Stinging Nettles

[+AD0SB]

Well had my first encounter with stinging nettles today..

 

Any good ideas how to get rid of the pain? It hurts pretty bad!

 

If you do not know what a stinging nettle is, I recommend google searching for it and become familiar, I wont go trekking in shorts again!

[+briansnat]

Time. Actually some people say if you rub the juice from jewel weed on it, the pain will go away. Never tried it myself.

[stryder717]

Many ineffective folk remedies exist for treating the itching, including horsetail , leaf of dock , Jewelweed, mud, saliva, baking soda, calamine lotion or soap and water. These methods can cause short relief only through mechanical stimulation such as rubbing or scratching or by cooling

[+DaFunkyFrogs]

The juice of the stinging nettle itself is the best cure, oddly enough. If you get into nettles while caching, you probably have a zip-lock bag with you. Just put a handful of the stuff in the bag and smash it up good, then cut or tear off a corner of the bag to squeeze out the liquid.

[+The Starry Family]

I agree with time. The burning and itching goes away after a bit.

 

Wifey, The bean and myself got into some yesterday too. They were suffering pretty bad, but it goes away after a bit.

[+WRASTRO]

I have encountered nettles so many times that I am able to simply ignore them. The worst thing you can do is scratch because that aggravates everything. Some folks around here claim that rubbing the sting with the spores on the underside of fern leaves will take away the sting. I have never tried it but my Son claims it works for him.

[+the hermit crabs]

On my one bad encounter with stinging nettles (while caching, of course ), it hurt so much it felt like I was being flayed alive. I put some Sting-Eaz on it, which didn't seem to help much. But after an hour the pain was noticeably less, and by about 2 hours it was almost gone. (Still noticeable, but no longer really painful.)

 

So, those who suggested time are right -- and it's really not too much time. Just hours, not days or weeks.

[+Parabola]

I've ran into them and went treking threw them so many times. Yup that stings, but what works for me is when I get home take a cool shower and wash up real good with soap. I try not to ich as that just makes it last longer.

 

I tripped while out hunting a cache a couple of weeks ago over a small log you couldn't see and went face first to the ground, right in a patch of neddles.

[stryder717]

Doing a little research i found that stinging nettle is found every province and state except for Hawaii Hawaii and South Carolina. That is strange that i have never ran in to it. Would it be possible that it doesn't affect me like poison ivy. Or am i just lucky to have never run in to it.

[+she_wolf]

I try not to wear shorts, but every once in awhile.... Since I always carry water bottles, and have a shop towel, and after coming out, I run water over my legs and then wipe them down, and repeat a few times. The stinging seems to fade pretty quickly. Folks think I am weird with so many water bottles, but there is a method to my madness

[+AD0SB]

Yeah, my problem is I didnt know what we were walking through until later...

 

Now I know

[+Silfron Mandotheneset]

Oh that's what that was! I had an odd patch of rash-like something on my hand the other day when out caching. I was confused since I'm pretty sure I'm immune to poison ivy (I got an insanely bad case when I was 8 and haven't had it since, even though I've been out in the woods a lot since then) and poison oak (same reason, same time, very unpleasant ). But then it went away after about 30 mins. Good to know what that was. I can imagine it would be worse in more than just a small patch!

[+silly2day]

We have had the unlucky chance of getting hit with the nettles a good couple of times. We use that waterless hand sanitizer on the areas that hurt and the pain seems to leave fairly quick.

[+Mokzii]

Ouch.

 

I've had a few nettle encounters, but all pain ceased after about 5-10 minutes without any kind of treatment.

Are there different kinds of nettles, I wonder? Some more toxic than others, maybe?

[Neos2]

There are several varieties. How potent they are and how much they will bother you depends on a lot of factors, including the specific variety, how old they are, whether it's a male or female plant, the temperature at the time, whether you brush against the stem or the leaves, how rich the soil is near there, whether or not it has rained near there lately, etc.

 

And of course, one person can be more or less sensitive to them than the next person. I can wade around through them and have only a mild reaction, like you, that only lasts a few minutes. I runmy hands over thr skin that is tingling to get most of the hair-like needles off, complain, and continue to hunt the cache, --and my poor husband has to high-tail it out of the patch as soon as he realizes we have walked into stinging nettles again. His welts will be huge and last for an hour or more and mine fade in a few minutes. He is truly miserable from them while I am just irritated.

 

A gardening book I had once suggested that gently running water over the skin was really the best way to handle getting into Stinging nettles---because it washed away the remaining needles hopefully before they had a chance to inject you with their toxin.

[+AD0SB]

Yeah Meg and I, both had stinging for almost 16 hours, and for the first 4 to 6 were terrible...

 

But then again we got covered in them twice, once on the way in, and then once agian trying to get back out...

[+Iowa Tom]

Nettles uses formic acid as a weapon; so do ants. It injects it just under your skin. Curious thing, when I'm working with acid I know when I get it on me because it itches. I used to carry a solution of baking soda to rub on the bad spots when I brushed a nettle accidentally. The baking soda will neutralize the acid, if it can get at it. The problem is, if the acid is within your skin, even a little ways, the soda may not get at it soon enough. Desperate measures may call for urine, since it has ammonia in it, and ammonia reacts with acid.

 

The best bet is learn to identify then stay away from wood nettle and stinging nettle plants. I always wear long pants when I go out into the boondocks. I learned that the hard way when I was a kid. The acid even soaks through the knee area of my denim pants sometimes.

 

-it