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Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

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Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#171

Post by DrScump »

notadoc wrote: post #86
nonbel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is wrong here. How did humanity survive living most of their lives outdoors for so long in the presence of these ticks? Did lyme disease really not exist until 1975? I see there is some kind of "blame everything on lyme disease" movement going on as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease_controversy

Tick populations have surged, mostly because of mice, rodent, and deer overpopulation. And we've killed off huge numbers of natural predators to those carriers. Anecdotally, 15 years ago I used to maybe find one tick a year after frequent walks/hikes in grasslands or woods. Today I can walk the same trail systems and find 10+ ticks per dog after a single days walk even when they have tick/flea treatment applied. It's…

For dogs, at least, there is a Lyme vaccine.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#172

Post by Othello_Returns »

gamblor956 wrote: post #129
lymeeducator wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best treatment for Lyme is a balanced immune system. Some people can be treated by a single course of Doxycycline, most relapse after 6 months and CDC incorrectly indicates that the cause is unknown. It's still Lyme. 2 of the 3 Lyme forms are resistant to antibiotics. Proper treatment will take months, or longer if coinfected, and require multiple, pulsing of antibiotics or herbals (yes, they are quite effective…

Couldn't find any published scientific results on the efficacy of "herbal" treatment for lime disease or "pulsed" antibiotic treatments from websites/doctors that weren't trying to sell the treatment. Do you have any actual scientific evidence to back up your claims or are you part of what the New Yorker has termed the lyme quackery?

Herbal therapies are a viable option for treating Lyme & Coinfections, just as Chinese medicine has been helping cure illness for thousands of years. It is not a recommended first line of therapy, but it can be curative for chronic conditions. For evidence-based research you will want to look at the research of Eva Sapi et al.

She has conducted excellent work around Lyme disease, Antibiotic therapy and Biofilms.

Eva Sapi: https://www.newhaven.edu/faculty-staff-profiles/eva-sapi.php

Stevia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681354/

Effects of samento and Banderol upon Spirochetes and Round Bodies: http://www.nutramedix.ec/Nutramedix-Priyanka.pdf

Biofilms and Borrelia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838982/

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#173

Post by jemfinch »

dang wrote: post #145
jemfinch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you please stop spreading this misinformation? If you want to use backwoods folk medicine on yourself, you're free to do so. But stop recommending this bullshit to others. What you're doing here is no better than the tick-removal version of the anti-vaxxer's playbook. The American Medical Association says in multiple places to use tweezers in a very particular way to remove ticks: * https://jamanetwork.com/journ…

You've broken the HN guidelines here. Please don't be uncivil, regardless of how wrong another comment is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree. Calling bullshit "bullshit" isn't uncivil. Cf. Paul Graham's own essay on bullshit: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html . Or his 2014 tweet on political correctness: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/512776361824354304 .

The objection that I'm being uncivil is DH2, "responding to tone". Yes, my tone is dismissive, specifically because the advice being given ought to be dismissed.

If HN has become a place where unscientific, unsound folk medicine cannot be called "bullshit" then I'll happily take my leave.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#174

Post by dang »

jemfinch wrote: post #173
dang wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've broken the HN guidelines here. Please don't be uncivil, regardless of how wrong another comment is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree. Calling bullshit "bullshit" isn't uncivil. Cf. Paul Graham's own essay on bullshit: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html . Or his 2014 tweet on political correctness: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/512776361824354304 . The objection that I'm being uncivil is DH2, "responding to tone". Yes, my tone is dismissive, specifically because the advice being given ought to be dismissed. If HN has become a place whe…

The incivility comes more from the combination of aggression and self-righteousness. We don't need that here, and since it detracts from any true information you're conveying, there's no trade-off in simply leaving it out.

(Citing pg makes the opposite point to what I think you intended; I've never once known him to behave like that, either in writing or in person.)

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#175

Post by trumped »

mlok wrote: post #157
trumped wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got 3 ticks in the past but luckily no lime disease... it's crazy how you don't feel them get in your skin.

(It is written "Lyme" like the town in Connecticut where the disease was first described back in 1975, not "lime" like the fruit)

thanks.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#176

Post by jjeaff »

Fomite wrote: post #168
mercutio2 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your epidemiologist pals wouldn’t laugh at the idea of freezing thousands upon thousands of ticks every warm season? I tend to think they would. Tick borne illnesses are unfortunate, but for people who live in rural areas like I (and apparently jjeaff) have lived, where we would keep jars of isopropyl alcohol around in which everyone could put the the few dozen ticks they’d pick off their clothes and bodies during a…

Nope! Their suggestion (last time I had a tick bite) was to keep the tick for testing, because there are a number of different pathogens, with different approaches to treatment, you can get from ticks. Naturally, there's a latent period, so you don't retain them for very long , but that's the advice I got from a woman who works with forestry workers in NC on tickborne illness.

So how do your friends suggest that they store the hundreds or thousands of ticks per season that your average farmer or outdoorsman might pull off themselves?

I guess we'll need some sort of rolling catalog system, labels for the dates etc. Perhaps a dedicated lab freezer with specimen vials would do the trick. Of course, if there are ever any symptoms, we'll have to have hundreds of ticks checked. I wonder what that costs? Would your insurance cover the testing of 275 tiny ticks? Or maybe we need a database system to take photos of the bite area, then we can bar code the offending tick and upload the photo to the system.

https://www.terrauniversal.com/gallery/lab_equipment/images/...

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#177

Post by jjeaff »

macintux wrote: post #95
jjeaff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two people to remove a tick? And I thought these little removal tools were crazy. You'll feel it itching after it digs in. Just be vigilant in the shower and use a loofa or other abraisive scrubber. Fingernails work perfectly fine as well. Of the literally thousands of ticks I have had to remove over the years, probably less than 5 were ever left on for up to 48 hours. Most people will scratch them loose accidentally…

Some spots on your body are very difficult to check carefully and/or reach for a clean, safe extraction. I went to the ER once to have a tick removed. I felt absurd doing so, but I simply couldn't reach it properly, and I had no one else around to take care of it.

Were you taken seriously? I'd have to think that by what I have heard about insurance companies recently, they would refuse to pay for a hospital visit like that and you would be stuck with a big hospital bill.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#178

Post by jjeaff »

stronglikedan wrote: post #136
jjeaff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the south, tools sold for the removal of ticks just makes me giggle. Just use your fingernail, scratch it off carefully. I can't imagine trying to use this or one of the crazier, "heat a needle" or "spread vasaline on them methods" when trying to remove the sometimes hundreds of ticks and chiggars you might have after working in the wrong field for a day.

Ridiculously terrible and potentially dangerous advice aside, not everyone has fingernails.

Unless you bite them down to a nub, all you need is a normal, close trimmed fingernail.

Ridiculously terrible and potentially dangerous to remove a tick with your fingernail? I scoff at the ignorance. The great majority of ticks will be unknowingly scratched off before you even notice you have one dug in. So I guess you could use special tools to remove those last 10% that you happened to notice before scratching them off.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#179

Post by jjeaff »

Symmetry wrote: post #91
jjeaff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two people to remove a tick? And I thought these little removal tools were crazy. You'll feel it itching after it digs in. Just be vigilant in the shower and use a loofa or other abraisive scrubber. Fingernails work perfectly fine as well. Of the literally thousands of ticks I have had to remove over the years, probably less than 5 were ever left on for up to 48 hours. Most people will scratch them loose accidentally…

I've never felt itching with any of the ticks that've gotten me. A few big ones I just noticed running my hands over my body. The one that gave me Lyme I never saw at all. Luckily I got a big bullseye rash and with antibiotics never had worse than an afternoon fever for a few days.

I guess everyone's sensitivity to their bite and poison is different. I generally feel them crawling up my leg before they have a chance to dig in. But you wouldn't be used to that feeling if you live in an area that doesn't have many ticks.

Re: Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

#180

Post by jjeaff »

dailyrorschach wrote: post #90
jjeaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you said this in the south, you would get a good long laugh.

I see you in multiple places on this thread with comments like these. So here's something to consider, Lyme Disease is actually not at all that prevalent in the South. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html Where it is prevalent, this is standard good advice, advice that we even taught in the BSA 18 years ago in the NE. Lyme is a really nasty thing to get, and not everyone even realizes they were bit, or is symptom…

Valid point. But mine was simply that the idea of careful removal and keeping of ticks would be laughable in the south.

Find any outdoorsy kid in the south during the summer, and there is a good chance their legs look like this most of the summer: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8241/29056330235_19aeb3585e_b....

Imaging carefully removing each one and storing it and classifying it for future lab testing.

The advice is only applicable in the NE.

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