Prevent Tick Bites & Lyme Disease
June 13, 2022
If you and your family enjoy the outdoors during the summer, it's essential to look for ticks - tiny bugs that carry Lyme disease. Ticks carry bacteria that cause Lyme disease - and if left untreated, tick bites can cause severe health problems.
While there are no foolproof ways to avoid ticks altogether, it's important to know what ticks look like, what to do if you find a tick on your body - and what to watch for in Lyme disease symptoms.
Outdoor Tips For Preventing Ticks
Ticks can live anywhere, but they thrive in the woods and damp, dark and overgrown places. Here are a few tips to help reduce your risk:
- Keep the lawn mowed.
- Use wood chips to create a barrier around playsets.
- Stay on the path when walking in the woods.
- Wear light-colored clothing to make it easier to see ticks.
- Treat clothing and hiking gear with the insecticide permethrin.
Unfortunately, insect repellants aren't enough to prevent tick bites. They can repel mosquitoes and ticks, but they don't kill ticks. Ticks may be able to walk across the sprayed skin and seek shelter in an area you missed - like an ear or in the underarm.
How To Remove A Tick
Take everything off and wash it after a hike to help prevent ticks from hanging out on clothing or unprotected skin. You can also toss all of your clothes straight into the dryer - ticks can't survive the heat. Then shower and check for ticks. If you rinse off a tick before it attaches to your body, it doesn't have a chance to transmit bacteria.
Although it can be tempting to flick the tick off your skin when you spot it, that isn't the best approach. According to experts, the proper way to remove a tick is with tweezers to ensure you remove the entire tick.
Use the tweezers tip and place it as close to the skin as possible and as close to the tick's head as possible - and pull straight up. It's dangerous to use a match or nail polish on a tick that's in your skin as it can force the tick to burrow deeper into your skin.
If part of the tick stays in the skin, don't panic. Try to dig a little to get the remaining parts of the tick out - or you can just clean the area with soap and water or rubbing alcohol.
Lyme Disease Symptoms
If you did have a tick bite - or have spent a lot of time in wooded areas and are now feeling unwell - keep an eye out for early Lyme disease symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Fever
- Headache
- Muscle aches
- Rash at the bite site
- Swollen lymph nodes
A bullseye rash is a symptom of Lyme disease, but a rash doesn't always appear.
It's important to treat Lyme disease as early as possible to avoid complications. See your doctor if you or a loved one develop a bullseye rash or flu-like symptoms.
If you're unsure if you've been bitten, if you don't have a rash and have tested negative for COVID-19, your doctor might test you for Lyme disease.
The typical initial treatment for Lyme disease is the antibiotic doxycycline. If Lyme disease advances, IV antibiotics might be necessary. Symptoms at this stage can cause significant problems, including severe neck stiffness, face palsy, arthritis, an irregular heartbeat, dizziness, nerve pain and shortness of breath.
Lyme disease also can develop months or years later, causing arthritis, limb numbness and neurological problems - making it more critical than ever to get immediate treatment if you have a suspected tick bite.
