Ticks and Lyme disease 06/10/17

The amount of ticks is ridiculous. They are everywhere. I mean, not from Sweden to Greece but where I live its worse each year.
This year It counts like this: 10 meters in a grass = 2-3 ticks. Few days ago I've probably made a record on a forrest line. I made some 5 steps from one car side- mirror to the second one and back and well + two steps to urinate... 10 yards max and I found 5 ticks walking on me. 2 managed to bite in less than 15 minutes.
What's wrong with the weather? -20 in the winter, dry summers ... it seems ok. 10 years ago I was able to spend 100 days a year or 200 in a wild in a military style, with crawling, lying in the grass for hours and everything with a couple of tick a year. I barely remember them or if I was using any repellent except someone else's in some really bad mosquito evenings. Maybe the trick was in my clothes which I washed only once in a month to remove hardcore white maps from salt.
My smell was never too bad. Bacteria seem to be doing a good cleanup job once you reach some point. You can eat garlic, sweat like an elephant all days and smell nothing but ammonia and tobacco from the arm pits lol. It had to be the ammonia.
Well, when I think about it I may HAD a pretty good repellent but mosquitoes still liked me.

I seriously think I have a chronic Lyme. Joints are fed up, the spine, headaches, chronic fatigue. It sucks. I loved the nature. Why is she trying to kill me? Bitch! I hate it now. If I could I'd burn to dust whole countries including the game.
It seriously needs a management. A massive chemotherapy. Some sort of game vaccination against ticks. We vax against rabies so why not against Lyme pandemia? It's not just Lyme.

Go to the livestock feed store, and buy some antibiotics OTC. Same stuff, the ones they do have, as at the hospital.

My mother had it.
Here in Japan now we have it also.
Not sure why. Maybe more drugs to sell? sic if so and I've been here on and off since the 70's.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Good idea, but I like to use the herbs instead. Thermotherapy. I think I wouldn't have a problem to get a proper cocktail from doc if I really wanted to but it's too bad to gut microbial immunity and people say it's worthless anyway once it's chronic. It could bring me back my atopic dermatitis which I'm prone to. My plan is MMS, coloidal silver, boron and a lot of D vitamin from the Sun.

originally posted by: PapagiorgioCZ
a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Good idea, but I like to use the herbs instead. Thermotherapy. I think I wouldn't have a problem to get a proper cocktail from doc if I really wanted to but it's too bad to gut microbial immunity and people say it's worthless anyway once it's chronic. It could bring me back my atopic dermatitis which I'm prone to. My plan is MMS, coloidal silver, boron and a lot of D vitamin from the Sun.

Hope your treatment goes well for you.

The point is that I'm not able to walk this planet outside of tarmac. I can just look at it from distance. It's nice from orbit but you can't touch it anymore.

It's almost like some self-defence mechanism. Like the trees hates the game eating it's bark so the energy manifests itself as ticks. Animals hate ticks so the hate materializes as a disease. Who knows why in hell there are ticks. I don't understand the creation of ticks. It's sick stuff.

Dude I feel your pain..I've had it twice.The first time was scary because I had all the classic symptoms you described..Thankfully a smart local clinic doc saw the bulls eye rash on My back,and gave Me some antibiotics I was feeling good in about 3 days.Lyme is no joke man get some meds,and get better..

a reply to: greydaze

Well I never had the bull's eye so I never cared to see a doctor. Once it's chronic you don't know what's wrong for years.
Even the blood tests won't show any antibodies. Antibiotics can't harm the biofilm. It can be disrupted with some natural anti-biofilm agents
but whatever... maybe I don't have Lyme at all. The point is that it's a matter of time with tens of tick bites every year.

It's giving me panic attacks when I find one followed by Itching all over body. Then a second one and I hate the planet. It's game over, bye bye nature. I'll try a special suite soaked in insecticide tetramethrin now. Duct taping the pants etc. We'll see who's the boss. What a pitty it's kind of a neurotoxin. I'd try to use it on my clothes not the skin.

Here in west Michigan the ticks are really bad. In my specific area they have gone from never see a tick like 5 or so years ago to you get a few every time you walk outside. They've always been near the river for the most part, but now they are everywhere it seems. Just yesterday I spent two and a half hours mowing the lawn, I never when in to a thicket or wandered through the tall grass, but sure as hell I had a tick attached to my upper thigh when I was done.

The most common tick around here is the American Dog Tick AKA Wood Tick ( Dermacentor variabilis), not considered a vector for Lyme or Spotted Fever, but nasty anyways. At most I've had them attach but never engorged. The dog had one I found fully engorged, it was sickening, and despite being blown up like a balloon, it's skin was still tough as hell. I put it into a glass and soaked it in rubbing alcohol and it took three hours to finally die. Nex-Guard treatment for the dogs kills them after they bite and start feeding, I wish they had that for humans.

Deet does little to nothing to repel them and regardless of what the so-called experts say, they will jump down from the trees on to you from as much as 50 feet up. There are less around the house since I've been keeping the lawn as short as a putting green and got the dogs on Nex-Guard. I've used Sevin 5% dust around the house, that may have helped.

The official sources on controlling them give some common sense advice, but nothing you can count on to eliminate them. My friend down the street wants to firebomb his property because of them. Parasites are nasty and need to die IMO, and ticks are about the worst of them outside of intestinal worms.

ETA: Now, if I feel the slightest tingle of a body hair, I feel like I'm crawling with ticks. I'm constantly checking myself for ticks and have been checking myself naked in front of a full length mirror daily. At least I've become determined to get in better physical shape because of that.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Yeah, this and a possible Toxoplasmosis cyst in the brain. Could someone burn this planet and start all over?

I had chronic Lyme disease for 4yrs. I repeatedly tested negative but having a medical background, knew from my symptoms it was Lyme. I begged doctors to put me on doxycycline in the early stages but they refused. A rheumatologist insisted I had 'idiopathic arthritis' and put me on prednisone for 4yrs. I was certain I was dying. In late 2010 I got new health insurance and changed primary care doc. I had taken myself off the prednisone about a month earlier. I told him my story and he decided to test me again. My IG's were literally off-the-chart. Their collective hair was on fire. Within a week they had me get an MRI, spinal, neurological consult, and a CT scan. On my own I contacted the head of Infectious Disease at a medical school connected hospital and begged her to see me. She confirmed my test results and placed a PICC line. I gave myself ceftriaxone IV for a month and it cured me. I had forgotten what it was like to feel 'normal'. I got my life back after losing 4yrs of it.

My advice: be a relentless self-advocate. If one doctor won't treat you find another. Most doctors are horribly behind the times re: lyme. Don't wait. Find an infectious disease specialist that actually has successfully treated chronic lyme. Remember, only a few years ago it was sacrilege in the medical community to even entertain the possibility that chronic lyme even existed.

a reply to: PapagiorgioCZ

Absolutely here in Michigan we have ticks now where we never had them. It's actually crazy.

www.freep.com...

a reply to: PapagiorgioCZ

That's awful. Perhaps if you were diagnosed properly there is some sort of treatment? Something to at least mitigate your symptoms?
In America here and I've been reading a bit the past few days of a new tick disease evidently worse and more deadly than the rest. Powassan virus or something similar.
I hope you feel better soon.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Southwestern Michigan Tick magnet chick checking in. Recent NE trip through the NY Adirondack Mountains and the presidential range in New Hampshire has proven that there does seem to be more ticks this year.

Everyone says they seem more abundant. They also all talk about how their winters have changed. The irrational cold and snow a day or two then it warms and quickly melts away! Times past...winter freezes would set in and truly freeze deep into the soil...that may be why there is more ticks. They are not getting froze out during the winter as much.

A few years ago, we did have that extreme freeze...and the ticks seemed to have nearly disappeared. Not so recently, so I now have free ranging chickens running around my backyard and gobbling up the little morsels! It seems to be striking a balance.

Edit add: I forgot to mention that I hate chemicals like deet or permethrin and have found that the organic lemon grass and eucalyptus sprays seem to actually work and smell much better too! One just has to apply it more frequently.

a reply to: CynConcepts

Tick Magnet! That's funny!
I had a bite about a month ago. It took weeks to heal entirely. It itched like mad. I thought it must be some weird variety of tick or something although I'm sure it was just an average deer tick. That's never happened before and I thought to myself 'crap what if I have some odd disease now?'
Anyway, all better.
I have heard of the weather effecting their numbers, I think rain is what keeps their numbers lower?

originally posted by: beachbound
a reply to: CynConcepts


I have heard of the weather effecting their numbers, I think rain is what keeps their numbers lower?

I think rain probably appears to hinder them due to animal and people activity is less during really wet seasons.

Edit add: the scariest tick I ever saw was on my husband further north in Michigan. It was a orangey red one and boy did it leave a swelling mark on him! Not the ring...but definitely an adverse reaction to it. Most ticks our the more yellows tan or brown/black ones. There is just some instinctual response towards seeing the color red! Freaks me out!

Neem oil smells weird but it repels ticks. Can try it w Eucalyptus oil. Maybe can even spray outside.

a reply to: beachbound

Lyme Disease symptom include, a red ring around the bite,

" Chills
Dizziness
Fever
Joint Swelling
Loss of Facial Muscle Tone
Swollen Lymph Nodes
Memory Problems
Muscle Pains
Numbness
Palpitations
Shooting Pains
Stiff Neck
Tingling

Some people may experience the following related Lyme disease symptoms and signs:

Rash
Joint Pain
Headache
Muscle Pains
Numbness
Palpitations
Shooting Pains
Stiff Neck
Tingling "

a reply to: nOraKat

Gosh those are awful!
I think I must have gotten lucky.
None of the above other than a scar of sorts on my shoulder blade. I kind of grossed out when I wondered how long the tick must have been there before he fell off or whatever.

a reply to: nOraKat

Many focus and only worry about Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain Fever due to their notoriety in the news. They run down the list of symptoms and feel relieved that they don't quite match. Most don't realize that there are other bacterial issues from ticks that can be treated. For Instance:

Ehrlichiosis is the general name used to describe several bacterial diseases that affect animals and humans. Human ehrlichiosisis a disease caused by at least three different ehrlichial species in the United States: Ehrlichia chaffeensis, Ehrlichia ewingii, and a third Ehrlichia species provisionally called Ehrlichia muris-like (EML).

Ehrlichia are transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected tick. The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) is the primary vector of both Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Ehrlichia ewingii in the United States.

Typical symptoms include: fever, headache, fatigue, and muscle aches. Usually, these symptoms occur within 1-2 weeks following a tick bite. Ehrlichios is diagnosed based on symptoms, clinical presentation, and later confirmed with specialized laboratory tests. The first line treatment for adults and children of all ages is doxycycline.  Ehrlichiosis and other tickborne diseases can be prevented.

Edit add: my grandson was diagnosed with this just last week. He had gone a school field trip to the local park and returned home with a tick on the back of his leg. A week later...it hit him. He is doing better now, just has a follow up this Monday to make sure.