Ticks ( any suggestions)

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Here in NOVA, I get a tick each time I am out on our property. We have woods and deer all around and the ticks are thick. If you have them around you, I recommend you get the tick removal tool they sell at REI. Its a little piece of metal that has a "v" cut in it that allows you to slide it under the tick to get a clean removal.

This year thus far - removed five that were embedded from me, one from the wife. Picked dozens off myself and the kids thus far that had not dug in. The dogs are clean but we treat them monthly.

You get about 36 hours before lyme is transmitted...but an improper removal that leaves the head will leave a heck of an infection that will itch and persist for a month.

Cheers,
Matt
 
DDT!!!




alright its a joke rachel carson
 
eujamfh said:
Here in NOVA, I get a tick each time I am out on our property. We have woods and deer all around and the ticks are thick. If you have them around you, I recommend you get the tick removal tool they sell at REI. Its a little piece of metal that has a "v" cut in it that allows you to slide it under the tick to get a clean removal.

This year thus far - removed five that were embedded from me, one from the wife. Picked dozens off myself and the kids thus far that had not dug in. The dogs are clean but we treat them monthly.

You get about 36 hours before lyme is transmitted...but an improper removal that leaves the head will leave a heck of an infection that will itch and persist for a month.

Cheers,
Matt



Are you saying that if tick is removed properly within 36 hrs no threat of lyme disease ??

Never heard that before.
 
Backwoods Savage said:
trailmaker said:
Cowboy Billy said:
I've been thinking getting some guinea hens and turning them loose around the property.

http://www.lymediseasepa.com/GuineaHens.htm

Billy

We had Guinea hens growing up. They make what is possibly the most annoying sound in the animal kingdom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_B2lMEyBsk&feature=related

I imagine other types of fowl would eat ticks also, I would look into that before getting Guinea Hens. They're neat birds but the sounds are just awful.


Many old farmers used to keep some hens around because that way they knew if someone was there or some strange animal was coming. It works! A great doorbell too.

The more I look into it the more I see about Guinea Hens being particularly good at tick control. This from Wikipedia
"An unusual, organic approach to control of ticks and prevention of Lyme disease involves the use of domesticated guineafowl. Guineafowl are voracious consumers of insects and arachnids, and have a particular fondness for ticks. Localized use of domesticated guineafowl may reduce dependence on chemical pest-control methods.[103]"

Ticks are getting so bad here I might give Guinea hens another try despite their noisy calls. The deer population is also out of control here, might be time for Fish and Game to start issuing more tags.

The article seems to have some pretty good information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease
 
cptoneleg said:
eujamfh said:
Here in NOVA, I get a tick each time I am out on our property. We have woods and deer all around and the ticks are thick. If you have them around you, I recommend you get the tick removal tool they sell at REI. Its a little piece of metal that has a "v" cut in it that allows you to slide it under the tick to get a clean removal.

This year thus far - removed five that were embedded from me, one from the wife. Picked dozens off myself and the kids thus far that had not dug in. The dogs are clean but we treat them monthly.

You get about 36 hours before lyme is transmitted...but an improper removal that leaves the head will leave a heck of an infection that will itch and persist for a month.

Cheers,
Matt



Are you saying that if tick is removed properly within 36 hrs no threat of lyme disease ??

Never heard that before.

I read this in the wikipedia link

However, transmission is quite rare, with only about 1% of recognized tick bites resulting in Lyme disease; this may be because an infected tick must be attached for at least a day for transmission to occur.[35]
and this

Attached ticks should be removed promptly, as removal within 36 hours can reduce transmission rates
 
OK. I have to tell the tick story. Back in the nineties I was working in our company's headquarters. Nice offices. Dress for success suits and the whole bit. One day I felt an itch in my navel. Scratched. Little while later felt it again. Shortly a lady that worked in the office came by and asked if I could drop her off at the VW dealership after work to pick up her car. "Sure". About the time I am realizing that there is a damn tick in my navel from being out cutting wood the afternoon before she is standing in the door ready to go.

Drove her to the dealership going out of my mind. Of course by now this feels like a saber toothed tiger in my navel since I have figured out what it is. Usually when I drop somebody at a dealership I sit and wait to make sure the car is ready and watch them drive out. That time she had hardly closed the door when I hauled it and found an alley. Clawing at my shirt buttons and pulling the tail out of my pants and attacking my navel. Ripped the blood sucker out and tossed it out the window and then started looking around for witnesses. :red:

I get'em on me all summer long but that one will be remembered forever.
 
BB I had a similar experience when I lived in Lyme CT and I was sitting in a physics class at the local U. Trying not to freak out in front of the whole class at the deer tick I discovered in my shoulder.

I worked a wildlife job with a guy from Madagascar. When I told him about ticks he was horrified. To me, they were nothing. Mom used to pay a dime for each one pulled off the dog and we would fight for the job. The part where we got to play with fire was even better.

He talked about big Malagasy leeches the same way I talked about ticks. Like nothing. Small nuisance. <shudder>


p.s. to the OP-chickens.
 
Joe Matthews said:
These are great:

http://www.tickremover.com/en/default.php

I have used it with great results on myself and my dog...

That looks interesting, Its located in sweden, did you order from the website? I could use one for the pets, damn cat had at least 50 so far and I treat him every 30 days.
 
I ordered mine on Amazon.com. They really do a good job removing them because you do not squeeze the tick at all when you are attempting to remove it with traditional methods. Squeezing it can force crap from its body into yours and cause problems. It also works really well removing them from the fur of a pet.
 
On a new story the other night, they said that there has been a fairly large increase in the number of cases of Babesiosis, primarily from ticks, in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. It apparently has many of the same symptoms as Lyme, but this one can be fatal for people with weaker immune systems. So, the bottom line for me with ticks is to stay alert about feeling ill. Years ago I wouldn't go to see a doctor unless dark red blood was pooling on the floor. But after hearing about some first-hand horror stories about Lyme, if I were to feel any flu-like symptoms (especially in Summer) it's in to the doc pronto. The meds around here take this thing very seriously (as they should), and do blood tests without hesitation (which unfortunately aren't a 100% ID). To reduce the probability, I cut down any tall grass or weeds along regular paths or work areas. They attach most often by climbing up and then jumping off onto anything that brushes up against the vegetation. I had way less on me last year by spending a few minutes each week chopping the tall stuff where I usually haul and split.
 
Lyme is only from deer ticks, not dog ticks, and removing them promptly reduces transmission chances drastically. I had a deer tick embedded and called about it once- they said if it was within 24 h, then there was almost no chance of transmission.
 
For an eye-opening (and scary) look at Lyme (and the politics surrounding its diagnosis and treatment), suggested viewing:
http://www.underourskin.com/

and reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Cure-Inside-Epidemic-Pamela-Weintraub/dp/0312378122

I know a couple of people in Mass who were diagnosed with MS, but ended up having Lyme. Many of the tests are not accurate.

I recommend killing some deer and rodents in your area. Chickens are good, too. Have someone check you for ticks after being in the brush or tall grass.
 
willworkforwood said:
On a new story the other night, they said that there has been a fairly large increase in the number of cases of Babesiosis, primarily from ticks, in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. It apparently has many of the same symptoms as Lyme, but this one can be fatal for people with weaker immune systems. So, the bottom line for me with ticks is to stay alert about feeling ill. Years ago I wouldn't go to see a doctor unless dark red blood was pooling on the floor. But after hearing about some first-hand horror stories about Lyme, if I were to feel any flu-like symptoms (especially in Summer) it's in to the doc pronto. The meds around here take this thing very seriously (as they should), and do blood tests without hesitation (which unfortunately aren't a 100% ID). To reduce the probability, I cut down any tall grass or weeds along regular paths or work areas. They attach most often by climbing up and then jumping off onto anything that brushes up against the vegetation. I had way less on me last year by spending a few minutes each week chopping the tall stuff where I usually haul and split.

I try to keep my grass down as well. Ticks have a behavior called "questing" where they climb up a pice of grass and extend their forelegs and just wait for something to come past so they can hook on to it. I've actually looked very carefully a few times and seen ticks "questing", it's kind of creepy. Ticks are also susceptible to dehydration so keeping grass and weeds down not only denies them a perch for their "questing" but also provides more air flow and sunlight, reducing humidity.
 
Great post CountryBoy19- thanks! I ordered some of this and plan to try it as a clothing spray. Good advice, too- I got the concentrate pretty cheap. I'll dilute it myself and make my own inexpensive spray. This stuff actually is widely available on the net, mostly as a 10 percent solution. I did also see a stronger solution, like 36 percent or something, but the price was equally stronger.

It took me a couple of hours and some false starts to find an on line vendor who was reasonably priced and not doing shipping ripoffs. I hate getting ripped off on shipping! This also led to a lucky find, it appears: ozbo.com. Prices are pretty good, and they have an incredible deal on flat rate shipping.

BTW 15 dollars for your quart is a pretty good deal. I went with 1/4 of that (8oz) for about 6 bucks. Plus about 5 bucks shipping. That'll still do a bunch of clothes, even in that size. It washes out of clothes only slowly, so you can get a lot of uses before you need to retreat the items.


BK- hope you are continuing to improve, buddy. That's rough stuff, lyme. Good you hammered it with Doxycycline as you did. Probably about all you could have done, at that point. I keep a bottle of that antibiotic around for just this sort of thing. BTW I have a science article that says that if you catch it soon enough, a single dose (single capsule) will nip it in the bud. OTOH my friend knew someone who was far enough along that he had to be hooked to IV antibiotics for 6 months, and dragged the bottle around everywhere on a rolling stand. Yikes! Those little critters are spooking me. I'm being a lot more careful about ticks than I used to be. :ahhh:

CountryBoy19 said:
Permethrin, Period, end of story...

It's what the military uses, it's what the serious outdoorsman uses, it's what I use, and it is what you should use....

Don't go to Cabelas or Dick's or any other sporting goods store to buy the stuff though. You'll pay $20 for a pint of .5% permethrin.

Go to your local farm store or home improvement store and look for carpenter ant killer. Read the label and find the contents. You want a carpenter ant killer that ONLY has permethrin in it. So look under active ingredients (inert ones don't matter too much) and find a product that only lists permethrin. You have now found the concentrated permethrin that all the companies buy and water down to put in that little $20 pint bottle. Take this concentrate and water it down to .5% and go to town.

I picked some up at Menards that was 10% permethrin, 1 qt for $15. That means I got 40 times the permethrin for 3/4 the price.
 
Thanks for the "get well" thoughts Clutter and the rest of you.

Yes, this has been a brutal experience for me. The doxy finally seems to be working after a month of being sick. Lost 25 pounds total. My headache lasted until two days ago and now is mostly just a "phantom" ache in my temples. The facial palsy has resolved about 80-90%, but time will tell if I'll ever get complete function of my lower lip again. I am still weak all over and have lost a lot of money because I was totally unable to work. This bug is way nastier than public health lets on, so don't downplay it like I did. Protect yourself.

The CDC has kept track of almost half a million cases in the last 30 years. In the opinion of the CDC, only about 10% of cases actually get reported. The vast majority of these infected individuals got no treatment at all. Many went on to develop secondary or tertiary disseminated Lyme Disease, with often devastating neurological illnesses that are attributed to other causes, creating a situation whereby folks are getting treated for the wrong diseases, with occasionally dire results.

Since only about 50 million people live in the moderate to highly endemic areas, that means that potentially 10% of the endemic population has been infected during the last 30 years. Few other illnesses can make that claim, and none that are as devastating as Lyme are even close to that number. Lyme is the sixth most common illness that is reported to the CDC. If all actual cases of Lyme were discovered and subsequently reported, it would be the most widely reported illness in the nation by a huge margin. This is a very serious epidemic, and the government is downplaying the extent and severity of it for some reason I can't begin to fathom. To this date, there is no definitive test for Lyme, despite 30 million dollars of research money being awarded each year by the NIH. The Infectious Disease Society of America has issued diagnosis and treatment guidelines that are nowhere near enough to guarantee a cure, and your primary care doctor is following these guidelines to the letter 95% of the time.

As a result of this public health failure, there has arisen a whole cult following of ill people who seek out "Lyme literate" doctors (LLMDs), and many of them are hawking quack treatments to a terrified group of patients who will try anything for a cure, no matter what the risk. Almost all of these jerks refuse to take insurance because they feel entitled to way more than the average doctor. Entire testing companies has been formed just to test for tick-borne disease, and charging $300-1000 for a test panel. Most of the quacks insist on you getting a positive test result from one of these companies (several of which are under heavy scrutiny by the FDA and medical review boards), and somehow, it seems that if you spend enough money, a positive test for something will eventually emerge. Now the quack doc has an official document that entitles him or her to treat you as they best see fit in their "clinical experience". That often leads to heavy doses of IV antibiotics administered over many years. A few of the folks have died from these bogus treatments, many have spent their entire life savings on these charlatans (routine long-term treatment is around $100K out of pocket), and yet, the number of LLMDs grows each day.

Yes, I saw "Under Our Skin", and I have mixed feelings about it. In spite of being worried that I am not getting as aggressive a treatment as my illness may need, many of the doctors that are lionized in the film are the same ones that have been investigated and lost their licenses. I feel that the IDSA's overly conservative recommendations are at least partly in response to the shear volume of over-treated patients in the country. This is making doctors at the primary treatment level minimize the scope and severity of this disease, as made apparent to me by my own doctor's refusal to accept the blatantly obvious Lyme symptoms I've had just because my initial Lyme titer came back negative... something that is almost universal in the first few weeks of infection, particularly and ironically, in bad infections such as mine.

I just bought 40 pounds of insecticide granules and spread it all around my wood processing area, my carving pit, the garden, the deck, the walkways... anywhere we have a chance of a tick encounter. I was told that this should eliminate 60-95% of the tick population. Whatever it does, I'm finally fighting back at any rate.


Brother Bart, I had the exact thing happen to me several years ago. I noticed my navel was starting to itch while we were watching a movie. I dug in there a bit and feel something that I thought was just a gross ball of lint stuck in there. When we went to bed I had Lady BK take a look inside to get whatever was in there out, and she saw a big old dog tick chowing down in my Nirvana center. When she tried to get it out, she pulled too hard and broke off the entire head, and it was just buried in there. I went to the first aid kit, got out a fresh scalpel and a bottle of alcohol, and told her to operate. She absolutely refused, but I said, "Look, no way am I going to the ER at midnight to get some tick parts pulled out of me. NOW, GET TO WORK IN THERE!"

Finally, she got down to the task. She was successful in the removal, but she cut me up pretty badly. In spite of my distress, I just couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of the whole scene, and every time I laughed she slipped a bit with the scalpel. In retrospect, I guess it wasn't a very good idea, but we still laugh about it to this day.
 
Battenkiller said:
As a result of this public health failure, there has arisen a whole cult following of ill people who seek out "Lyme literate" doctors (LLMDs), and many of them are hawking quack treatments to a terrified group of patients who will try anything for a cure, no matter what the risk. Almost all of these jerks refuse to take insurance because they feel entitled to way more than the average doctor. Entire testing companies has been formed just to test for tick-borne disease, and charging $300-1000 for a test panel. Most of the quacks insist on you getting a positive test result from one of these companies (several of which are under heavy scrutiny by the FDA and medical review boards), and somehow, it seems that if you spend enough money, a positive test for something will eventually emerge. Now the quack doc has an official document that entitles him or her to treat you as they best see fit in their "clinical experience". That often leads to heavy doses of IV antibiotics administered over many years. A few of the folks have died from these bogus treatments, many have spent their entire life savings on these charlatans (routine long-term treatment is around $100K out of pocket), and yet, the number of LLMDs grows each day.

Yes, I saw "Under Our Skin", and I have mixed feelings about it. In spite of being worried that I am not getting as aggressive a treatment as my illness may need, many of the doctors that are lionized in the film are the same ones that have been investigated and lost their licenses. I feel that the IDSA's overly conservative recommendations are at least partly in response to the shear volume of over-treated patients in the country. This is making doctors at the primary treatment level minimize the scope and severity of this disease, as made apparent to me by my own doctor's refusal to accept the blatantly obvious Lyme symptoms I've had just because my initial Lyme titer came back negative... something that is almost universal in the first few weeks of infection, particularly and ironically, in bad infections such as mine.

I empathize with your plight, but I disagree strongly with your characterization of these doctors as jerks and quacks with such a broad brush. Many of these doctors are very good and do not take insurance because it is the insurance companies that helped to initiate the lawsuits to have licenses pulled for treatments that they do not want to pay for, because the CDC does not deem the treatment appropriate. The CDC says two weeks of oral antibiotics and you are cured. That is BS if you have had Lyme for years. I know someone who went to one of the doctors in the film after conventional treatments failed (and payed from their own pocket). After conventional treatment with antibiotics failed, they were diagnosed with MS (in fact were already taking daily steroid injections to treat MS). After long-term (6-months) treatment with IV antibiotics, they are now asymptomatic.

Keep in mind that most cutting edge doctors and scientists in history have been called quacks in the beginning for disagreeing with the conventional wisdom.

Also, this "cult" would not have developed if the CDC would open their eyes to the possibility that Lyme can't always be cured with 2 weeks of oral antibiotics. Are there people who do not have Lyme chasing LLMD in hopes of solving another medical problem that medicine can't resolve? I am certain that is the case. But that doesn't help people who do have Lyme but do not deserve further treatment according to the CDC.

BTW, Cure Unknown is a better choice than the movie, IMO.

I wish you a full and healthy recovery from your Lyme, as I do for all the victims.

Edit: Checked CDC website, they say "most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics". Maybe it is starting to sink in?
 
PeteD said:
I empathize with your plight, but I disagree strongly with your characterization of these doctors as jerks and quacks with such a broad brush. Many of these doctors are very good and do not take insurance because it is the insurance companies that helped to initiate the lawsuits to have licenses pulled for treatments that they do not want to pay for, because the CDC does not deem the treatment appropriate. The CDC says two weeks of oral antibiotics and you are cured. That is BS if you have had Lyme for years. I know someone who went to one of the doctors in the film after conventional treatments failed (and payed from their own pocket). After conventional treatment with antibiotics failed, they were diagnosed with MS (in fact were already taking daily steroid injections to treat MS). After long-term (6-months) treatment with IV antibiotics, they are now asymptomatic.

Keep in mind that most cutting edge doctors and scientists in history have been called quacks in the beginning for disagreeing with the conventional wisdom.

Also, this "cult" would not have developed if the CDC would open their eyes to the possibility that Lyme can't always be cured with 2 weeks of oral antibiotics. Are there people who do not have Lyme chasing LLMD in hopes of solving another medical problem that medicine can't resolve? I am certain that is the case. But that doesn't help people who do have Lyme but do not deserve further treatment according to the CDC.

BTW, Cure Unknown is a better choice than the movie, IMO.

Pete,

Maybe I should not have worded my post quite that way. What I meant is that many of these docs are exploiting the situation for their own gain, not all or maybe not even most. The insurance thing...? Well, all I can say is the big name Lyme doc in my area wants $1000 from you just to walk through his door. Even a Lyme-friendly insurance company would never pay that kind of dough for a consult, or for any kind of consult I can think of in any specialty. The world-class eye trauma surgeon that restored the sight in my right eye three years ago gave me a free initial consult, and then went out of his way to accept my insurance, even though he was down in Philly and way out of our network. He felt bad that I had to go all the way to Philly to find a doc that could do the operation. I paid a total of $175 for a $12,000 operation. How much he got from my insurance I'll never know, but I am pretty sure it was well short of $12K. When I went for my follow up the next day, he told me that as far as that eye was concerned, I was his patient for life.

Six months later I went back down because I was having a very serious problem in the same eye. He made room for me in his busy surgical schedule, I was examined, diagnosed, given sample medications and scripts for three months and I never even saw a bill. Similar compassion is sorely lacking everywhere I look in Lyme treatment. I have been repeatedly told that the waiting list to see Dr. "X" is 12 months, at which point BTW I will be very, very ill if they are correct, and will therefore actually require their treatment for chronic Lyme. Not one of them made a referral to another Lyme doc, or even hinted that there was anyone else. Even a local nurse practitioner wants almost $400 for the initial Lyme visit (again, no insurance)... and that doesn't even include testing. How is it that an NP gets to charge that kind of money for a Lyme consult when a cardiologist with 30 years experience doesn't?

I have been spending a lot of time on a few of the Lyme support forums, and some of the things I read that people are being advised to do makes my jaw drop. There are people who have been treated for years on high-dose IV drugs (delivered via central catheters because of their caustic nature), for symptoms that have never actually been observed by the physician and have been only anecdotally described by the patient. As their conditions continue to worsen, they are being advised to step up the treatments rather than to seek other possible explanations for their sickness. There are doctors out there ascribing virtually every disease known to mankind to untraceable tick-borne infections, totally disregarding the well-known and long-accepted epidemiology of these diseases (i.e. ALS being described to patients as actually being Lyme, even though the incidence of Lyme is growing exponentially while the incidence of ALS has been at a constant for nearly fifty years).

Even some of the best intentioned Lyme docs are forced to shoot in the dark a lot of the time, trying one treatment regimen after another based strictly on observation and intuition. This is medieval medicine, not cutting edge science. No, it is not entirely their fault. It is the politics of medicine, and the megalomania of guys like Steere who just can't admit they got it so wrong 30 years ago. IMO the most telling problem in this whole fiasco was covered in the movie by a comment from Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the borrelia spirochete that bears his name:

"The [research] money goes to the same people who have, for the last 30 years, produced the same thing... nothing."

This was why I left medical research after a very short time period in the field. It was immediately obvious to me that there was plenty of money being spent on research, but nothing close to cures being delivered. The same pointless projects were being funded over and over again while much more promising work was routinely being denied. The biggest egos made the biggest sounds and got the biggest share of the pie. I worked for just such a megalomaniac, so I have a clue about the whole issue.


BTW, I found a copy of the book "Cure Unknown" at my local library and have reserved it for tomorrow.
 
All this thinking about ticks has given me a crazy idea. I wonder if you could trap a bunch of deer and rabbits and dose the heck out of them with Permethrin or Frontline or something else that kills ticks, then let them loose as mobile tick executioners. Maybe you could even rig some kind of applicator next to a salt lick or water dispenser where the deer get a couple of drops of Frontline on them as they drink or lick the salt.
 
trailmaker said:
All this thinking about ticks has given me a crazy idea. I wonder if you could trap a bunch of deer and rabbits and dose the heck out of them with Permethrin or Frontline or something else that kills ticks, then let them loose as mobile tick executioners. Maybe you could even rig some kind of applicator next to a salt lick or water dispenser where the deer get a couple of drops of Frontline on them as they drink or lick the salt.

Works on cows. Let's go havsies. You get'm down and I'll put the drops behind their ears.
 
JimboM said:
trailmaker said:
All this thinking about ticks has given me a crazy idea. I wonder if you could trap a bunch of deer and rabbits and dose the heck out of them with Permethrin or Frontline or something else that kills ticks, then let them loose as mobile tick executioners. Maybe you could even rig some kind of applicator next to a salt lick or water dispenser where the deer get a couple of drops of Frontline on them as they drink or lick the salt.

Works on cows. Let's go havsies. You get'm down and I'll put the drops behind their ears.

How about paint balls filled with Frontline. I've got this gun in mind, we just need a dune buggy to mount it on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kME4ddw4SWU&feature=related
 
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