51–60 of 61 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except water isn't wet. Things touched by water are wet. Common mistake.
Seriously? Is that just language semantics or does it actually make sense to apply this definition of (fluid) water being dry? Also, doesn't water touch itself and is thus wet too?
Thankfully, I’ve never gotten Lyme. However, one of my friends did. Half of his face was paralyzed by the time he found out.
From my experience, I can say that while the consequences are severe, the chance of infection seems to be pretty low. Either that or I’m just extremely lucky. Perhaps I would be an outlier in the data. Or perhaps immunity to Lyme is more common than we realize. Part of me is surprised that I only know one person with Lyme.
Either way, my advice to everyone is to be vigilant but not overly afraid. You can be an outdoorsy person for many years in one of the most Lyme infested areas and be fine. Just be sure to check yourself at regular intervals, especially before AND after sleeping. The risk goes up the longer the tick stays on you, particularly once the tick starts getting full. The rule of thumb I’ve always heard is that if you get the tick off within 4 hours, you should be fine.
My friend who got Lyme never noticed any ticks that summer, but his symptoms developed within a month of a camping trip, so that’s probably how he got it. Noticing them is so important, because they are stealthy.
Last year, there was a day when I found five ticks on me all at once, just from going through the front yard to get the mail. I felt one of them crawling on me after going inside. Again, be vigilant, you won’t usually feel them. If you do feel one, there may be others. In addition to the five on me, I found two more on the floor, which had probably fallen off of my clothing. Most of the year it isn’t that bad. Although, a group of them is actually easier to notice.
The videos of ticks flying through the air are here: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-static-electricity-hosts-scien... Totally worth watching. Key take-away for me: Don't wear statically charged clothes in wooded areas.
> Key take-away for me: Don't wear statically charged clothes in wooded areas. Isn't that most outdoor clothing? Fleece, polyester, wool, etc.
Valneva/Pfizer are developing a Lyme disease vaccine, VLA15:
https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/
It's being widely tested in many US/EU locales.
15k people in the small south-eastern region of Sweden where I live have already gotten the shot 3 times, as an example. There are about 50 such test regions, so the testing is quite wide already.
The current plan calls for general availability in US/EU in 2026. Before May the plan was 2025.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them to let go on their own. I thought the reason was if you accidentally apply pressure to the engorged tick, it backflows the potentially lyme-contaminated blood into your person. They sell special tweezers which engage the head while avoiding the body for this reason AIUI.
IIRC the recommended approach now is to freeze them off with those wart removers you can find at drug stores. Even the special tweezers were hard enough to use properly that it's no longer the recommended approach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately, tick-borne diseases aside, they are probably about a 2 on a scale from 1=non-disease-carrying mosquitoes to 10=guinea worms. You don't notice when you've been bitten, and if you get into the habit of checking yourself all over before bedtime, you can usually remove them fairly easily with alcohol. The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them t…
Do absolutely not "encourage them to let go on their own". When discovered use tweezers or a tick-removal tool to remove it as soon as possible. Make sure to pull as close to the skin as possible. All old folk-remedy things with butter and alcohol only risks the tick to go into shock and spew saliva into you, increasing the risk for lyme disease/tbe or borrelia. Just pull it straight out, it's safe and easy, done it…
Admittedly, there are a lot of articles saying "Don't try to suffocate or irritate the tick before pulling it out." They are written by doctors who have never actually had a tick bite. Once the tick is firmly attached, which takes several hours, you will often be unable to remove it cleanly without chemical assistance of one sort or another.
We used coal-tar ointment (ichthammol) for that back in the day [2]. Some say alcohol works just as well, others say differently. The suggestion elsewhere in the thread to freeze them off with wart remover sounds like it could work well. For me personally, the ultimate remedy was G'ing TFO of that part of the country.
1: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2017.0028...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately, tick-borne diseases aside, they are probably about a 2 on a scale from 1=non-disease-carrying mosquitoes to 10=guinea worms. You don't notice when you've been bitten, and if you get into the habit of checking yourself all over before bedtime, you can usually remove them fairly easily with alcohol. The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them t…
> The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them to let go on their own. I thought the reason was if you accidentally apply pressure to the engorged tick, it backflows the potentially lyme-contaminated blood into your person. They sell special tweezers which engage the head while avoiding the body for this reason AIUI.
Man I’m so glad I live somewhere with few if any ticks. They sound horrible from everything I’ve read.
Fortunately, tick-borne diseases aside, they are probably about a 2 on a scale from 1=non-disease-carrying mosquitoes to 10=guinea worms. You don't notice when you've been bitten, and if you get into the habit of checking yourself all over before bedtime, you can usually remove them fairly easily with alcohol. The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them t…
Interestingly, you need to turn them clockwise for ages before they let go, but counter-clockwise gets them out after a single rotation.
She did get both lyme disease and encephalitis (mostly spread in Central Europe), but she did spend ~70 years foraging for blueberries and mushrooms..
I also do it (but probably on hundreds not thousands) and never caught anything.
The videos of ticks flying through the air are here: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-static-electricity-hosts-scien... Totally worth watching. Key take-away for me: Don't wear statically charged clothes in wooded areas.