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

161–170 of 238 posts

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#161

Post by op00to »

learc83 wrote: post #37
joyjoyjoy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 do not drop from trees. They almost always climb up your legs. They are generally below waist height.

The other day a tick dropped from a tree onto my computer screen. I was sitting under the tree. Ticks drop from trees.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#162

Post by davidjnelson »

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.

It’s called “Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome“.

https://www.healthline.com/health/lyme-disease-chronic-persi...

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#163

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#164

Post by chidg »

bduerst wrote: post #74
morley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that if you find a tick on you, you should keep the bug in case you need to have it tested for Lyme.

Yep. Put it between two pieces of scotch tape to prevent it from getting away.

Elsewhere in this discussion someone who deals with these samples has said that the scotch tape is a problem for the lab technicians.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#166

Post by [deleted] »

twic wrote: post #115
spacebatsghost wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-Lyme Literate Medical doctors prescribe Doxycyclin. If you are seeing a Lyme Literate Medical doctor they'll put you on a cocktail (often Clarithromycin, Doxy, Alinia (anti-parasitic), and a few others. This also depends if you have co-infections or not.

The UK NICE guidelines suggest doxycycline, and have a section discussing the evidence for that: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng95 "Lyme literate" seems to be a pseudoscience term related to the ME-like crypto-syndrome "chronic Lyme disease" - for example, see towards the end here: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/legislative-alchemy-2014-so...

[deleted]

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#167

Post by abledon »

perfmode wrote: post #61
pmoriarty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticks can drop out of trees on your head, or attach to your hair when your head brushes past some leaves on a tree. Also, if your bare skin is not covered in insect repellent, that could also be a route that they get to the rest of your body. The most effective method of not getting bitten is not to go in to the woods at all.

> The most effective method of not getting bitten is not to go in to the woods at all. your profile reads: He who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks. -- Rouchefoucald

A funny saying I've heard is that "The difference between a smart person and a stupid one is the smart person knows he is full of stupidity".

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#168

Post by rb808 »

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?

Yes I meant other diseases like this one http://healthland.time.com/2013/07/19/theres-a-new-disease-s.... I'm sure I saw a prion spread by ticks too, but maybe that is some weird theory. https://jmm.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jmm/10....

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#169

Post by abledon »

Chazprime wrote: post #155

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 tic…

Wow, "first dominated by dinosaurs, then humans, the third age of the earth arrived in 2050, dominated by ticks"

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#170

Post by khuey »

magduf wrote: post #133
stupidboy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's proper procedure--except for the scotch tape. Our lab techs need to tediously remove ticks from adhesive every day because some authority (first-aid manuals?) is telling people to do that. It ends up in pieces after extraction which hinders us from identifying the species, life stage, and duration of engorgement. Hopefully this practice phases out with time.

So how else do you store the tick? I can see why they would recommend scotch tape: deer ticks are tiny, and the tape helps keep you from losing them. Don't say "put it in a film storage canister" because no one has those any more! I haven't seen one of those in decades. I'm not sure what I'd do with one honestly; I have some small Tupperware containers I could use, IF I happen to be at home when I pull the tick off.

Old spice jars.
Post reply on HN