As winter gives way to spring-like temperatures and the human urge to delight in the sunshine, it’s wise to familiarize yourself with the risks of outdoor activity. High on the list of undesirable natural hazards is poison ivy.  The best defense against this weed that leads to painful, itchy and highly transmissible body rashes is the ability to identify it.

5 Tell-Tale Signs of Poison Ivy

1. The leaves grow in close threesomes of which the middle is larger than the outer laying leaves and is connected by the largest stem.
   
   
2. The tops of the leaves are pointy, with slight curving on sides.
   
   
3. Typically it is green in the spring and red/orange in the autumn.

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     4. It can grow as a twining fur-like vine or in a shrub form.

     5. It blossoms with miniature groups of shiny cream or white berries that remain through wintertime.

Home Treatment for Exposure

If you do come in contact with poison ivy, apply liquid soap onto hands first; rinse with cold water. Then, follow the procedure with the rest of the exposed skin parts. While most opt for a physician’s intervention of prescription medicine, some insist there’s nothing that beats the old school of anti-itch remedies: 

• Apply the juice of a lemon immediately after contact with poison ivy
  
  
• Slice a cucumber and apply to affected area
  
  
• Rub the inner part of a banana’s peel or watermelon’s rind on the rash
  
  
• Put a paper bag that has been soaked in apple cider vinegar upon irritated skin
  
  
• Apply a cold compress to area

• Apply a paste made of three teaspoons of baking soda and one teaspoon of water to area
  
  
• Sit in cool bathwater mixed with one cup of baking soda
  
  
• Run tepid bathwater over a tied stocking filled with powdered
  oatmeal; Sit for half hour in solution, then apply oatmeal to area.
  
  
• Squeeze Aloe Vera gel onto the area
  
  
• Apply the juice of a lemon directly onto affected area
  
  

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