Inspections still most important step

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Azrile

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There is a lot of conversations about all of the risks and symptoms of Lyme Disease, but the most important thing you can do by far is to inspect yourself and your children after being in wooded areas.

Finding and removing ticks are important, because even if your child or yourself is bitten by a tick, the risk of the bacteria causing and infection is very low within the first 24 hours, and even up to 48 hours if the tick is removed. Only when the tick is able to feed for a long time, more than a few days does the transmittance rate jump up.

Inspecting is also important because of the rash. The rash is the biggest clue you can give a doctor to get a correct diagnosis early. If the rash comes and goes and you never see it, the rest of the symptoms of lyme disease occur in dozens of other diseases and it will take doctors a long time to figure out Lyme Disease. You need to observe, and then report the rash.

Both the prevention of the disease by early removal of the tick, and later the diagnosis of the disease involve you checking your children very closely after they have been in wooded areas.
 
And even if you're bitten by a tick. There is a chance that the Borrelia burgdorferi is lingering in a tick’s salivary glands. I'm not saying you don't have to be worried when you get bitten by a tick, only that is not a reason to get panicked and think you're doomed with lyme disease right away.

When removing a tick is suggested:

-Using tweezers, grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible. Do not use your fingers.

-Gently pull the tick in a steady, upward motion. A strong pull could cause an injury and would leave a blood clot.

-Wash the area with a disinfectant.

-When trying to remove the tick:

-DO NOT touch the tick with your bare hands.

-DO NOT squeeze the body of the tick as this may increase your risk of infection.

-DO NOT put alcohol based liquid on the tick.

-DO NOT put a hot match or cigarette on the tick in an effort to make it "back out."


Hope it helps.
 
Yep, the statistics are actually pretty surprising. Even if you are bitten by a tick, if you are able to find it and remove it within the first 24-48 hours, you are very unlikely to have the bacteria survive in your bloodstream. Only after a couple days does the flow of the bacteria become high enough to overcome your immune system.

And that is similar to my point with the rash. Even if you do get infected, if you actually spot the rash and give that information to your doctor, Lyme disease, at that stage is very treatable.

It is only people who don´t remove the tick within 48 hours AND fail to tell their doctor about the rash that usually have really bad issues.
 
So true, so true. If we do not inspect ourselves we can never discover if we have a tick or not. And believe me, after a day playing in the woods or forest we can get ticks virtually anywhere...
 
So true, so true. If we do not inspect ourselves we can never discover if we have a tick or not. And believe me, after a day playing in the woods or forest we can get ticks virtually anywhere...

I guess I see it as a debate over resources and time. At times I think it is almost a waste of time trying to educate the public about the symptoms of lyme disease because the symptoms are so common for other diseases. That education effort would be better spent talking about the importance of inspections ( especially of children) and the importance of reporting the rash to your doctor.

Telling people the symptoms of Lyme disease is just going to drastically increase the rates of false positives, of people going to the doctor with joint pain and claiming it is lyme disease.
 
Yeah, having false positives it's not going to help, so nothing like examining our body or the body of our kids to see if we have something we should not have.
 
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