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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

Fortunately, tick-borne diseases aside, they are probably about a 2 on a scale from 1=non-disease-carrying mosquitoes to 10=guinea worms.

You don't notice when you've been bitten, and if you get into the habit of checking yourself all over before bedtime, you can usually remove them fairly easily with alcohol. The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them to let go on their own.

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> The risk is leaving bits and pieces behind when you pull them off, which is why you want to encourage them to let go on their own.

I thought the reason was if you accidentally apply pressure to the engorged tick, it backflows the potentially lyme-contaminated blood into your person.

They sell special tweezers which engage the head while avoiding the body for this reason AIUI.

IIRC the recommended approach now is to freeze them off with those wart removers you can find at drug stores. Even the special tweezers were hard enough to use properly that it's no longer the recommended approach.

'How to handle those bloody potentially life-ruining ticks properly' is something that seems to change rather frequently. Quite annoying, despite the fact that improvements in that area are welcome.

Any definite source? Pulling them out is usually easy.. but not always, if freezing them off is feasible and better would like to try, but this thread now has already the bad alcohol recommendation :/ so would like to make sure not just hearsay?

Good question. I've read a lot of local news here in New England in the last year that recommends freezing, but looking up formal sources... it isn't so simple. Seems like freezing means you still end up using tweezers for the removal, but the risk of pushing toxins back into your bloodstream is lessened because the toxins themselves are frozen inside the tick.

So I guess the recommendation remains: remove with tweezers carefully, targeting the head so as to avoid sqeezing the body and flushing toxins back into your body. Which is easier than heading to a drugstore for freezing wart removers anyway.

There’s also a tool called a tick twister that is supposed to get them around the neck and twist them out. Like flat tweezers that you slide along your skin so you don’t accidentally squeeze the body. If I understand correctly they have flexible spines/barbs on their head which is what can keep the head in if you pull without twisting. When you twist the spines lay down and so the tick slips right out intact. That’s the marketing behind the tool anyway.

https://www.ticktwister.com/

Yes, my wife pulled one out with an "approved tool" but it left a bit off the fangs or whatever in unfortunately. Went to the doctor and to my surprise she said: I won't fumble now and do anything there, the important thing is the body/gut is gone, this is unimportant, just lets disinfect it and watch for lime. shrug

My grandma pulled out thousands of ticks by wetting a piece of cloth, putting a bit of soap on it and turning them counter-clockwise.

Interestingly, you need to turn them clockwise for ages before they let go, but counter-clockwise gets them out after a single rotation.

She did get both lyme disease and encephalitis (mostly spread in Central Europe), but she did spend ~70 years foraging for blueberries and mushrooms..

I also do it (but probably on hundreds not thousands) and never caught anything.

Mosquitoes are super awful already and turn what would be an 8/10 outdoor experience into a 5/10.

We seriously need to find a way to get rid of biting insects on a grand scale.

I used to hate mosquitoes, but then I travelled to New Zealand and met the sandflies, and now I'm glad we only have mosquitoes where I live.

We need to get rid of these either, and also of horse-flies.

Totally no reason to have any of these around. Any ecological niches they are taking should be left to those who do not prey on human.

Yes, but the tick-borne diseases turn it into 7-8. Lyme disease is awful.

Lyme isn't even the worst thing you can get from ticks. If you really want to scare yourself, read up on Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Powassan virus, Ehrlichiosis, etc. etc.

I've never been able to get a tick off with alcohol.

The trick is to use alcohol on tick, not on yourself.

Joking aside I think alcohol was supposed to be just for disinfecting and some people took it wrong way ?

The disinfecting part is relatively new in the human history.

Me neither, and I've got many ticks a lot of times.

The trick is to grab them near the skin, without using too much force, and pull them with the minimum amount of force that works (go increasing the force until they move).

People using tweezers also invariably do it wrong, because tweezers are not an instrument for delicately handling things.

Do absolutely not "encourage them to let go on their own". When discovered use tweezers or a tick-removal tool to remove it as soon as possible. Make sure to pull as close to the skin as possible.

All old folk-remedy things with butter and alcohol only risks the tick to go into shock and spew saliva into you, increasing the risk for lyme disease/tbe or borrelia.

Just pull it straight out, it's safe and easy, done it a dozen times.

Also get vaccine for lyme disease if you are in an area where ticks pass it on, it is a horribly crippling disease and not worth the risk however low.

I don't think there's any Lyme disease vaccine available for humans, at least not in the US.

I take apple flavored ivermectin meant for horses sometimes. So any horse vaccines available?

You meant encephalitis vaccine , Lyme disease does not have approved vaccine but can be healed with antibiotics if noticed on time. I got encephalitis vaccine as I live in country that is one of the top countries where people get tick borne diseases.

The saliva injection occurs when the tick attaches. It's accompanied by an anesthetic that keeps you from noticing it in most cases. [1]

Admittedly, there are a lot of articles saying "Don't try to suffocate or irritate the tick before pulling it out." They are written by doctors who have never actually had a tick bite. Once the tick is firmly attached, which takes several hours, you will often be unable to remove it cleanly without chemical assistance of one sort or another.

We used coal-tar ointment (ichthammol) for that back in the day [2]. Some say alcohol works just as well, others say differently. The suggestion elsewhere in the thread to freeze them off with wart remover sounds like it could work well. For me personally, the ultimate remedy was G'ing TFO of that part of the country.

1: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2017.0028...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_bituminosulfonate

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