I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease.
I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change.
Sometimes, I've believed that it impacts my performance at work. Sometimes I feel like I should be retiring, but I’m not even 40 yet. Sometimes, it's not so bad.
I saw a video on controlled hypothermia the other day, which seems like snake oil. I guess that’s next on my list to try. I feel desperate, but I’m just having to get used to the feeling of desperation, because there appears to be no answer or solution.
That's rough. Same symptoms of low testosterone, which a blood test can measure. This can be caused (even in younger men) through daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) like BPA and phthalates, heavy metals, and pesticides. Poor lifestyle exposures such as chronic stress, lack of sleep, and high ambient air pollution also significantly suppress hormone production.
Indeed. Thanks for the pointer. My testosterone level is in a happy range, as are most of my levels.
Chronic stress, now that's an interesting one. I've never regarded myself as stressed. Or, if I am stressed, I'm always stressed and it's just normal. But I see no reason to be stressed, but maybe I am. And I wonder, how much of stress is a cause, or a result. I've taken a year off work. Am I better for it? It's hard to say. I'm yet to find anything that I can say helps. I've only really found things that make it worse. Like alcohol, and sugar. Diabetes? Yeah, I've considered it. I've got 6 months of blood sugar monitoring data, with no discernible correlation between my levels and how I feel. Funny world <3
About stress: how's your HRV? Look into sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, vagus nerve and it's relation to HRV. It gives you a more objective way to measure stress.
In particular, Garmin smartwatches have a very good measurement and intepretation with their "stress" and "body battery" features.
I initially thought about sharing this about stress and didn't, but then I read your post.
That's how I learned I was stressed while working. I have a Garmin watch and everyday I get an alert telling me I had a stressful day.
During the day if I do a little check-in where I observe how I feel, I often notice a lot of muscle tension, especially in the plexus area, and that I stop breathing for extended periods of time. I try to consciously relax, which would work for a few minutes before the tension comes again. I end up being exhausted almost everyday. My watch has been telling me I'm either in "recovery" or "strained" for months.
Stress can be difficult to notice, especially when you're stressed.
The poor sleep might be the root cause. I’ve got some of the symptoms that you describe but I’ve always had nasal issues that I think are wrecking my sleep through snoring. That’s my theory anyway so I’m pursuing that.
When did you last (1) eat a proper salad with no sugary dressing (2) get up early to exercise (3) achieve a suntan (4) spend a week without caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol? (5) catch a sunrise? (6) wake up at an acceptable hour without an alarm? (7) eat a high fiber meal like a vegetable curry?
Other: Dark, cold, quiet bedroom. Sleep study. Vicious dietary improvement. If all else fails: move and change jobs. If that doesn't fix it, try one of those drug induced purges with ibogaine.
I’m not optimistic this will be all that helpful. Just because the tick you found is negative, that tells you nothing about those you did not find. Just because a tick is positive, that does not mean that it has infected whoever it was attached to.
My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
> My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
I’ve hear stats as long as 24 hours and as short as 30 seconds. One nurse told me that removing ticks by grasping and pulling means they transmit immediately, because you squeeze their contents through their mouths. I no longer believe any of the stats; seems like it could be at any time.
I've removed several hundred ticks using soap on a wet cloth and doing one counter-clockwise rotation on the tick. No lyme, tick-borne encephalitis so far. Key thing is to check after every hike, keep checking their favorite places (where the skin gets thinner and softer) and check before you scratch something that itches.
Having an easy to use method which doesn't need special tools also helps by being able to immediately remove them.
Whenever someone recommends removal using tweezers, I wonder if the person offering this advice has ever removed a well attached tick. I’ve found tools like a Tick Tornado work better, but are still problematic with smaller ticks.
The cards I found close to useless. The tools in the link from the parent poster, which are actually for pets, work much, much better.
And tiny ones are easy to remove with finger nails and some spit. But it requires some skill, do not stress out the ticks while they are attached and be careful to not partially remove it.
(Just had to remove 3 ticks on me I failed to spot after a late night walk yesterday, bigger and medium sized ones with tool, the small one with fingernail)
edit: and found a 4th one, but a tiny one(nymphe), they don't carry lyme disease as only ticks who have previously bitten a infected animal before will have it
We always covered them with coal-tar ointment (ichthyol / ichthammal) for a few minutes. They detached without a problem after that, with nothing more than a subtle hint from the tweezers.
Just breaking out the tweezers and yanking away was most emphatically not recommended. It can leave the mouth parts behind, if nothing else.
Considering how often dogs in my area were covered with ticks, I am surprised we never got one as teenagers, we were running or biking in the same place.
30+ years ago we would use ether to remove them, and I enjoyed burning them afterwards, it was so satisfying...
In my experience it works the same way by simply using a drop of dishwashing detergent on them. After 30 seconds max they want to get out with wriggling legs. Works on me after jogging, on my cats, at the back of their neck. Any other place they can take care by themselves, and do.
Unfortunately there are a number of tick-borne illnesses. Eg, Powassan virus is a viral infection that attacks the central nervous system (leading to encephalitis). It can be transmitted within hours or even just 15 minutes of tick attachment.
Another is Alpha Gal. It is a molecule carried in tick saliva that can cause serious allergies to red meat and even dairy. Because the molecule is in the saliva, it can be delivered immediately.
This is very helpful for determining if prophylactic treatment is necessary after discovering a tick.
If someone doesn’t notice a tick then they aren’t going to be considering prophylactic treatment anyway. It’s for the cases where ticks are discovered.
According to the dutch public health institute, the longer the tick is in the body, the bigger the chance of transmission. Early removal also does not prevent lyme, it just reduces the chances.
Next to that, in The Netherlands we have a site to report tick bites and if they had lyme disease or not. It’s good to know if you should be extra vigilant after a bite from a certain area. I think the self-test could be very useful for such sites.
Upstate New York has a site for testing and reporting / tracking. Costs are $80 USD for a comprehensive test though. It looks like they'll test just for Lyme for $20, but if you found a tick on you I imagine you'll want to know all the diseases it has potentially given you. At least I did.
I think it's super helpful. Sure it doesn't help with ticks, you don't find, but in my experience it starts to itch eventually even with the tick attached. If it's negative good, if it's positive go see a doctor.
This is one of the things that is oft repeated by my vector disease colleagues -- your infection may not be caused by the tick you found, but by the tick you didn't.
Do ticks commonly detach on their own before being noticed? Because from what I’ve seen of fully engorged ticks I don’t think I would fail to discover that. Or maybe an earlier stage where they’re smaller?
I always thought that too. I spend a lot of time outside and check rigorously. Very often I find a recently attached tick. Found a fully-engorged deer tick half-detached not too long ago - pulled it off jaw-intact. In treatment for early-mid stage disseminated Lyme again, for the third time. Certainly a hidden tax one pays living in New England...I've recently put a lot more effort into things like permethrin.
From what I understand, you're spot on with your last note. Larval stage can be extremely hard to see even when fully engorged. Adult-stage ticks (at least Deer Ticks) are the size of a large grain of cooked brown rice. I've seen fully engorged nymph-stage that rival the size of a grape...
I think you need to stop overthinking. Yes it can make you sick, but the only thing you can do is be on the lookout for it and be smart about avoiding it. I've had around 4-5 ticks in the last years, my kids and family probably around 15-20, one recently near my ankle that probably could've been avoided if I wasn't wearing short trousers. But anyway nobody ever got sick from it and we live in a region with a high prevalence of tick caused encephalitis. There's a vaccine for that so we're all vaccinated now.
You're the smart one.. Unfortunately I didn't find the tick on time and have been sick with persistent Lyme for over 10 years. Hoping for some kind of solution soon.
Ticks are extremely tough to kill, compared with the myth that some people hold that they can only be drowned (you can obliterate them pretty well with a rock) I'm pretty sure many return to the wild unscathed.
And some even just pull them off and squish them a bit and then throw them down the toilet, bin, outside. Those very likely survive for a new bite.
I usually trap it between two pieces of tape and then put it in a plastic bag and keep it in the freezer for a few weeks in case someone gets sick and I might need it as a sample.
I have no idea if that is actually necessary, but it's easy and I think that probably kills it.
How about loosening restrictions on deer hunting as part of the policy change to reduce deer populations and, consequently, tick populations, that Governor Healey grandstanded^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spoke passionately about earlier this year
and the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels, as well as that you have to kill basically all deer to the point of about 8 deer per square mile, since one deer can carry 2000-3000 new ticks. which is basically impossible on mainland because new deer just wander over.
I wasn't making a scientific statement about whether depopulating the deer will help; the governor of Massachusetts already did. I'm saying that it's pathetic to blame it all on deer and then not eliminate the pointlessly onerous burden on culling their population.
But since you're being needlessly snarky about it (it's not productive to suggest killing "the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels"), here:
>After hunts were initiated, number and frequency of deer observations in the community were greatly reduced as were resident-reported cases of Lyme disease. Number of resident-reported cases of Lyme disease per 100 households was strongly correlated to deer density in the community. Reducing deer density to 5.1 deer per square kilometer resulted in a 76% reduction in tick abundance, 70% reduction in the entomological risk index, and 80% reduction in resident-reported cases of Lyme disease in the community from before to after a hunt was initiated.
No, well the point was that noise, chorus, or feedback did not exist. There was no such thing. Therefore, the technical workaround was to place two amplifiers, face to face in order to "mimic" distortion.
This is the way that "Loveless" (1991) was recorded, sans anesthesia.
I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease.
I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change.
Sometimes, I've believed that it impacts my performance at work. Sometimes I feel like I should be retiring, but I’m not even 40 yet. Sometimes, it's not so bad.
I saw a video on controlled hypothermia the other day, which seems like snake oil. I guess that’s next on my list to try. I feel desperate, but I’m just having to get used to the feeling of desperation, because there appears to be no answer or solution.
That's rough. Same symptoms of low testosterone, which a blood test can measure. This can be caused (even in younger men) through daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) like BPA and phthalates, heavy metals, and pesticides. Poor lifestyle exposures such as chronic stress, lack of sleep, and high ambient air pollution also significantly suppress hormone production.
Indeed. Thanks for the pointer. My testosterone level is in a happy range, as are most of my levels.
Chronic stress, now that's an interesting one. I've never regarded myself as stressed. Or, if I am stressed, I'm always stressed and it's just normal. But I see no reason to be stressed, but maybe I am. And I wonder, how much of stress is a cause, or a result. I've taken a year off work. Am I better for it? It's hard to say. I'm yet to find anything that I can say helps. I've only really found things that make it worse. Like alcohol, and sugar. Diabetes? Yeah, I've considered it. I've got 6 months of blood sugar monitoring data, with no discernible correlation between my levels and how I feel. Funny world <3
About stress: how's your HRV? Look into sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, vagus nerve and it's relation to HRV. It gives you a more objective way to measure stress.
In particular, Garmin smartwatches have a very good measurement and intepretation with their "stress" and "body battery" features.
I initially thought about sharing this about stress and didn't, but then I read your post.
That's how I learned I was stressed while working. I have a Garmin watch and everyday I get an alert telling me I had a stressful day.
During the day if I do a little check-in where I observe how I feel, I often notice a lot of muscle tension, especially in the plexus area, and that I stop breathing for extended periods of time. I try to consciously relax, which would work for a few minutes before the tension comes again. I end up being exhausted almost everyday. My watch has been telling me I'm either in "recovery" or "strained" for months.
Stress can be difficult to notice, especially when you're stressed.
Do you drink coffee?
The poor sleep might be the root cause. I’ve got some of the symptoms that you describe but I’ve always had nasal issues that I think are wrecking my sleep through snoring. That’s my theory anyway so I’m pursuing that.
Easily proven or disproven with a sleep study. You can get home tests too. Wishing you the best!
When did you last (1) eat a proper salad with no sugary dressing (2) get up early to exercise (3) achieve a suntan (4) spend a week without caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol? (5) catch a sunrise? (6) wake up at an acceptable hour without an alarm? (7) eat a high fiber meal like a vegetable curry?
Other: Dark, cold, quiet bedroom. Sleep study. Vicious dietary improvement. If all else fails: move and change jobs. If that doesn't fix it, try one of those drug induced purges with ibogaine.
https://lymealert.com/how-it-works/
I’m not optimistic this will be all that helpful. Just because the tick you found is negative, that tells you nothing about those you did not find. Just because a tick is positive, that does not mean that it has infected whoever it was attached to.
My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
> My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
I’ve hear stats as long as 24 hours and as short as 30 seconds. One nurse told me that removing ticks by grasping and pulling means they transmit immediately, because you squeeze their contents through their mouths. I no longer believe any of the stats; seems like it could be at any time.
I've removed several hundred ticks using soap on a wet cloth and doing one counter-clockwise rotation on the tick. No lyme, tick-borne encephalitis so far. Key thing is to check after every hike, keep checking their favorite places (where the skin gets thinner and softer) and check before you scratch something that itches.
Having an easy to use method which doesn't need special tools also helps by being able to immediately remove them.
> you squeeze their contents through their mouths
Whenever someone recommends removal using tweezers, I wonder if the person offering this advice has ever removed a well attached tick. I’ve found tools like a Tick Tornado work better, but are still problematic with smaller ticks.
https://www.zenpetusa.com/tick-tornado
I always carry a tick removal card in my wallet. Perfect removal every time. Even the tiny ones.
The cards I found close to useless. The tools in the link from the parent poster, which are actually for pets, work much, much better.
And tiny ones are easy to remove with finger nails and some spit. But it requires some skill, do not stress out the ticks while they are attached and be careful to not partially remove it.
(Just had to remove 3 ticks on me I failed to spot after a late night walk yesterday, bigger and medium sized ones with tool, the small one with fingernail)
edit: and found a 4th one, but a tiny one(nymphe), they don't carry lyme disease as only ticks who have previously bitten a infected animal before will have it
We always covered them with coal-tar ointment (ichthyol / ichthammal) for a few minutes. They detached without a problem after that, with nothing more than a subtle hint from the tweezers.
Just breaking out the tweezers and yanking away was most emphatically not recommended. It can leave the mouth parts behind, if nothing else.
On dogs my friend likes to strike a match, touch the extinguished tip to the back of the tick, and then pull it out with tweezers. Seems to work
Considering how often dogs in my area were covered with ticks, I am surprised we never got one as teenagers, we were running or biking in the same place.
30+ years ago we would use ether to remove them, and I enjoyed burning them afterwards, it was so satisfying...
From experience, you might end up with 2nd degree burns and burn the bugger into a hot crispy pile of ash.
Now that you say it...
Makes me wonder of what would happen when you'd use the tips of two blank wires connected to a 1.5V battery?
ZAP!
Could be made into a small USB-gadget, to have it always available? Zaptastick!
I like this. Better: ZapStick!
In my experience it works the same way by simply using a drop of dishwashing detergent on them. After 30 seconds max they want to get out with wriggling legs. Works on me after jogging, on my cats, at the back of their neck. Any other place they can take care by themselves, and do.
It depends on the disease. Lyme takes many hours, as it must migrate across the tick's gut, but there are others that can transmit in minutes.
Yes, but if you push the tick - it will vomit its gut into you.
“Lyme coinfections”, for anyone seeking a list.
Unfortunately there are a number of tick-borne illnesses. Eg, Powassan virus is a viral infection that attacks the central nervous system (leading to encephalitis). It can be transmitted within hours or even just 15 minutes of tick attachment.
Another is Alpha Gal. It is a molecule carried in tick saliva that can cause serious allergies to red meat and even dairy. Because the molecule is in the saliva, it can be delivered immediately.
I’m not sure we are talking about the same virus, but for the version prevalent in northern europe, there’s a vaccine.
This is very helpful for determining if prophylactic treatment is necessary after discovering a tick.
If someone doesn’t notice a tick then they aren’t going to be considering prophylactic treatment anyway. It’s for the cases where ticks are discovered.
According to the dutch public health institute, the longer the tick is in the body, the bigger the chance of transmission. Early removal also does not prevent lyme, it just reduces the chances.
Next to that, in The Netherlands we have a site to report tick bites and if they had lyme disease or not. It’s good to know if you should be extra vigilant after a bite from a certain area. I think the self-test could be very useful for such sites.
Upstate New York has a site for testing and reporting / tracking. Costs are $80 USD for a comprehensive test though. It looks like they'll test just for Lyme for $20, but if you found a tick on you I imagine you'll want to know all the diseases it has potentially given you. At least I did.
https://nyticks.org/
I think it's super helpful. Sure it doesn't help with ticks, you don't find, but in my experience it starts to itch eventually even with the tick attached. If it's negative good, if it's positive go see a doctor.
This is one of the things that is oft repeated by my vector disease colleagues -- your infection may not be caused by the tick you found, but by the tick you didn't.
Do ticks commonly detach on their own before being noticed? Because from what I’ve seen of fully engorged ticks I don’t think I would fail to discover that. Or maybe an earlier stage where they’re smaller?
I always thought that too. I spend a lot of time outside and check rigorously. Very often I find a recently attached tick. Found a fully-engorged deer tick half-detached not too long ago - pulled it off jaw-intact. In treatment for early-mid stage disseminated Lyme again, for the third time. Certainly a hidden tax one pays living in New England...I've recently put a lot more effort into things like permethrin.
From what I understand, you're spot on with your last note. Larval stage can be extremely hard to see even when fully engorged. Adult-stage ticks (at least Deer Ticks) are the size of a large grain of cooked brown rice. I've seen fully engorged nymph-stage that rival the size of a grape...
> My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged
This understanding will age like milk.
there have been times in my life where this could have saved me a doctors visit, and that's good enough for me
You went to a doctor because you had a tick, or because you had symptoms? (like the red ring)
I think you need to stop overthinking. Yes it can make you sick, but the only thing you can do is be on the lookout for it and be smart about avoiding it. I've had around 4-5 ticks in the last years, my kids and family probably around 15-20, one recently near my ankle that probably could've been avoided if I wasn't wearing short trousers. But anyway nobody ever got sick from it and we live in a region with a high prevalence of tick caused encephalitis. There's a vaccine for that so we're all vaccinated now.
Otherwise just enjoy your life.
I always keep doxycyline around take a couple whenever I find a deer tick on me.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545493/table/rc1121.ap...
You're the smart one.. Unfortunately I didn't find the tick on time and have been sick with persistent Lyme for over 10 years. Hoping for some kind of solution soon.
Controlled hyperthermia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtPtlcNXEs
Did you ever see a tick?
Does it matter at this point?
The “no, never saw a tick” anecdotes help support the obvious concept that a bullseye rash is not required to end up with chronic Lyme.
(nor is a tick required!)
And it's relatively easy to get a prescription for since it's a PEP drug for high -er risk sexual activities.
I like that it involves grinding up the tick. Just deserts.
I don't mind there being some selection pressure against biting humans.
At the same time no tick that I’ve ever removed from a person survived, even without testing it for anything.
I don’t think anyone removes a tick and sets it on its merry way.
Ticks are extremely tough to kill, compared with the myth that some people hold that they can only be drowned (you can obliterate them pretty well with a rock) I'm pretty sure many return to the wild unscathed.
And some even just pull them off and squish them a bit and then throw them down the toilet, bin, outside. Those very likely survive for a new bite.
I usually trap it between two pieces of tape and then put it in a plastic bag and keep it in the freezer for a few weeks in case someone gets sick and I might need it as a sample.
I have no idea if that is actually necessary, but it's easy and I think that probably kills it.
https://archive.ph/cNwmN
How about loosening restrictions on deer hunting as part of the policy change to reduce deer populations and, consequently, tick populations, that Governor Healey grandstanded^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spoke passionately about earlier this year
and the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels, as well as that you have to kill basically all deer to the point of about 8 deer per square mile, since one deer can carry 2000-3000 new ticks. which is basically impossible on mainland because new deer just wander over.
I'm thinking reverse gene drive? Keep the animals and destroy the pests. Also let's do that for screw worms.
In many places, you need to add lizards to that list.
I wasn't making a scientific statement about whether depopulating the deer will help; the governor of Massachusetts already did. I'm saying that it's pathetic to blame it all on deer and then not eliminate the pointlessly onerous burden on culling their population.
But since you're being needlessly snarky about it (it's not productive to suggest killing "the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels"), here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25118409/
>After hunts were initiated, number and frequency of deer observations in the community were greatly reduced as were resident-reported cases of Lyme disease. Number of resident-reported cases of Lyme disease per 100 households was strongly correlated to deer density in the community. Reducing deer density to 5.1 deer per square kilometer resulted in a 76% reduction in tick abundance, 70% reduction in the entomological risk index, and 80% reduction in resident-reported cases of Lyme disease in the community from before to after a hunt was initiated.
No, well the point was that noise, chorus, or feedback did not exist. There was no such thing. Therefore, the technical workaround was to place two amplifiers, face to face in order to "mimic" distortion.
This is the way that "Loveless" (1991) was recorded, sans anesthesia.