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.