Lyme Disease Information

Lyme Disease the Great Imposter

Since Lyme disease is only one of many tick borne diseases, it’s prudent to use a tick bite avoidance program. After all, if you can avoid being bitten by an infected tick, or if you’re bitten and intervene early in the tick feeding (within 24 hours), you will most often avoid any infection. 

Here’s the recipe for avoiding tick and insect bite – it’s known as the DoD system

Wear clothes- cover your body – it’s your armor.

Permethrin- Treat your clothing with a permethrin insect repellent. Just follow the instruction on the can. It has a perfect safety record. This product is designed as a clothing treatment and offers many weeks of protection from a single treatment.  While some permethrin formulas are designed for skin application for the treatment of head lice and scabies, the formula for the DoD system is not.  The permethrin formula for clothing uses special solvents to assure bonding of the permethrin to a wide range of fabrics.  These solvents are not for use on skin and as such the treated fabric should not be worn until the fabric is dry.  When dry, all solvents have evaporated. Presenting your repellent to insects is ideally done on clothing.

Deet- Use a skin repellent that contains deet. Keep your exposure below 35%.

Tick Check- Look for ticks at least every 24 hours and if you find one remove it. Don’t forget your pets and don’t blame them if you find a tick crawling on you. Any tick worth its salt is not going to leave the warmth, concealment and immediate presence of your pet to go crawling onto you. If it’s on you, you probably brought it in yourself. Consider this: Grooming your pets has many beneficial therapeutic effects on you and it also warns you of potential problems when you find a tick. Like the canary carried into mines, your pets warn you of risks in your immediate area, so listen!

Note: Consider some of the new once-a-month tick applications available from your veterinarian.

Lyme disease – visit the www.tickinfo.com  where you can download a brochure on Lyme Disease. This is an excellent site to aid in tick identification.