Tick Off: A Simple Trick Everyone Should Know – Do This When You Find a Tick on Your Body
How to protect yourself from ticks
Now that summer and peak season is here for ticks, it’s important to protect yourself and your family from tick bites, which unfortunately are just as much a part of summer as picnicking, hiking, and swimming these days.
But no matter how prepared you are, you can never be 100% sure you’re safe. That said, we have some tips to minimize the chances of you or a loved one getting bitten and we also have the best way to remove a tick if you do get one.
Read them below and feel free to share this article with your friends so they are prepared too. Trust me, no one wants to google “tick bites” after already having a tick under their skin!
Removing ticks
1. Ticks are generally attracted to warm areas – like in hair, under arms, behind ears, or in the groin. According to Kid’s Health, children often have ticks on the upper part of their bodies.
2. Is it a tick? Relax – now it’s time to try to get rid of it as soon as possible. The risk of infection increases the longer the tick is attached. For example, Lyme disease is usually not transmitted during the first few hours after a tick bite. So the sooner you remove the tick, the less chance of infection!
3. Take tweezers or a tick removal tool (often found in pharmacies). Since ticks bite into the skin with their small jaws, it’s important to keep the tick as close to the skin as possible. Then pull straight up slowly with a steady hand.
4. Once done, wash the wound with soap and water or disinfectant. Then wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water.
5. Now it’s time to kill the tick so it can’t harm anyone else. You can flush it down the toilet or burn it. Or you can keep the tick in a ziplock bag, so if you get sick, you can have doctors examine it to see if it carries a dangerous disease.
6. Watch out for symptoms. Some common symptoms of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and Lyme disease are fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, and fever. Another symptom of Lyme disease is a rash that appears three to fourteen days later.
How NOT to remove a tick
There are also some things you should not do when removing a tick:
1. Do not squeeze the tick’s body while removing it. You can cause fluid to come out and infect the wound.
2. The idea that it’s better to twist tweezers while removing a tick is a myth, according to the Center for Disease Control in the United States. Pull the tick straight up; otherwise, you might pull the tick apart and leave part of it behind in the wound.
3. Do not suffocate the tick in vaseline or try to drown it before removing it, as written by the CDC.
4. Never burn a tick, cover it in nail polish, or try to drown it in alcohol. As mentioned above, tweezers are all you need.
Now that peak season is here, it’s extra important to know how to properly remove ticks in case you get bitten.
Let’s share this information on Facebook so everyone follows this advice this summer. Your friends will thank you later!
