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Comment by oblib | Hacker News Reader

I've lived in a tick infested area (Ozark Mountains) for 25 years now and get bit at least a 100 times a year (probably a lot more, but I don't keep count).

The trick to avoiding Lyme disease is to do a "tick check" everyday and get them off of you asap. It helps a lot to treat clothes with permethrin but you'll still get a few bites if you're out where they're thick.

Here's a link to video I made last year about killing ticks in my yard:

https://youtu.be/TFVDv8swzxQ

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Me too! I just picked off a couple of ticks this evening after woodland mushroom picking. My region is endemic for Lyme disease. I'm not concerned because the tick must be attached for 36-48 hours for Lyme disease to vector. Wash clothes immediately after being outdoors and have a shower check. Having a willing partner makes it more effective and fun.

Don’t be so sure about that 36-48 number. In upstate NY I felt a bite on my leg; checked the spot and found nothing there. But I ended up with the ring around that exact spot all the same...

You’re unlikely to feel a tick bite while they’re attached, their saliva provides local pain relief.

Weird, both times I've been bitten it's felt like a really bad sunburn that just continues ramping.

Are you allergic to mosquito bites? I have an allergy to their anti-coagulant or their local anesthetic. When a mosquito latches on, it starts burning, and afterwards, the swelling is as big as a US quarter coin.

I have similar reactions to ticks. The moment they latch on and start working, it starts a painful burning sensation.

I thought maybe it was the sensation of the tick detaching/jumping off which I felt, to explain the situation.

But I had only been outdoors a few hours by the time I felt something, so the total time of exposure would be <6 hours, I estimate.

Luckily Lyme disease appears to be very rare in the Ozarks: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html

The map shows cases, not the probability to contract Lyme's if you live there. Ozarks seems to be not very densely populated area.

I live in MA, and these pesky ticks occur everywhere there're deers. They are called deer ticks there.

But not Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I've had 2 family members get RMSF in the last 2 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/rmsf/stats/index.html

One of my neighbors kids got it here. Had the classic ring around the bite on his stomach.

Wow, that is horrific. I don't know how that is tolerable! I had no idea you could have a yard so full of ticks as that. Super interesting, thanks for sharing!

Yeah, it was pretty bad here last year. I'd let the leaf matter from the previous autumn and didn't mow enough that spring to knock them down in our yard.

And our home is surrounded by public land (Army Corps) that's all forested. So there are a lot deer and other forest critters that visit us daily and bring them in.

This year I got on top of cleaning up our yard, and keeping the grass short so it hasn't been near as bad. I did end up spraying some bug killer right around the house and under our decks. As a result of all that I've not seen a tick on me from any of the spaces shown in the video I made last Spring.

Still have a few "chiggers" out there though, but those can be killed off easy with diatomaceous earth in the early Spring so I'll lay some of that down again next year. I did it about 6-7 years ago and it knocked them down until this year, and it's still not near as bad as it was back then. We have some blackberry and raspberry bushes growing out there and they were covering my shoes and marching up my pant legs when I was picking berries back then.

Growing up in Indiana, I definitely had my fair share of pruning ticks off my body, but I have never seen as many ticks as in that video.

Get some chickens and a coop. Let the chickens free roam. They'll eat the ticks. You can eat their eggs.

I have chickens, but can't really let them roam. We have fox and coyotes living around us and they've decimated our little flock when I did that. Right now I let them out of their pen for about an hour every night but that's not near enough time for them to make a dent in the ticks.

Do you have a dog? If not get a donkey to protect the chickens.

"The trick to avoiding Lyme disease is to do a "tick check" everyday and get them off of you asap."

I wouldn't be so confident about the effectiveness of tick checks.

Baby ticks can be smaller than the period at the end of a sentence, and can still infect you with Lyme disease. They are very difficult to spot, especially if they're under your hair on your scalp, for instance. It's doubly difficult if you don't have a partner that's willing to thoroughly look over every part of your body that you can't check yourself.

If you watch that video I linked to you'll see a lot of pretty tiny ticks.

Concern over inadequate, infrequent, or non-existent tick checks is why my children do not attend any sort of sleep-away wilderness camps.

You could just select a camp where ticks aren't a concern.

> You could just select a camp where ticks aren't a concern.

No problem, that rules out most of the US and Europe:

* https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/geographic_distribution.html

* https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/surveillance-and-d...

I don't worry about ticks one bit in the Mojave, no annoying mosquitoes either. Maybe there's winter camp near Joshua Tree?

I lived in So California for around 14 years and spent a lot of time hiking in the Sequoias and Tehachapis and the only tick I ever saw was one that jumped on me while hiking around Castiac Lake.

When I was a kid my mother gave us kids a tick check every evening when we came inside and tossed our clothes in the washing machine.

Every kid's mom's did that around here. If you spent the night at a friends you'd be getting tick checked :D

When we got to be around 10 years old we had to do the checks ourselves, so it's really a habit now.

I don't blame you. Here in the Ozarks hiking and camping in the forests is something we locals do in the cool months, from the beginning of October to the end of March the next year. After that we hang out at the lakes, streams, and swimming holes.

I only venture into the forests in the warm months when I must and I try to wear clothes treated with permethrin when I do. I not a big fan of wearing poisoned clothes but that stuff does work very well.

Clear this up for me...your tip to avoid Lyme disease is to remove any found ticks ASAP, but you say you still get bit 100+ times a year. Is it not true that getting bitten by an infected tick is "game over in the threat model"?

In most cases, the tick must be attached for 36 to 48 hours or more before the Lyme disease bacterium can be transmitted.

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/transmission/index.html

That page doesn't cite any sources, so it's not really any more credible than any other random blog. I would consider this to be more credible: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4278789/

More importantly though, Lyme is just one of over a dozen tick-borne illnesses, some of which can be transmitted in as little as 15 minutes.

“That page” is from the Center for Disease Control — a division of the US Dept of Health and Human Services. Credibility is subjective, but I would say it is in fact more credible than a random blog.

In many cases, the CDC is the source (or at least funds them).

OK, but why would you trust the recommendation if you don't know why they're making it?

Because rarely do we get accurate descriptions of the why behind most advice. Trusting credible people and institutions is a necessity unless you're planning on doing foundational research for everything in your life.

We're taught this in med school. Along with NOT using flame to remove them and instead using something like tweezers while preserving the tick (for identification).

The game over is for encephalitis, since that gets transmitted by saliva. Thankfully encephalitis is much rarer, and can be vaccinated against if you live in a tick-infested area.

As the other poster said, borreliosis/Lyme takes much longer to infect you on average, so daily tick checks are an effective borreliosis prevention measure.

And how long til the black legged tick just becomes resistant to permethrin?

Not before deer themselves start using it en masse.

What about clothing? If you're covered head to toe, can they still get you?

Depends on what you're covered in. A hazmat suit--probably not, but otherwise yes. One trick is tuck your pants into your socks and coat your clothes in pyrethrin.

In my experience they prefer to get under clothing, especially in tight spaces like between you and the waistband of your underwear, or a hatband, etc. They’re small and light enough that it’s hard to perceive the difference between a tick and your clothing rubbing against your body when they’re moving.

Wear light colored clothes, including pants (long sleeves are less important). Tuck your pants into your socks. Treat your clothes with permethrin (permethrin treatments will persist across several washings) and treat your skin with picardin.

I spend a lot of time in the woods, in tick prone areas, and have a lot of success with the methods described.

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