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Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

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51–60 of 238 posts

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#51
I've got ticks a few times a year just running in the woods (the last one was Saturday). During holidays in the Pyrenees with my family, we had to scan our bodies for ticks every day, and every day we found several -- up to a dozen -- on each of us.

Now the article is very light on the main question: why did ticks multiply that much recently?

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#52
post #51

I've got ticks a few times a year just running in the woods (the last one was Saturday). During holidays in the Pyrenees with my family, we had to scan our bodies for ticks every day, and every day we found several -- up to a dozen -- on each of us. Now the article is very light on the main question: why did ticks multiply that much recently?

Could be global warming, or at least warm winters (whether due to global warming or not).

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#53
post #44
post #4

I've recently gotten into backpacking and learned that the most effective way of dealing with mosquitoes and ticks in nature is Permetherin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin . It is intended for clothing and not the skin. The best way to apply it is to soak your clothes and let it dry. Spray on applicators are also available. Once it is dry, it is very stable and safe. It does breakdown with UV and washes, so…

Any link for actual product that one can buy?

We use this[0]. Buy it in the biggest container available and use it to treat an entire set of clothing that we use as our hiking clothing. A hat of any sort, well treated with permethrin will also keep mosquitoes and other annoying insects away from you while hiking or enjoying the outdoors (Source is extensive personal experience in a tick dense area in the Northeast U.S.)

[0]https://sawyer.com/products/permethrin-insect-repellent-trea...

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#54

We actually have a vaccine for Lyme disease that was pulled due to the Antivax hysteria. I believe an article was posted here on Hacker News before, but here is a link to one otherwise: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2018/5/7... We now live in a world where you can vaccinate your dog for Lyme disease but not yourself.

We don't vaccinate dogs for lyme disease. We give them a topical or oral systemic insecticide that permeates their skin and bloodstream so as to kill ticks on contact. Dogs have short, and I guess less valuable, lives. So this is considered an acceptable practice for prevention. And there are many many dogs with severe reactions to these medications, including some fatalities. Would you really want to do that to your…

https://www.zoetisus.com/products/dogs/vanguard-crlyme/index...

> For vaccination of healthy dogs 8 weeks of age or older as an aid in the prevention of clinical disease and subclinical arthritis associated with Borrelia burgdorferi.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#55
post #18
post #6

Are these all real cases or some psychogenic ones? I was under the impression that a lot of "chronic Lyme" cases were something else.

There's no such thing as "chronic Lyme disease": https://www.fasebj.org/doi/10.1096/fj.10-167247 https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-everybody-have-chronic...

I didn't read the links, but I've read a lot here https://lymescience.org/

and I also almost fell for "chronic Lyme" few years ago. There's something seriously unsettling around websites/online communities dedicated to chronic Lyme. From Lyme friendly doctors, to people doing and interpreting their own tests, to people ascribing all kind of ailments to this "condition", etc.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#56
post #38

I read about this issue in a runners World article. Most people assume that the tics jump from trees down onto people. But that's not how they said it goes. They said that the tics which spread Lyme disease get spread onto runners from Tall Grass that people run through as you make contact with the grass they get onto you.

I had a friend who was in the Marines and he told me once that they wore panty hose when training in areas with ticks. He said the only downside was that they can be hot in the summer time.

...but is that the only downside?

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#57
post #46

I was bitten by little nymph/larval (not sure which) ticks on Bay Trail in Mountain View, CA. Had to stop riding my bicycle there (which I absolutely loved) because I just can't afford to be debilitated by Lyme's disease. I've become violently genocidal towards these little bloodsuckers. If it was up to me, I'd wipe them out with almost any means, and at whatever cost ;-) After looking into the anti-tick options I ac…

FWIW, lyme disease is exceedingly rare on the west coast..

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#58
post #43

My father nearly died of [what we believe to be] Lyme disease. A few years ago he started getting awful bouts of pain all over his body. He couldn't eat, was losing weight, was losing muscle mass fast. It got the the point where he was using a walker (he was less than 60 years old at the time) and could barely lift a 5 pound weight. He went to a bunch of different doctors, had all kinds of scans run, and only kept ge…

I would greatly appreciate it if you could find the name of that medication. My sister has Lyme Disease and is still suffering health effects from it despite various treatments.

The treatment for Lyme is via antibiotics but I think it’s only effective if it’s relatively early on in the course of the disease (on the order of weeks or months). Caught early it’s curable. One of the issues though is symptoms are not caught early on as they’re so general and by the time treatment starts the disease has spread and already caused the major damage.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#59

I read about this issue in a runners World article. Most people assume that the tics jump from trees down onto people. But that's not how they said it goes. They said that the tics which spread Lyme disease get spread onto runners from Tall Grass that people run through as you make contact with the grass they get onto you.

That's also why they're collected/sampled by dragging a cloth over the grass/ground.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#60
Jack MacReady: It's obvious the bastard's got lyme disease!

Bill Pardy: What?

Jack MacReady: Lyme disease. You touch some deer feces, and then you... eat a sandwich without washin' your hands. You got your lyme disease!

Bill Pardy: And that makes you look like a squid?

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