Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

elemental.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 238 posts

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#151

Post by Something1234 »

mox1 wrote: post #47
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. The military pre-treats jackets with Permethrin so in general you can assume that small quantities of well diluted product on the skin are okay. Probably 2%, but do your reading and consult a doctor. That being said, there is much to be said for simply eating healthy in order to prevent certain bug bites. If you want really safe external repellant, you could probably go back to sulfur powder. It stinks like eggs…

Wait, are you saying that if I eat healthy a deer tick is less likely to give me lyme disease? Can you explain how that works?

Old wives tale. Stinky hippies didn't seem to get sick or bitten up outside. They are a different diet. Therefore diet has an effect on bug bites.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#152

Post by astazangasta »

Assossa wrote: post #43
robolange wrote: post #31

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.

Lyme Disease is caused by a bacterial infection that can cause nerve damage. Even if you treat it with antibiotics and remove the infection, the nerve damage might remain and be very hard or even impossible to rehab.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#153

Post by DoreenMichele »

mox1 wrote: post #47
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. The military pre-treats jackets with Permethrin so in general you can assume that small quantities of well diluted product on the skin are okay. Probably 2%, but do your reading and consult a doctor. That being said, there is much to be said for simply eating healthy in order to prevent certain bug bites. If you want really safe external repellant, you could probably go back to sulfur powder. It stinks like eggs…

Wait, are you saying that if I eat healthy a deer tick is less likely to give me lyme disease? Can you explain how that works?

Some people attract more bug bites than others. My general impression is that hormone levels and blood sugar both impact this outcome. To the degree that blood sugar can be moderated by diet, staying on top of blood sugar issues might be helpful.

I don't know about ticks, but my military spouse had good results from eating a match head once a day to discourage chiggers when he was in the field in Georgia. He later replaced this policy with taking garlic supplements.

I bought his supplements. He specifically asked for the smelly garlic pills, not the ones that advertise low odor.

From what I gather, his co-workers were insanely jealous of his general lack of miserable bug bites in spite of laying in the same grass as them. He was very introverted and closed mouth. Unlike me, he was entirely disinclined to helpfully blather on about such things to people unlikely to believe him.

He was probably wiser than me in some sense. I would likely get a lot less flak if I didn't remark on such things myself, kept it to myself and privately gloated.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#154

Post by 8456523 »

cogman10 wrote: post #81
llamataboot wrote: post #34

I may or may not have had chronic lyme disease. I definitely had many many ticks. (Never cared about em, just pulled them off). And I definitely was sick for over a decade. And I definitely tested positive on the Western Blot multiple times. (And chronic lyme is definitely a bit of a catch-all diagnosis for a host of auto-immune stuff we don't quite understand yet) It was awful, something I wouldn't wish on anyone. I…

Just a note, Chronic lyme disease isn't really a thing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477530/ This isn't to say you haven't been dealing with a lot of garbage, just that you might need to seek different medical care if your doctors are telling you that you have chronic lyme disease.

Just because there are peer-reviewed scholarly articles making an argument does not make that argument correct.

I hope anyone who suspects they or someone they love has chronic lyme will dig deeper than just reading scholarly review articles. A professional scholar tends to write only about things that they anticipate will advance their career.

In particular, I hope anyone who suspects chronic lyme will meditate on some of the comments on HN written by people who claim to have recovered from chronic lyme or what they suspect was chronic lyme. If you search the web for information on chronic lyme you will encounter a lot of material by people who make a living trying to persuade various segments of the public in one direction or another. (Some of the professional persuaders have MD after their name.) On HN comments in contrast I am satisfied that almost all the substantive comments about chronic lyme are currently not written by professional persuaders.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#155

Post by Chazprime »

This isn't a joke. In New England where I live, in the early 2000's, car accidents involving moose had become so common that Vermont attempted to halve the moose population by increasing hunting permits.

Today, the population in New England has been shockingly decimated by ticks... researchers are pulling upwards of ten thousand ticks off of dying moose. They've been bled dry, thanks to warmer winters and reduced tick dormancy periods.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#156

Post by tomxor »

mgamache wrote: post #142
rb808 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Lyme isn't the only tick borne disease. There are a bunch and some speculate there are more undetected ones. When someone has "chronic lyme" maybe they have some other prion that no one has diagnosed yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-borne_disease

I don't think you mean 'prion' here as that's a different problem altogether, right?

yeah it's bacteria, antibiotics are for bacteria, not prions, if it was a prion there are no cures, they are really nasty.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#157

Post by davidjnelson »

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #11
acheron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this. Also from what I've read just applying it to your shoes is hugely effective on its own vs ticks, with socks adding another large percentage, as the majority of ticks will jump onto your feet and climb up your legs. The rest of your clothes are worth treating too certainly, but even if it's just your feet it will be a major help.

"Also from what I've read just applying it to your shoes is hugely effective on its own vs ticks, with socks adding another large percentage, as the majority of ticks will jump onto your feet and climb up your legs." This is very interesting advise. I always thought ticks drop from trees? no? I actually wear a hat sometimes in the forrest because of this. Am I stupid?

Ticks don’t seem to fall from trees when “questing”. Usually they are knee level or below [1]. But if they are on a tree branch and you bump it then it could climb on you.

https://tickencounter.org/faq/tick_habitat#tickhabitat_quest...

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#158

Post by ethagnawl »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #78
wazoox wrote: 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?

why did ticks multiply that much recently? It's because of warmer winters and an exploding deer population. People need to take up hunting again to reduce the numbers of those tick motherships.

> People need to take up hunting again to reduce the numbers of those tick motherships.

... or, as others have said elsewhere in the thread, restore a balance to the ecosystem by reintroducing and protecting natural predators (wolves, foxes, etc.).

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#159

Post by mrfusion »

lkrubner wrote: post #118
Galaxity wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm no medical expert but antibiotics resolve an infection after a certain amount of time. Even for Lyme and leprosy. There may be health after-effects but those would not be resolved by antibiotics since the infection is gone. What could possibly outlast 20 years of continuous antibiotics that isn't either completely killed or mutates and renders the antibiotics ineffective? And then be resolved with a fast?

Teenagers with acne often take antibiotics for many years. I had one friend with severe acne who took antibiotics well into adulthood. Those teenagers, who take antibiotics, with a microscope at home can do this simple experiment: prick your finger with a needle and put a drop of blood on steriled glass, then put that under a microscope. Do you see bacteria? Yes, of course you do. Even if you take antibiotics for 20…

I’m under the impression that blood is very sterile. That’s the point of your immune system.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#160

Post by Something1234 »

lkrubner wrote: post #118
Galaxity wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm no medical expert but antibiotics resolve an infection after a certain amount of time. Even for Lyme and leprosy. There may be health after-effects but those would not be resolved by antibiotics since the infection is gone. What could possibly outlast 20 years of continuous antibiotics that isn't either completely killed or mutates and renders the antibiotics ineffective? And then be resolved with a fast?

Teenagers with acne often take antibiotics for many years. I had one friend with severe acne who took antibiotics well into adulthood. Those teenagers, who take antibiotics, with a microscope at home can do this simple experiment: prick your finger with a needle and put a drop of blood on steriled glass, then put that under a microscope. Do you see bacteria? Yes, of course you do. Even if you take antibiotics for 20…

Don't you need some kind of dye to see the bacteria?
Post reply on HN