There are some frightening stories out there about ticks, including one in The Oregonian about Asian longhorned ticks, also called “clone ticks” because they can reproduce without mating. This year, longhorned ticks have killed five cows in North Carolina by draining them of blood.
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Native to Russia and Asia, where they have spread serious disease to humans, it’s still a mystery as to how or when they arrived in the U.S. So far, the longhorned ticks found in North America have not carried disease.
Ticks are small, resilient eight-legged parasites that survive by feeding on the blood of their host.
Only deer ticks — found mostly in the northeast and upper Midwest — are known to transmit Lyme disease, the most commonly reported vector-borne illness in the U.S., thought to affect more than 300,000 Americans annually. Ticks can also transmit other illnesses including Rocky Mountain spotted fever and human babesiosis, a rare microscopic parasite that infects red blood cells.
Lyme disease usually starts with fatigue, fever, headaches and joint or muscle pain. It can then progress to muscle spasms, loss of motor coordination, intermittent paralysis, meningitis and even heart problems. Lyme disease is hard to diagnose because it mimics other conditions such as arthritis, fibromyalgia, neurological symptoms and multiple sclerosis.
Early treatment is crucial, but there is no reliable diagnostic test. Many who are tested for Lyme disease receive false negative results, with the average patient seeing five doctors over nearly two years before being diagnosed, and many patients being told that “it’s all in their heads.”
Once diagnosed, antibiotic treatments are normally prescribed, but are not necessarily the best option; natural strategies will help your body cope with the infection.
To prevent getting bitten and the risk of Lyme disease, avoid walking through tall grassy areas, woods and brush, especially in warmer months.
Ticks will crawl around your body to look for a suitable place to feed, often the ears and along the hairline, waistline, armpits and groin. Ticks may be hard to remove because of their barbed feeding tubes, which attach the tick to your body. A tick bite may take only a few minutes or up to 36 hours to transmit diseases, so if you have been in a tick-infested area, it’s important that you do a full-body search afterward.
Here are some tips for safely removing ticks:
- Grasp the tick — as close as possible to its head — with clean fine-tipped tweezers.
- Pull the tick out gently and steadily. Do not squeeze, twist or jerk it, as this can cause its head to break off and stay embedded in your skin.
- After the tick has been removed, thoroughly clean the bitten area with soap and water. Put the tick in a sealed container, so you can show it to your physician in case you develop other symptoms.
If the tick head remains stuck in your skin — it will appear as a small black dot — use pointed tweezers to try and remove the remaining part and then clean the bite area with soap and water.
If you can't get rid of a lodged tick head, contact your physician to have it removed. Although the tick head will eventually be expelled from your body as the bite wound heals, it's better to be safe than sorry and have it removed to reduce your risk for infections.