Eight Myths About Ticks You Should Ignore
Chances are, no matter where you live, you live in tick country. These parasitic arachnids love to crawl onto our bodies, explore a bit, and then settle in and burrow their little heads into our skin. They can carry diseases like Lyme disease, making them not only disgusting but dangerous. However, there are a lot of myths surrounding ticks, including some bad advice on how to remove them once they’ve attached themselves. Let’s find out the truth.
Myth: Ticks should be removed with a lit match.
If you find a tick on yourself — or worse, on a child or a hard-to-reach part of a loved one — don’t reach for a match. If the tick is attached, you can slowly suck out the blood and pull it out with tweezers, but this can leave the head and mouthparts embedded in your skin. Yuck. You’ve probably heard that the best thing to do is let the tick come off. Unfortunately, this only makes the situation worse.
In other words, don’t light the match, but blow it out and then hold the still-hot match to the tick’s abdomen. These methods cause the tick to vomit the blood it has already drunk , which, along with saliva and possibly infectious germs from someone it bit, enters your bloodstream.
Instead, try grabbing the tick at the skin and pulling it out. Not brave enough to perform this precise maneuver with tweezers? It’s nearly impossible with the Tick Twister and Tick Wrench . I have an insect/arachnophobia I can’t explain, but when my husband got a tick on his back, I was able to remove it with the Tick Wrench without touching it or even looking at it. Just run the Wrench over the disgusting, wiggling lump and it falls off.
Myth: Rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover can safely remove ticks.
Indeed, rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover (or even soapy water) can cause the tick to detach from your skin. Unfortunately, the downside is the same as with the match: the tick may first regurgitate its stomach contents into your bloodstream. Please spit it out instead; I can’t recommend enough The Tick Detachment Key.
Myth: Ticks only appear in the forest.
Sure, you can pick up a tick in the woods, but you’re also likely to encounter them in parks and backyards. Ticks burrow into damp soil or leaf litter , then climb into grass or bushes, waiting for their prey (like a deer, mouse, or squeamish person) to pass by.
You can make your yard less attractive to ticks by keeping your grass trimmed, removing rotted leaves and similar debris, and getting rid of brush piles where mice like to nest. (Despite their name, deer ticks love all kinds of mammals, including mice.) Dogs can also spread ticks, so treat your pup with Frontline.
When traveling to areas where ticks are likely, wear boots that have been thoroughly treated with permethrin . This is an insecticide that is completely safe for humans but prevents ticks from crawling on your feet. Treat your favorite hiking boots, socks, and pants; consider treating the shoes you use for gardening, too. Finally, spray a DEET-based spray every time you go out into your backyard or to a park. DEET is also safe when used correctly, even for children, and repels both mosquitoes and ticks.
When you get home, be sure to check yourself for ticks , or at least take a shower. Ticks crawl on your skin for several hours before they bite, so showering after a hike (or yard work) is quite effective in reducing your risk of getting bitten.
Myth: You need to wear a hat because ticks fall from trees.
You may well find ticks in your hair, but they don’t fall from the sky. Remember, ticks spend their time in damp leaf litter to stay hydrated. When they’re ready to grab prey, they don’t rise too high off the ground. They rise to about ankle or knee height and hang on the edge of a branch or blade of grass with their legs outstretched. Entomologists, who probably think this is cute, call this behavior searching .
Once you touch a tick, it’s on you, and all bets are off. The tick will climb higher and higher up your pant leg, and you can find it anywhere . In one study , the star tick “preferred the lower extremities [legs], buttocks, and groin,” while black-legged ticks ignored this and bit anywhere.
Ticks can hide in your hair, beard, armpits, or in places where sunlight doesn’t reach. They’re also very small, so you (or a close friend) should check these areas carefully.
Myth: If you are bitten by a tick, you probably have Lyme disease.
Time for some good news. You probably don’t have Lyme disease. First, while Lyme disease is now common in more areas than it used to be, it’s still limited to a small area of the United States. Most cases are in the northeast, from Virginia on down, and in the Wisconsin and Minnesota areas. If you live elsewhere, you’re much less likely to catch it at home.
Instead, you could be infected with ehrlichiosis , babesiosis , Rocky Mountain spotted fever , or any number of other tick-borne diseases. Each species has its own habitat, so check with your local health department to see what you should be concerned about.
And even if a tick carries Lyme disease bacteria, it won’t transmit them until it’s attached and feeding for 36 to 48 hours . So if you know the tick wasn’t there yesterday, you’re probably safe.
Myth: You should get checked for ticks.
We’ve already told you that if you find a tick, you should save it for testing. Although, it depends: In 2010, my husband found a vicious little tick sucking the life force out of my sweet baby, and the pediatrician told us to send it to the county health department for testing. We rushed it, and the results came back negative. Phew.
But a few years later, another child of ours was bitten by a tick, and the doctor shrugged and said we shouldn’t be tested anymore. Tick bites are pretty common these days, a tick can carry Lyme disease without infecting you, and you can get Lyme disease even if the bite wasn’t from that particular tick. Check with your doctor to see if he or she agrees with our recommendations; they may differ.
By the way, a blood test for Lyme disease is unlikely to help . Instead, your doctor will likely recommend monitoring your symptoms for Lyme disease — not just the famous “bull’s eye” rash, since that doesn’t always happen, but also flu-like symptoms, fatigue, and pain. If you have any of these, whether you noticed the tick bite or not, see your doctor. If Lyme disease is common in your area, your doctor may prescribe a course of strong antibiotics, regardless of whether you have symptoms.
Myth: Lyme disease always starts with a “bull’s eye” rash
An expanding, ring-shaped rash around the tick bite, known to doctors as erythema migrans, occurs in 70 to 80 percent of people with Lyme disease.
That doesn’t mean you’re safe if you don’t have a bull’s-eye rash; you may just be one of the remaining 20 to 30 percent. Other symptoms of Lyme disease can include fever, chills, headache, muscle pain, and sometimes other symptoms like joint pain or facial paralysis.
There are also a number of other types of rashes , such as ringworm, that may be circular in shape but are not associated with Lyme disease. If you have any underlying health issues, seek medical attention to determine the cause and begin treatment.
Myth: If you get Lyme disease, it will stay with you for life.
There’s some truth to this: If you’ve had Lyme disease and recovered from it, you may still feel tired and achy for months afterward . That’s because the disease attacks parts of the body, and it can take a long time to recover from it, even after antibiotics kill the bacteria that caused it.
The disease can also cause damage that persists even after the Lyme bacteria are gone. For example, long-term untreated Lyme disease can lead to the development of permanent arthritis .
But there’s a whole mythology surrounding “chronic” Lyme disease , with people describing a wide range of symptoms they say are caused by hidden colonies of bacteria. If you click on the wrong Google search results while you’re recovering, you’ll find yourself down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and alternative medicine clinics that claim to have a cure when your doctor wants to hide the truth.
Some people with “chronic Lyme disease” likely have real autoimmune or neurological conditions that go undiagnosed while they chase a fictitious villain. If you have Lyme disease, don’t be afraid to seek help (or even a second opinion), but be vigilant. There are a lot of myths out there.