people will get a reaction to eating mangoes, especially if you're getting mangoes that have gone feral. Oh, yeah.

So it is present in the domesticated ones, but if you get them off the street from a sea that's just germinated, you are really risking it. I mean, your best bet is to avoid the skin because that's where it's kind of. concentrated, but even if you cut into a mango, what gets on the knife and then travels into the fruit can be enough to really mess your day up or week up, I should say. I have a question if you're ready about distribution of the plants. Okay, yeah, yeah, we'll go there before I get into some of the interesting mango results. Okay. So does Ehrushial or like the amount of Ehrushial or anything like that, does that follow any

sort of geographic distribution in terms of latitude or in terms of like rainfall or in terms of like predator or a herbivore density or whatever? That's a really cool question to ask. And I don't know the full picture of it, but I will say that it is very much present in both tropical and temperate representatives. But I will get into something in a little bit dealing with climate change and CO2 that kind of lends to this. But no, I think overall it's a compound that's very much found in varying degrees in different

tissues maybe by latitude and habitat. But, you know, poison ivy is going to affect you just as much as pistachios or mangoes are. Right. Okay. So like, it's not like, oh, this poison oak is more, contains more irishol than poison ivy. It could be this leaf on this plant contains more irishol. Like there's more variability within the plant than there is. across plant species.

Okay. So especially like toxicodendron, poison ivy, I don't know too much about poison oak just because I grew up on the East Coast, but it is a highly variable species. And anytime you talk about plant chemistry, you know, it varies with genetics and populations. So it's like, as my old botany professor you say, it's like good dope and bad dope. You never know what you're going to get. Variation within a species. It's important.

So in mangoes, a lot of the Eurisurals are concentrated in these. resin ducks. So you can picture them as sort of like veins, vascular tissue that goes through the rind of the mango and is just chock full of these compounds. And what they found is that in plantations or any sort of commercial production for mangoes, the more dense the resin ducts are in the tissue, the less the mangoes are affected by flies, ovipositing flies looking to lay their eggs on the fruit. And what happens is when the female fly lands on and sticks, her ovipositor into the tissue to lay her eggs, she ruptures those resin ducts, and it just floods the egg chamber, killing the resulting eggs and larvae.

Stop it. Yeah. That is awesome. And so on top of all of that, the other part of it, too, is just antimicrobial. So really, I think the impetus, the evolutionary pressures that really set Eurisrael on its trajectory and why we see so many different variations within this class of compounds, it has to do with antimicrobial properties. infectious, you know, disease-causing microbes from fungi to bacteria and everything in between.

Oh, my gosh. My brain is reeling. This is fascinating. Yeah, so absolutely has nothing to do with us. In fact, we were up in Indiana Dunes over the summer, and there was a poison ivy covered in soft fly larva that were just devouring it. And birds eat it like crazy. I mean, you know, they say leaves of three, let it be. Let it be for a lot of reasons. Let it be because you probably don't want to get, what Aaron came down with and just be itchy, scratchy, having a horrible time. But it's also extremely ecologically important, at least toxicodendron radacans, what we know is poison ivy, and I'm sure it extends to poison oak, and it definitely extends

to poison sumac, although you really have to work to find true poison sumac. They say you have to find a high-quality bog, you have to trip and fall, and the first pint you will grab will be poison sumac. but they are ecologically extremely important. Their foliage feeds many different species of animal, especially insects. There's lots of leaf and stem-boring insects. There's lots of caterpillars of numerous different species of butterflies and moths. The flowers are visited by a wide variety of insects for pollination, mainly by beetles, actually.

It is primarily a beetle-pollinated species, but bees will find it too. and the fruits. Oh my God, are the fruits of poison ivy so extremely valuable. They're one of the few species that has a white fruit, and you can guarantee if it's a white fruit, at least in the east, you probably should leave it alone. But they're really high in fat, and they happen to appear around the same time

that all of our migratory songbirds are making their way south. And so it is a vital component of their diet as they migrate south. And so if you have this plan on your landscape, it's not hurting you. You're not going to come into contact with. it easily. Consider leaving it. It's got beautiful fall foliage. It turns very red and contrasted with the white berries. It's really, really pretty. And, you know, birds disperse the fruit. That's how it gets around. So it's really important for them. But one of the most interesting things is

what's going on specifically with poison ivy and climate change. And they used, have you heard of the face experiments? The free air CO2 enrichment. Yeah, where they basically set out all of the CO2 enrichment stuff. It's waste product CO2 from it was going to find its way into the atmosphere one way or another. But they concentrate it in an area and look at how plants respond. So it's a way of trying to study what elevated CO2 levels are going to do for plants. Well, someone got it in their head to see what was going to happen with poison ivy in the context of CO2 enrichment. And what they found is that poison ivy really loves extra CO2 hanging around in the atmosphere. So CO2 enrichment increased photosynthesis in poison ivy by

77% I just want you to sit with that 77% more photosynthesis Wow Yeah so not only did that lead to better performance It led to bigger plants overall They made better seeds that were more likely to germinate And grow just as extreme or more than the parents that produce them

But the most alarming of all is the production of this triene congener of eurisur, increased by 153%, which is the most allergenic form of eurac. As if we needed one more reason to slow climate change down. To slow climate change, we're going to be taken over by mutant poison ivy that makes the most allergenic urichol. And it's sadly, it's a double whammy because not only are we increasing the amount of of CO2 in our atmosphere, we're creating through habitat destruction, especially a forest,

a lot of edge habitat. So when you fragment a forest into tiny little chunks, all of those edges suddenly present a ton of really perfect niches for poison ivy to grow. So it's this double whammy of we're increasing its niche availability, which increases its numbers on the landscape, but we're also making it extremely potent and vigorous in the process. Wow. Which is good news for ecology in a lot of ways when you think about all of the ecological impacts. But in terms of like, you know, us being outside and enjoying being in the woods, which again, I'm not sensitive, but I also don't want to push my luck for the reasons you mentioned.

It's a really interesting thing. And there is some speculation that it's because, you know, with CO2 enrichment, you get warmer temperatures. You tend to get higher humidity spikes. Could result in more fungi, bacterial infections, those sorts of things. So fascinating Matt. Yeah. It's a really cool group of plants, but like I said, woefully understudied for obvious reasons. And in talking with Dr. Pell, she desperately wants grad students to work on this stuff.

It's just kind of hard sell. So if you're interested listeners, check out Matt's episode on In Difensive Plants, and then you can get all of that info. Yeah. And, you know, in botany and in ecology, it's easy to think that. like all the low-hanging fruit have been taken, you know, all those early naturalists took all the fun easy stuff. There's, this is proof that this is, there's areas that are ripe for exploring. So curious, brave minds. And then why in humans does that same compound produce this hypersensitivity response? That's so bizarre. It's strange. Are there like analogs of it? Are there compounds that are super

similar where it's just sort of this coincidental like oh bad luck for humans that's what i'm wondering yeah i think it's just kind of bad luck you know there's a lot of things that can be said of just kind of happenstance like people will talk like take t hc for instance cannabis is not producing that because it has the psychoactive effect on us we just happen to have receptors that are receptive to it you know yeah and so there's a lot of questions about sort of the happenstance of these evolutionary dynamics, this trajectory that takes a species or clative organisms in one direction. And humans are just so apt to try and experiment and move around the globe that we're bound to come into contact with this stuff on some point. And sometimes it affects us. Sometimes it doesn't.

Yeah. Evolution does not have a goal or an endpoint or a plan. There is no agency. And that's what's so cool to think about is just when you talk to even experts on this, they're like, yeah, I think it's just unfortunate for us. Yeah. Oops. Oops. How cool. Yeah.

Oh, man. But yeah. My recommendation is don't eat anything. You can't identify. And learn the species that can affect you, Erin. If these episodes don't convince people to learn at least the species around them that can affect them, I don't know what it will. Nothing. Nothing.

Maybe the pictures of my poison ivy rash will convince you. There we go. And hopefully my mother's if she's feeling willing. This was a fun episode. This was so interesting. Thank you for your suffering, Erin, that inspired it all. I cannot say that there is anything that is worth that suffering, but this was a very nice little consolation. Fair enough.

But no, this was super fun. There's, what a weird group of plants. What a weird group of plants. Yeah. Well, should we do sources? Let's. Sure. Okay.

So, like you, Aaron, I found a couple of papers that were super great for the history that kind of laid it all out. So one was called by Rost. from 1955, an anecdotal biographical history of poison ivy. And then from, by Vogel from 2000, Oriental Lacker, Poison Ivy and Drying Oils. And then finally, there was an article on sciencehistry.org called No Ill Nature, the Surprising History and Science of Poison Ivy and its relatives. And that was actually a really interesting and great article. It had like tons of information in it.

So, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I already mentioned my main one by Gladman in 2006 was really great, but I do have a few others that I will certainly post on our website. This podcast Will Kill You.com. Yeah, so I had a bunch of sources because I had to kind of search high and low for people that have braved this. But some of the bigger ones I pulled from, I will obviously send you the links for all

of the ones, were Resinducks in the Mango Fruit, a Defense System by Joel, 1980. There was beetle interactions with poison ivy and poison oak by Sinchina, 2005. Insects feeding on poison oak, ruse toxicodendron by Howden et al, 1991. And the climate change one was biomass and toxicity responses of poison ivy to elevated atmospheric CO2 by Mohan et al, 2006. Nice. Awesome. Yeah, we will post all of these references and links to them on our website.

Podcast will kill you.com. So if you want to do some continued reading, check it out there. Definitely. Yeah. Well, thank you, Matt, so much for coming on and doing this really fun episode. Like, this is just like one of the most fun, I think. It was nice and relaxing, weirdly. Yeah. It was. Yeah. Even though you had to relive your darkest days, Aaron? I mean, honestly, like, time is meaningless at this point. It's all the same. 2020. And also, if my suffering can in some way alleviate the suffering of others and, like, prevent their exposure to poison IV, that's great.

That's great. How noble of you. Thank you both so much, as always, for having me. It is a wonderful blast to talk with you, and I always learned so much. Check me out, In Defense of Plants podcast, In Defensive Plants on all major social media. outlets. If you Google it, you will find me. Stay tuned. A lot of good things over the horizon. Yes, definitely. If you're not already following Matt on all the things, make sure that you are because it's like, oh my gosh, it's incredible. The Insta, I'll say again, is. Oh, yes. Incredible.

Just the best. Beautiful. I have a lot of fun with it. Oh, you do a great job. But thank you for what you two are doing. You are putting out just such wonderful and meaningful content. So thank you again. and your fans are just fantastic. I love interacting with them, so. They're the best. They put the fan in Fantastic. Oh, that's so good. All right, I'm done.

Oh, boy. Well, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode in all of our episodes. And thank you to you. Fantastic listeners. Fantastic fans. Oh, seriously, though.

I won't rub poison ivy on any of you. Seriously, thank you so much for listening. We love getting to make this podcast. Thank you so much. Yes. Well, until next time, wash your hands. You filthy animals. Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toes.

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