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Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

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Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#41

Post by Darkphibre »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #22
kaycebasques wrote: post #17

I remember standing in line at a coffee shop, after walking some dogs on a nature trail. I felt a sharp pain on my hip flexor and knew right away it was a tick bite, even though I had never had one before. I rushed into the bathroom and lo and behold, it was a tick. In a panic I asked all the women in the coffee shop if they had tweezers. They must have thought I had a screw loose. None of them did so I rushed home t…

I had dozens of ticks as a kid. Lyme disease hadn't spread to Canada yet, so it wasn't a big deal. I never once felt them bite; they produce an anesthetic so you don't feel it. Sometimes you could feel them crawling on you, but most of the time you didn't even feel that. And you didn't hear the jaws snap when you pulled it off, you heard the mouth parts tearing. You have to be careful pulling a tick off or the mouth…

I can confirm. I had a tick on my shoulder, which tore off. We didn't realize and the skin healed over, the mandibles eventually dissolved, and I was left with an 'air' pocket under my skin I could play with for the next 20 years.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#42

Post by kaycebasques »

Causality1 wrote: post #25
kaycebasques wrote: post #17

I remember standing in line at a coffee shop, after walking some dogs on a nature trail. I felt a sharp pain on my hip flexor and knew right away it was a tick bite, even though I had never had one before. I rushed into the bathroom and lo and behold, it was a tick. In a panic I asked all the women in the coffee shop if they had tweezers. They must have thought I had a screw loose. None of them did so I rushed home t…

Nobody in the shop was carrying a multitool? Must be Europe or California.

Even though this comment is being downvoted funny enough Causality1 was correct. It was California.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#43

Post by Assossa »

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.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#44

Post by sytelus »

nouveaux wrote: 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?

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#45

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tolmasky wrote: post #24

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 yourself?

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#46

Post by staunch »

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 actually started fantasizing about some kind of super lightweight "earth suit" (like an astronaut's space suit).

Something that you could put on, fully seal yourself in, and then just enjoy the outdoors with reckless abandon. I know it sounds a bit crazy but I think it could potentially be a transformative way of exploring the outdoors.

I love the idea of being rattlesnake/tick/spider/thorn-proof. I could sleep outdoors in the middle of fields, under trees, in puddles, etc.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#47

Post by mox1 »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40
nouveaux wrote: 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…

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?

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#48

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Explosion of deer and rodent populations is definitely not helping. We were walking with our dog at a local natural area we frequent. A deer crossed the path and we all stopped to take photos, and then moved on. That day we found ticks all over our dog. The deer are literally swimming in them.

Both rodents and deer are part of the lifecycle of the tick. Suppressing deer populations and encouraging red foxes and other rodent predators would have to help.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#49

Post by narag »

kaycebasques wrote: post #39
narag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil. Edit: I had a scary experience. After rain I was hunting in the woods with bushes a metre tall, shotgut over the head to avoid accidents. Then a snake hiss ahead, tried to turn right, another snake hiss that way, same to left and... same back. I panicked and got out of the bushes as fast as I could, I was panting. Then I noticed I was covered by hundreds of ticks. I shouted and my father came alarmed. He managed…

So you just rub olive oil on it?

Yes. We used some chemical powders for the dogs. I thought the same was going to be used for me too but, to my surprise the oil was very effective. The bug seemed to dislike it as much as I disliked the bug. It loosened the grip very quickly.

Re: Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding

#50

Post by jseliger »

tolmasky wrote: post #24

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.

The key moment in the original article:

Lyme and other tick-borne diseases have yet to receive anything like that sort of attention. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration approved a Lyme disease vaccine called Lymerix, administered in a three-injection cycle, that reduced infections in adults by nearly 80%. But it was discontinued three years later after sales bottomed out, due in large part to public fears driven by negative news reports over its side effects (most notably arthritis) and a class-action lawsuit whose claims were debunked. It was an early victory for the anti-vaccine movement, which gained momentum thanks to a now-retracted study linking autism to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that was released the same year as Lymerix.

“That actually scared me,” says Joyce Sakamoto, an entomologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University who has researched public engagement strategies to improve tick-borne disease literacy. “That was a case where the anti-vax community was able to effectively kill something entirely without a lot of scientific evidence.”

Damned depressing.

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