Q. I’ve used milk of magnesia to clear up poison ivy. I used to get poison ivy all over after clearing the weeds and grass from my mowers in the Texas winds. I had to go to the doctor for a steroid shot to clear it up.
One weekend, out of desperation, I first wiped all the rashes down with rubbing alcohol and then rubbed milk of magnesia all over them. It worked much better than calamine lotion. The rash stopped weeping and spreading, and best of all, the itching stopped too! It all cleared up quickly. Now milk of magnesia is the first thing I grab as soon as blisters appear.
A. Calamine lotion contains zinc oxide and ferric oxide. It is an old-fashioned mainstay for poison ivy treatment but there has been controversy about its effectiveness.
Other readers agree that topical applications of magnesium hydroxide (milk of magnesia) can be helpful for soothing poison ivy rashes: “I heard that milk of magnesia (MoM) can be applied to underarms as a deodorant. I tried it and it worked!
“Later I heard it is good for pimples. So when, two years ago, I had an attack of poison ivy, I thought MoM might work on poison ivy too.
“It is GREAT! It stops the discomfort immediately and dries it up within a day.”
