Be Very Afraid of Ticks

To begin, please don't flame me for the title of the thread. I'm not trying to spread doom porn. It's the title of the article.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's get to the main event.

Ticks are nasty little buggers and are dangerous. They are known disease vectors for at least 14 diseases.

Ticks in the U.S. can spread more than 14 diseases. They are “the most significant vectors of infectious diseases in the United States,” according to a write-up from a recent scientific conference. Research suggests that where I live, in the lower Hudson Valley in New York, more than half of adult-stage blacklegged ticks harbor the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. (It’s also carried by one-fifth of nymphal-stage blacklegged ticks—the tiny ones that are hard to see and therefore often go unnoticed for days.) Another one in five adult blacklegged ticks in the region is infected with the bacterium that causes anaplasmosis; one in 30 harbors the potentially deadly deer tick virus; and another one in 30 can pass along the parasite that causes babesiosis. And yes: Ticks can and do often harbor multiple pathogens, so that’s fun too.

What freaks me out about them is that they can crawl on you for hours before biting you. If you're lucky, you'll feel their little legs tickling against your skin before they do. How do you keep them from getting on your clothes (and you) in the first place? According to Thomas Mather, director of the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Vector-Borne Disease and its TickEncounter Resource Center the best way is to treat your clothes with Deet, picaridin, or permethrin.

But since bug sprays work only when you remember to use them, Mather suggests that families living in tick-infested areas consider another tactic, too: Treating shoes and clothes with the synthetic pesticide permethrin, which, when commercially applied to clothes, can repel and kill ticks for up to 70 washes. Mather has research to back up this recommendation: In a 2011 study, he and his colleagues released 30 blacklegged tick nymphs on each of 15 volunteers who were wearing regular or permethrin-treated clothes. (Boy, am I glad I was not one of those volunteers.) Then they waited two hours to see what the ticks did. They found that the volunteers who were wearing permethrin-treated sneakers and socks were 74 times less likely to get a tick bite—that’s a huge reduction in risk!—compared with those who wore untreated shoes and socks. Those who wore treated shorts were five times less likely to be bitten in surrounding areas. Even when ticks did bite people wearing the permethrin-treated clothes, four out of five of the biting ticks died within hours, making it unlikely that they could transmit disease. Based on these findings, Mather says, “permethrin in treated clothes is more effective than any other repellant.”

Let's not forget our furry friends. They share our homes and often make close physical contact (cuddle time, anyone?). Because of this, they can spread ticks to you without your even noticing until you get bit. How do you keep them off of your pets?

Mather recommends long-lasting solutions such as Bayer’s Seresto flea and tick collar, which works for eight months. You can also discourage tick-carrying deer and mice from coming near your home. If you and your kids spend a lot of time in your yard, and you live in a tick-infested area, consider hiring a professional to treat your lawn or its perimeter with a pesticide in May or early June. (Mather says the synthetic options, such as bifenthrin, tend to work best.) The thing is, though, that preliminary findings suggest that even though synthetic lawn pesticides do kill ticks, they don’t necessarily reduce the incidence of tick-borne disease, a finding that supports the lack of understanding of where and when people actually encounter the ticks that make them sick. In other words, people who catch tick-borne diseases may not be getting them from ticks in their yards; nobody really knows.

Okay, we've covered clothes and pets. What else can be done to ensure that you won't have a tick embedded in your skin and possibly making you sick? Check often!

Since you can’t guarantee that your tick prevention tactics will work all the time, you really need to do daily tick checks on yourself and your kids in the spring and summer. This doesn’t mean looking under your armpits and calling it a day. Nymph ticks, the ones that usually transmit disease, tend to embed themselves lower on the body in adults, so check behind your knees, in your belly button, and around your genitals, too—even in your butt crack. These ticks are about the size of a poppy seed, so get in there and look closely. For kids—especially those who like to roll around on the ground—you really need to check everywhere on their bodies, including around the hairline and ears.

Source
Take this article to heart. Lyme disease (among the many others) will ruin your day, to say the least. Be safe, stay aware, and always check yourself and your pets for ticks.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Check behind your knees, your armpits, and in your crotch-ticks love the nooks and crannies.

Check your pets as well; ticks love the base of the tail and between the ears.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: Skid Mark

Check behind your knees, your armpits, and in your crotch-ticks love the nooks and crannies.

Check your pets as well; ticks love the base of the tail and between the ears.

Thanks for the comment. Yes, they do have their favorite hiding places. I check myself and my dogs often.

They have been here longer than us. Can suck, heck can ruin a young life for a few years....best remedy is a few essential oils in a carrier oil like apricot or avacado reply to: Skid Mark

Artemisia and lemon grass are great oils for getting after this.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Thanks skid, its good to know this stuff. My mother got lymes disease from a tick, she was diagnosed last year.


Peace.

Yep, pretty nasty.

Check out the Lonestar Tick down in the southern states. If it bites you, it can make your body allergic to meat for the rest of your life.

Also, I heard from a guy that was cruising around in the woods, when it was real foggy out. He got back to his car in the parking lot, and under a street light. When he looked at his skin, it was moving and completely covered with seed ticks. The fog wasn't fog after all, it was the ticks jumping from the trees onto them.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Finding them is easy, dislodging them is a bit harder.

Soaking a cloth in turpentine and applying it to the parasite is a good way to coax them out, but they do not come easy. tweezers come in handy.

Not all ticks?

Ticks should never been taken off using greasy products, when tick is suffocating it vomits inside your skin and that vomit increases the risk to get borreliosis. Best is to use tick nippers.

And like vampires, tics do not like the smell of garlic.

originally posted by: Lichter daraus
a reply to: Skid Mark

Thanks skid, its good to know this stuff. My mother got lymes disease from a tick, she was diagnosed last year.


Peace.

When I got Lyme the target rash encircled my underarm, so yes a good thing for people to look after a walk in the tick areas. I went off trail and through the bushes exploring, I don't do that anymore.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
They have been here longer than us. Can suck, heck can ruin a young life for a few years....best remedy is a few essential oils in a carrier oil like apricot or avacado reply to: Skid Mark

Artemisia and lemon grass are great oils for getting after this.

Thanks for the added info. It's much appreciated. The essential oils aren't bad for dogs are they, they lick themselves.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
They have been here longer than us. Can suck, heck can ruin a young life for a few years....best remedy is a few essential oils in a carrier oil like apricot or avacado reply to: Skid Mark

Artemisia and lemon grass are great oils for getting after this.

Thanks for the added info. It's much appreciated. The essential oils aren't bad for dogs are they, they lick themselves.

originally posted by: Lichter daraus
a reply to: Skid Mark

Thanks skid, its good to know this stuff. My mother got lymes disease from a tick, she was diagnosed last year.


Peace.

Ouch, nasty. Yeah, the main point of this thread is to keep people healthy. Is your mom any better?

originally posted by: Mandroid7
Yep, pretty nasty.

Check out the Lonestar Tick down in the southern states. If it bites you, it can make your body allergic to meat for the rest of your life.

Also, I heard from a guy that was cruising around in the woods, when it was real foggy out. He got back to his car in the parking lot, and under a street light. When he looked at his skin, it was moving and completely covered with seed ticks. The fog wasn't fog after all, it was the ticks jumping from the trees onto them.

That would suck. I'm a meat eater. I can't imagine not being able to eat it.
The living fog of ticks makes my skin crawl. Ewww! I've never heard of that before. Thanks!

I put powdered sulfur in a sock and dust it around my ankles when I go in the woods.
It seems to work pretty well at repelling ticks and chiggers.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Tweezers are a must. I found a couple of videos of getting them off pets and humans.

For pets


For humans


After I remove them, I always torch the suckers.

a reply to: Greathouse

Lol I thought of that when I was writing the OP. That's funny.

originally posted by: dollukka
Ticks should never been taken off using greasy products, when tick is suffocating it vomits inside your skin and that vomit increases the risk to get borreliosis. Best is to use tick nippers.

And like vampires, tics do not like the smell of garlic.

I didn't know that about garlic. Does it have to be whole cloves, or is garlic oil good, too?

a reply to: Char-Lee

I've picked up ticks the same way. How are you now? Do you still have it?

originally posted by: skunkape23
I put powdered sulfur in a sock and dust it around my ankles when I go in the woods.
It seems to work pretty well at repelling ticks and chiggers.

Do they sell that in the lawn and garden section of most stores? I think I saw it there but I'm not sure.