Chances are, no matter where you live, you live in tick country. These parasitic arachnids love to crawl onto our bodies, explore for a bit, and then settle down and bury their little heads into our skin. They can transmit illnesses like Lyme disease, making them a safety issue in addition to simply being gross. But a lot of myths have grown up around the tick phenomenon—including bad advice for how to remove them once they’re attached. So let’s learn the truth.
In other words, don’t burn a match, blow it out, and place the still-hot match on the tick’s abdomen. These methods make the tick vomit up the blood they’ve already eaten, squirting it (along with their saliva and possibly infectious germs from someone they previously bit) into your bloodstream.
Myth: Alcohol or nail polish remover can safely remove a tick
It’s true that alcohol or nail polish remover (or even soapy water) may get a tick to release from your skin. Unfortunately, the downside is the same as with a match: The tick is liable to first barf its stomach contents into your bloodstream. Please yoink it out instead; I cannot recommend the Tick Key enough.
You can make your yard less of a tick haven by keeping your grass short, removing any rotten leaves or similar debris, and get rid of brush piles where mice like to live. (Despite the name, deer ticks love all kinds of mammals, mice included.) Dogs can spread ticks, too, so put some Frontline on your pup.
When you get home, make sure to check yourself for ticks, or at the very least, take a shower. Ticks crawl around on your skin for a few hours before settling in to bite, so that post-hike (or post-yardwork) shower is pretty effective at reducing your risk of a tick bite.
Myth: You should wear a hat, because ticks drop out of trees
Once you brush against the tick, it’s on your body, and all bets are off. The tick will climb up, up, up your pantleg, and you could subsequently find it anywhere. In one study, the lone star tick “favored the lower extremities [legs], buttocks, and groin,” while blacklegged ticks didn’t care and would bite anywhere.
It’s time for a little bit of good news. You probably don’t have Lyme disease. First, although Lyme is common in more areas than it used to be, it’s still in just a small portion of the U.S. Most cases are in the northeast, from Virginia on up, with another swath in the Wisconsin-Minnesota area. If you live anywhere else, you’re much less likely to catch the disease at home.
And even if the tick carries the Lyme disease bacteria, it doesn’t transmit them until it’s been attached and feeding for 36 to 48 hours. So if you know that tick wasn’t there yesterday, there’s a good chance you’re in the clear.
Myth: You should get that tick tested
But a few years later, another of our kids was bitten by a tick, and the doctor shrugged and told us testing was no longer recommended. Tick bites are fairly common these days, the tick can have Lyme without giving it to you, and you can get Lyme disease even if this particular tick wasn’t the one that did the deed. Check with your doctor to see if they agree with ours; this advice may vary.
An expanding, ring-shaped rash around a tick bite, known to doctors as erythema migrans, occurs in 70 to 80 percent of people who contract Lyme disease.
There are also a variety of other rashes, like ringworm, that can have a circular appearance but are not related to Lyme disease. If you have a medical concern, seek medical care so you can find out what’s going on and get treated.
Myth: If you get Lyme disease, you'll have it for life
The disease can also cause damage that lasts after the Lyme bacteria are gone. As one example, Lyme that is untreated for long enough can result in permanent arthritis.
Probably some of the people with “chronic Lyme” have real autoimmune or neurological conditions that are going undiagnosed while they chase a fictional villain. If you end up with Lyme disease, don’t be afraid to seek help (or even second opinions), but do keep your wits about you. There are a lot of myths out there.
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