Staying Away From Ticks

Previously we covered a little about ticks, one of nature's most unpleasant creatures. So unpleasant that we’ll want to avoid them as studiously as we can. How can we do that? For one we can avoid woody areas. Certain areas are known for ticks. Different areas are known for different types of infectious agents. Up on the mountain here near me there is a road called “Scratch Ankle” road. That’s because there are so many chiggers in that area that for whatever reason you can’t walk around in the grass there without getting chiggers. Why the chiggers like that particular grass on that particular spot on the mountain I don’t know.

Ticks are the same way. They love some areas and inhabit some areas more than others. If you’re going hiking in a national forest or state park, the forestry departments will actually know which areas are more likely to have ticks on them. First thing you can do is avoid those areas. The second thing is just physical protection: long pants, long sleeved shirts. I’d even recommend blousing your pants: tucking your pants legs down into the top of your boots and putting your shirt inside your pants so that they can’t crawl up under the pants or shirt. That way they all wind up at your neck as they crawl on up. It is definitely easier to inspect your neck than the groin or other areas.

One very common way to prevent ticks from latching on are chemicals. Deet is probably the most famous one. Then there is permethrin. Those are probably the two commonly used ones that you see in repellants for ticks. Deet being a repellant and permethrin being an insecticide. There’s a huge difference between the two. Deet in higher concentrations is quite effective at preventing tick bites, but it does need to be a higher percentage, probably 30-40%. Permethrin is an insecticide and that is a whole different animal.

Let’s flip back to deet just a minute. Deet is not highly toxic. There are a handful of deaths the last few years from deet and it was usually by people trying to commit suicide by drinking it. There’s virtually no known deaths. I think there was a child or two who died when their mother used deet on them 2-3 times a day for a period of a couple of months. I know that’s hard to fathom, but that sort of thing does happen. Don’t spray yourself down with it for weeks on end repeatedly, and certainly not children. Deet is heavily used in the military. You might occasionally see someone with a little rash or headache or drowsiness which might be associated with that but it’s certainly not a neurotoxin. It doesn’t damage the liver, kidneys or anything else. So if you’re going to pick one of these two it would be deet, as far as the chemicals.

Permethrin is a whole different animal. It’s an insecticide. It’s a neurotoxin. It’s a skin irritant. It decreases your immune system T-cell activity, K-cell activity, and lymphocyte activity. It is a very problematic chemical. It is not just found in bug sprays; it's also used as a pesticide on a lot of vegetables. That’s a good reason to wash your vegetables in hydrogen peroxide or other types of cleansing solution when you bring them into the house. Permethrin is known to cause cancer and damages liver, adrenals, kidneys even at minimal levels. Children seem much more susceptible than adults. To emphasize: if you’ve got to choose between permethrin and deet, it would certainly be deet.

Permethrin is nowhere directed to be put directly on the skin. On the other hand, deet can be sprayed on the skin and is OK’d by the FDA for that. Permethrin is strictly recommended for clothing if you are going to use it at all. Personally, if I get close to it I get neurotoxicity within hours. My ears start ringing and I have some other problems.

There are some quasi natural things which have been approved lately by the FDA for repelling ticks. Picaridin is a modified natural agent which appears to be quite effective at killing ticks also. If you’re wanting to go natural (which I would highly recommend) I’ve used natural oils for years with great success. Probably the most important one is the oil of lemon eucalyptus. That will repel ticks with a high degree of probability. Citronella is another one that is used. Soy bean oil is used and peppermint. These are oils because it is oil that seems to repel the ticks as well as keep them from biting. Essential oils, especially oil of lemon eucalyptus is important.

Next time I'll dive into Lyme disease.

The Summer Is Almost Here, & So Are Ticks

As the summer gets closer and closer I’m going to talk more about the particular maladies that affect these summer months. One disease that you might have heard of showing up more often during the hotter times of year is Lyme disease. If you’re going to talk about Lyme disease you have to talk about the vector of Lyme disease and that is ticks. Last week we talked about irritable bowel syndrome. This is only slight less pleasant. There are few things more icky than being bit by a tick and trying to pull that little blood sucker off. Then there’s the inflammation and irritation that follows, wondering if you’ve gotten a serious disease from it like Lyme’s or Rocky Mountain Spotted fever or one of the other number of diseases that they can carry. Tick bites are a big deal.

The amount of ticks out there is usually related to the number of deer in the area. The particular tick that carries Lyme disease, the black-legged tick (so if you’ve got a tick with white legs you don’t have to worry about Lyme’s disease) is also called the deer tick. This species of tick hang around deer, hence the relationship between deer and the ticks (and the name). Ticks carry this bacteria once they are infected with it, even as a nymph they carry the bacteria or whatever they have picked up the rest of their life.

I just alluded to the fact that there are different stages of ticks. There are larva, nymphs, and then there are adults. They all look about the same. If you’re using a magnifying glass, one’s just bigger than the other. I know that as a kid what we used to call larva now we would call seed ticks. You could literally have a hundred or two hundred on you real easy. An adult tick would lay an egg and they all hatched out. If you happened to walk right through where they had hatched out you could wind up with a lot of them on you. Those little things, you can hardly see them, which could be a big problem. It’s hard to get 100% of them off of you. Those usually occur later in the summer because the adults have to mature, find an animal to attach to and get some blood from before they can mature and lay their own eggs. Seed ticks are mostly a fall thing.

Where do ticks live? Their habitat is mainly woody, leafy areas with dried leaves or brush. They do not particularly like mowed lawns or groomed areas. The transition from yard to woods, the farther and more brushy you get the more likely you are to encounter ticks.

About 90% of all tick bites occur during May, June and July with June being the highest month. 90% of all tick bites and certainly Lyme disease occurs during those three months. This is prime season right now for tick bites. We’ll talk more about Lyme disease itself in my next post.

IBS: Quelling the Furor

I started talking about IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) in my last post, exploring some ways that IBS affects us. So why does IBS happen? Neuro-transmitters are thought to be part of the problem. Maybe even serotonin levels. That’s why sometimes anti-depressants tried to treat IBS symptoms. Other possible areas are food allergies, dyes and grains. It’s kind of a hodge-podge of trial and error of trying to figure out what causes IBS.

Let me just make clear that bleeding, fever, weight loss, or persistent severe pain is not part of IBS. If that’s what is happening then there is something else going on. People with IBS should probably avoid large meals, meals that frequently cause bloating like cabbage, dairy products including cheeses, certain medicines, caffeine and coffee. Caffeine and coffee seem to be on every list. They certainly don’t appear to be very healthy for us. Last, but not least, avoiding stress, conflict, and emotional upsets are always factors in mitigating IBS.

Women have it a little bit more often than men. It seems that during menstrual periods it may be worse. We don’t know if that’s just because you feel worse during those times, thus everything is worse, or if it really is worse during menstrual periods.

It’s largely untreated. Probably 70% of the irritable bowel people out there don’t go to doctors, probably for good reasons. Doctors don’t have any great treatment or pills and tend to give laxatives, fibers, or antidepressants. That can be worse than constipation if you’ve got that. There are no clear cut answers.

There is a new drug approved by the FDA, lotronex. But, it has some pretty serious side effects (PDF link). You have to have a serious problem to even think about trying that.

As far as naturopathics are concerned probably the best treatment is coated peppermint oil if you can find that or get a compounding pharmacist to make it up. Other natural remedies are ginger and chamomile, valerian root, rosemary, and lemon balm. Those are how you would approach that from a more natural perspective.

So there it is in a nutshell. IBS is a serious problem in that it affects a huge quantity of our population. There is no great medicine treatments for the symptoms and there is certainly no treatment that will cure it. But we do know that stress is a huge factor in irritable bowel syndrome.

IBS: Uncomfortable Times

There are certain topics we are more comfortable talking about than others. In this post we’re talking about an uncomfortable one mentally and certainly physically if you have it: IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

It’s estimated that 10-20% of the population of the world has irritable bowel syndrome. Theoretically that’s one of every five people listening in on this call today have problems with irritable bowel. It may be the most common syndrome that affects more people than anything else out there.

Some of us have different ideas and constructs about just what irritable bowel is so let me go over some of the ideas on that. First there’s abdominal pain even though there are a lot of things that cause abdominal pain. Discomfort and pain are the harbingers of IBS. Sometimes there is constipation and interestingly enough sometimes there is diarrhea. Even more interesting is that it alternates between constipation and diarrhea, sometimes in the same stool. Difficult to pass and infrequent bowel movements are common. People frequently have urgency with those which can be a significant problem if you at WalMart or out on a date or having a nice dinner. It can be very inconvenient. That is the major issue. It’s not only uncomfortable but it is inconvenient.

Like many things, as you’ve discovered while we’ve covered a number of different topics, we in the medical establishment don’t know what causes it and a lot of times we don’t know how to definitively treat it. Frequently treatments consist of mere symptom management and that is certainly true for irritable bowel syndrome. We don’t have a clue what causes it. We know some things that affect it. We know that dairy products bother some people, among other different foods, and there may be some allergy situations as well. Whole grains are indicated as a possible irritant. There are a lot of different ideas there but it doesn’t affect everybody the same so there is no definitive answer as to what to avoid. It’s mostly trial and error with each individual that has the syndrome.

There is good news too. It doesn’t really seem to change the structure or the function of the normal parts of the bowel. They don’t get changed like with Celiac Sprue or Crohn’s colitis or things like that. It’s not known to lead to other diseases. That’s also good news. While it is uncomfortable and inconvenient it is not known to lead to other serious problems.

So why does IBS happen? We’ll talk about the possibilities next post, so stay tuned.

Sunlight: The Good (Or, How To Make It Good)

I interviewed a local nutritional specialist (who is a brilliant person, by the way) in preparation for this series on sunlight. He only had one recommendation. I usually don’t like to mention name brands or anything, but he said Life Extension had currently the only sunscreen that he would personally use out of a bottle. Otherwise, there are some other good things that can help protect you. Shea butter is one of those that is known to help block UVA and UVB. If I’m going out in the sun for any period of time I’ll take some Vitamin E supplements, at least 400 IU’s if not 800. I’ll take a couple of grams, that’s 2000 milligrams or more, of Vitamin C. You should probably take 800 IU’s of Vitamin D (what you get from sunlight, as we talked about previously) or more. Ironically, that actually is a good damage preventer for sunlight itself. Certainly you want to be taking Vitamin D all winter because that’s what you are not getting when you’re not out in the sunlight during the winter.

When I was in China a couple of summers ago there were Chinese out sun bathing. They were putting something on them. They were out there all day with it and didn’t get sunburned. It turned out that it was green tea extract. Because of the anti-oxidant properties, they would put green tea extract on them and they did just great. I was very impressed with the anti-oxidant properties of that. Now I don’t think any scientific, double-blind studies have been done on that for UVA and UVB so I don’t know that I could scientifically recommend it, but they were real happy with the results.

Maybe the most unheralded product for sunblock and sunscreen out there is probably MSM which is what it goes by in the nutrition shop. MSM is maybe one of the best things you can possibly take as an oxidizing prevention agent for sun damage as you are going out in the sun. I would take at least 1000 milligrams (one gram) of that, if not two, if I were going to be out in the sun for any period of time.

The amount of sun exposure varies according to your altitude. If you’re in Colorado and you are out there 10 minutes you can get burned on a sunny day because there is no atmosphere between you and sun. If you’re down at sea level and a little bit of tan, it might take you 30 minutes to get enough sun. I should also mention that the color of your skin affects how quickly you get enough healthy sun radiation.

There are a lot of different things that affect the amount of sun that you get. I mentioned the time of day: you might want to stay out of direct sun between 11 and say 3 o’clock when it is directly overhead. Also, don’t forget good old clothing. They even rate sports clothing and its sunblock ability. Get out there and get 15-30 minutes of sun and then put on your sunscreen that has UVA and UVB in it. Take your Vitamins E, C and D , and your MSM. Maybe you even want to drink a little green tea and spread a little shea butter on yourself. Then put your clothes on after a little while or just get out of the sun. Enjoy it more in the mornings or in the evenings. Your skin will be happier for it. You’ll live longer and everything will be well with your skin.

Sunlight: The Ugly and the FDA

Last time I started talking about UV radiation and ended with a note about melanoma and how sunlight can actually help prevent melanoma, in moderation. It’s currently the recommendation that you get 15 – 30 minutes of direct sunlight a day on as much of your skin as you would care to bare to whoever is around. This is a moderate amount that is very beneficial for manufacturing vitamins, preventing melanoma and things like that.

Beyond that you get into some trouble with damaging the skin. The way UVA damages the skin is through DNA mutation, and as we’ve all heard at some point in our life that can lead to cancer. There were a number of types of skin cancer, whether it is basal cell or melanoma or different types of skin cancer, that can arise from too much exposure. It also wrinkles the skin, damages the skin in other ways. Too much sun is not a good thing.

What about sun screens? We’ve all heard, yes, lather it on. Now we’re hearing it may not be effective and some are saying that it, in itself, is damaging. There is a huge conundrum, a huge mental problem going on. Do or don’t I? Let’s talk about those for just a minute.

Part of that problem has been caused by the government standard, the FDA nomenclature, if you will, the wording that they use. The SPF (sun protection factor) only takes into account the UVB part of the spectrum. Well, that’s the part that causes basal cell carcinomas and weathering of skin and some of the tanning. We thought as long as we were protecting the skin with UVB protectants, PABA and those type of compounds, we were doing a good thing. The problem is there is that other part of the spectrum, the UVA part that most of the common things in sunblock and sunscreen don’t block. That’s a part of the ultraviolet area that causes melanoma and other problems. So we haven’t been protecting ourselves for some time against a very, very harmful part of the light spectrum.

Now what do you do? They are trying to come out with some new sunscreens which protect against both A and B UV rays. Some people in the state of California (which is always on the forefront of what causes cancer it seems) are actually suing most of the major manufacturers of these sunscreens because they say they mislead the public into believing they were protected. They say it lasts 6 hours when it usually only lasts an hour or two. There is a whole lot of controversy in the area of sunscreens and sunblocks right now.

Next time I’ll tell you what I do when I go out into the sun, and what I think works best to protect your skin.

Sunlight: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

We’ve all had that experience where we’ve gotten too much sun. That night you’re laying in bed but you can’t sleep. All the sheets come off and you can’t make the air conditioner run quite fast enough to be cool, because you are on fire.

All of that because of a little sunshine. Soon it will be the season of sunshine and we all have a tendency to get a little too much at times. It happened at my house with some friends visiting over the weekend a while back. There was a young lady who was just white as a sheet but she was pinker than my wife’s roses when she left.

Sunlight – is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Well, yes. Like many other things it is good in small quantities but bad in large quantities. There’s been this huge debate for so long about sunlight and sun protection. At one point in time the standard medical dogma was “avoid all sunlight”. Well, that made cancer rates go up. We’ve specifically learned now that not getting enough sunshine (because of Vitamin D production) is a cause of cancer. Let’s go back to the concept of moderation; everything in moderation.

What type of sunlight do we get? There are two major types that are of concern; UVA and UVB. These are part of the sunlight spectrum, way down on the ultraviolet end of the wavelength, that tend to be damaging and yet also can be very helpful. For instance, Vitamin D is manufactured when that particular wavelength of sun hits us. Vitamin D is a wonderful thing. It gives us strong bones. It’s essential for incorporating calcium into the bones. It prevents rickets, osteoporosis later in life. So there are a lot of good things that Vitamin D does.

The scare with sunlight has been melanoma. Melanoma rates have been dramatically rising. There was this “stay out of sunlight because you’ll get melanoma” mantra that doctors would repeat. But now you have to scratch your head and say, “Did melanoma rates rise after people went indoors under fluorescent lighting for most of their life, or when they were out in the sunshine most of their life?” That makes you beg the question: is not some sunlight good for you? Again, standard medicine has come full circle to say yes, you need some sunlight every day, even to prevent melanoma.

Sunlight is a particularly interesting topic to me, so I'll continue to talk more on this subject soon.