When you find that tick on yourself—or worse, on your kid or on a loved one’s hard-to-reach body part—don’t reach for the matches. Check out these six myths about ticks, so you’ll know what not to do.
Myth: You Should Remove a Tick With Chemicals or a Burnt Match
If a tick is attached to you, slowly sucking your blood, yanking the tick out with tweezers might mean you leave the head and mouthparts embedded in your skin. Ew. So you’ve probably heard that it’s best to get the tick to voluntarily let go. Unfortunately, that just makes things worse.
That means don’t burn a match, blow it out, and place the still-hot match on the tick’s abdomen. And don’t rub the tick with a harsh chemical like alcohol or nail polish remover until it lets go. These methods make the tick vomit up the blood they’ve already eaten, squirting it (along with saliva and possibly infectious germs) into your bloodstream.
Instead, try to grab the tick near the skin and pull it out from there. Don’t have the fortitude to execute such a precise maneuver with tweezers? The Tick Twister and Tick Key make the job almost foolproof. I have an insect/arachnid phobia that I can’t quite explain, but when my husband got a tick on his back recently, I was able to use the Tick Key to remove it without having to touch the tick or even look closely at it. You just slide the Tick Key over the disgusting, wiggly-legged lump, and off it pops.
Myth: Ticks Come From the Woods
You certainly can pick up a tick from the woods, but you’re also likely to find them in parks and backyards. Ticks bury themselves in damp soil or leaf litter, and climb up on grass or brush to wait for their prey (a deer, a mouse, or a squeamish human, for example.)
You can make your yard less of a tick haven by keeping your grass short, removing any rotten leaves or similar debris, and get rid of brush piles where mice like to live. Dogs and deer can spread ticks, too, so put some Frontline on your pup and try to fence out the deer if you can.
When you go to tick-prone areas, wear shoes that you’ve thoroughly sprayed with permethrin. This is an insecticide that is very safe for humans but stops ticks from crawling up your legs. Treat your favorite hiking boots, socks, and pants with the stuff; consider it for the shoes you use for yard work, too. To finish the job, spritz on a DEET-based spray whenever you head out to the backyard or park. It’s also safe when used properly, even for kids, and it will repel mosquitoes as well as ticks.
Myth: You Should Wear a Hat Because Ticks Drop Out of Trees
You may well find ticks in your hair, but they aren’t falling from the sky.
Remember, ticks spend their time in damp leaf litter so that they don’t dehydrate. When they’re ready to snag a meal, they don’t climb too far from the ground. They’ll go to about ankle or knee height, and hang off the edge of a twig or blade of grass with their legs extended. Entomologists, who probably think this is cute, call this behavior “questing.”
Once you brush against the tick, though, it’s on your body and all bets are off. The tick will climb up, up, up your pantleg, and you could find it anywhere. In one study, the lone star tick “favored the lower extremities [legs], buttocks, and groin” while blacklegged ticks didn’t care and would bite anywhere.
Ticks could be in your hair, in your beard, in your armpits, or where the sun don’t shine. They’re also very small, so you (or a very close friend) need to examine these areas carefully. Me, I just take a shower after I’ve been outside, and hope for the best.
Myth: If a Tick Bites You, You Probably Have Lyme Disease
It’s time for a little bit of good news. You probably don’t have Lyme disease.
First, although Lyme is common in more areas than it used to be, it’s still in just a small portion of the US. Most cases are in the northeast, from Virginia on up, with another swath in the Wisconsin-Minnesota area. If you live anywhere else, you’re much less likely to catch the disease at home.
Instead, you might get ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, or any of a variety of other tick-borne diseases. Each one has its own home range, so check with your local health department to see what they say you should worry about.
Even if the tick carries the Lyme disease bacteria, it doesn’t transmit them until it’s been attached and feeding for 36 to 48 hours. So if you know that tick wasn’t there yesterday, there’s a good chance you’re in the clear.
Myth: You Should Get That Tick Tested
We’ve told you in the past that if you find a tick, you should save it for testing. That depends, though. Back in 2010, my husband found an evil little tick sucking the life force out of my adorable dear infant son, and the pediatrician had us send the tick to be tested at the county health department. We rushed to do so, and the results came back negative. Phew.
But a few years later, another of our kids was bitten by a tick, and the doctor shrugged and told us testing was no longer recommended. Tick bites are fairly common these days, the tick can have Lyme without giving it to you, and you can get Lyme disease even if this particular tick wasn’t the one that did the deed. Check with your doctor to see if they agree with ours; this advice may vary.
By the way, a blood test for Lyme isn’t likely to help either. Instead, your provider will probably recommend watching for symptoms of Lyme disease—not just the famous bull’s eye rash, since it doesn’t always appear, but also flu-like symptoms, fatigue, and achiness. If you have any of these, with or without noticing a tick bite, call the doc. And if Lyme is common in your area, it’s possible your provider might want to treat you with a course of heavy duty antibiotics whether you show symptoms or not.
Myth: If You Get Lyme Disease, You’ll Have It for Life
There’s some truth to this one: If you had Lyme disease, and were already treated for it, you could still have fatigue and pain for months afterward. This happens because the disease damages parts of your body, and it can take a long time to recover from that even after antibiotics have killed the responsible bacteria.
But there is also a whole mythology around “chronic” Lyme disease, where people describe wide-ranging symptoms that they say are caused by hidden colonies of the bacteria. Click the wrong Google results while you’re recovering, and you’ll find yourself deep in a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and alternative medicine clinics that say they have the real way to treat you, even though your doctor wants to hide the truth.
Probably some of the people with “chronic Lyme” have real autoimmune or neurological conditions that are going undiagnosed while they chase a fictional villain. If you end up with Lyme disease, don’t be afraid to seek help (or even second opinions), but do keep your wits about you. There’s a lot of myths out there.
via Lifehacker
You’re Probably Going to Get a Tick This Summer. Good Luck.