Tick Removal

[Zoom-boing]

Tick removal - Good to know!!

Spring will be here soon and the ticks will soon be showing their heads. Here is a good way to get them off you, your children, or your pets. Give it a try. Please forward to anyone with children... or hunters or dogs, or anyone who even steps outside in summer!!

A School Nurse has written the info below -- good enough to share -- And it really works!!
I had a pediatrician tell me what she believes is the best way to remove a tick. This is great, because it works in those places where it's some times difficult to get to with tweezers: between toes, in the middle of a head full of dark hair, etc.

Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball and swab it for a few seconds (15-20), the tick will come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away. This technique has worked every time I've used it (and that was frequently), and it's much less traumatic for the patient and easier for me.
Unless someone is allergic to soap, I can't see that this would be damaging in any way. I even had my doctor's wife call me for advice because she had one stuck to her back and she couldn't reach it with tweezers. She used this method and immediately called me back to say, "It worked!"

 

[random3434]

Good Advice! Thanks for posting! My daughter and I love the outdoors, and we love to hike in the woods. I need to pack some liquid soap and cotton balls in my backpack next time we to out!

I also seem to have the mosquitoes go for me, I wonder why that is? They say don't wear any perfume or such when you're outdoors, and I don't. I wonder if it's the soap I use?

 

[strollingbones]

damn that was worth paying the 15 bucks for....great advice didnt know that...i guess we are waterboarding the tick

also remember if you are bitten...rocky mountain spotted fever shows in about 3 days...a rash around the ankles (hell i dont know why) and a high fever.

i dont know much about lyme's disease however but someone else does.

 

[Agnapostate]

I also seem to have the mosquitoes go for me, I wonder why that is? They say don't wear any perfume or such when you're outdoors, and I don't. I wonder if it's the soap I use?

I assume you use bug spray? I remember a live bite from a mosquito hurt like the deepest circle of hell, and they used to leave my arms looking like the surface of Mars when they attacked me during the night. Bug spray repelled that...to some extent.

 

[RodISHI]

Good Advice! Thanks for posting! My daughter and I love the outdoors, and we love to hike in the woods. I need to pack some liquid soap and cotton balls in my backpack next time we to out!

I also seem to have the mosquitoes go for me, I wonder why that is? They say don't wear any perfume or such when you're outdoors, and I don't. I wonder if it's the soap I use?

Get some vitamin B. I can't recall off hand what it does but it helps. Garlic pills help also they don't like the smell. I don't go outside in the summer without cutter sprayed anywhere on me that the bugs can get to.



Lyme disease spot...

 

[AllieBaba]

Avon Skin So Soft I've heard is excellent mosquito repellent. I've never used it, because I just don't have a huge problem with mosquitoes (and I live in the desert). I know people who've used it on horses, too.

My son is a mosquito magnet. He woke up one morning with 10 mosquito bites on his face alone, and more on his body. Whoever says a mosquito only bites once is lying, because this was obviously a case of one mosquito that bit him over and over. His nose swelled up (2 bites there) as did his eyes and he was pretty low for days.

I bought Burt's Bees herbal insect repellent, because all my kids react horribly to chemical sprays (it burns their skin and doesn't seem to work to keep mosquitoes away). It smells good, it feels good, and he hasn't had a mosquito event since. The house we lived in also had a terrible problem with earwigs coming up from the foundations of the house for about 2 weeks each summer....we had a big fir tree which shed needles all along the house, and those buggers would hatch out and we'd have earwigs all over for a while. Earwigs aren't poisonous and seldom can they even pinch effectively, but believe me it's unnerving to find a half dozen or so in your bed when you pull back the covers. We started shaking out the blankets every single night before bedtime, and I'd cover those kids with burt's bees insect repellent and you know we never had another earwig in the beds...it's pretty pungent and it's oil based so it makes everything it touches smell.

And it smells so good.

 

[Sarah G]

Some of the things you eat attract mosquitoes. Like bananas, mosquitoes love them so if you know you'll be outdoors, don't eat them.

Here is what I was reading recently:

Natural Mosquito Repellents

I have also heard that bees hate the color red. They tend to sting people who are wearing it.

 

[waltky]

Granny got her flea an' tick powder out again, goin' after possum...

New Lyme disease estimate: 300,000 cases a year
19 Aug.`13 — Lyme disease is about 10 times more common than previously reported, health officials said Monday.

As many as 300,000 Americans are actually diagnosed with Lyme disease each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced. Usually, only 20,000 to 30,000 illnesses are reported each year. For many years, CDC officials have known that many doctors don't report every case and that the true count was probably much higher.

The new figure is the CDC's most comprehensive attempt at a better estimate. The number comes from a survey of seven national laboratories, a national patient survey and a review of insurance information. "It's giving us a fuller picture and it's not a pleasing one," said Dr. Paul Mead, who oversees the agency's tracking of Lyme disease.

The ailment is named after Lyme, Conn., where the illness was first identified in 1975. It's a bacteria transmitted through the bites of infected deer ticks, which can be about the size of a poppy seed. Symptoms include a fever, headache and fatigue and sometimes a telltale rash that looks like a bull's-eye centered on the tick bite. Most people recover with antibiotics. If left untreated, the infection can cause arthritis and more severe problems.

In the U.S., the majority of Lyme disease reports have come from 13 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. The new study did not find anything to suggest the disease is more geographically widespread, Mead said.

New Lyme disease estimate: 300,000 cases a year

 

[waltky]

Lyme disease been around for a long time...

Lyme Disease Bacteria Found in Ancient Amber
May 30, 2014 ~ Lyme disease - a painful, debilitating disease spread by ticks - was identified only about 40 years ago. But researchers say the bacteria that causes it dates back to the age of the dinosaurs... and those ancient roots may have made it difficult to treat.

The bacterium that causes Lyme disease was present at least 15 million years ago, some 12 million years earlier than the appearance of modern humans. Researchers at Oregon State University discovered a diseased tick in ancient fossilized amber from the Dominican Republic. The tick was dissected and examined with a powerful microscope by George Poinar, an expert in the detection of ancient microbes.

When he drilled into the amber and opened up the tick, Poinar said he saw the same spirochete-like bacteria, called Borrelis, which causes Lyme disease today. “You can see spirochetes. They are still there. They are not moving, but they are frozen in different positions, kind of curving this way and that way. It almost looks like a flash photograph of these creatures swimming around. They are in all different positions in the tick on top of each other squirming around. So, you know the tick was heavily infected,” said Poinar.

Photo of a deer tick under a microscope in the entomology lab at the University of Rhode Island in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

The discovery of the ancient tick and Lyme bacteria was reported in the journal Historical Biology. Bacteria are an ancient group of microbes dating back about 3.6 billion years, almost as old as Earth itself. They are rarely preserved in the fossil record, except in amber, which is hardened tree sap. Poinar, a professor emeritus with OSU's Department of Integrative Biology, said Lyme bacteria evolved over millions of years, likely becoming resistant to efforts to treat them in humans.

While Lyme disease is easily vanquished with antibiotics soon after an infection, Poinar notes that its symptoms often are mistaken for other conditions, and as time passes before it's recognized, it becomes chronic and increasingly difficult to treat. “It’s much harder after the spirochetes get into the system and then lodge in various parts of the body. Then it’s very difficult [to treat]. And there are various experimental treatments that are being done out there.”

Lyme disease affects the joints, heart and central nervous system. People can become infected anywhere in the world through the bite of an infected tick carried by mice or deer. One experimental and expensive treatment is immunoglobulin or IVIG, a blood product administered intravenously. IVIG is made up of pooled antibodies extracted from the plasma over one thousand blood donors. The treatment is usually reserved for people with autoimmune disease and blood disorders.

Lyme Disease Bacteria Found in Ancient Amber