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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Tenacious little buggers, you have to love them.
Uh, that could be said about you, Jim. My money's on you outlasting the ticks.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Thank God, CA doesn't have lymes like the east, or I would be screwed. This was debunked right after it was posted last year.
As a reminder I'd like to summarize a few important points.
1- California has plenty of Lyme Disease. Percentage of ticks carrying it varies by region. In the Santa Cruz mtns is about 20%.
2- Ticks APPEAR to not be too bad in the SCruz mtns this year. I live near Castle Rock and my dog and I get out off trail in the surrounding woods often. YES there are ticks here, just not as many as last year. And 2011 was a real doozy for ticks. The record for Oliver: 120 at a time. For me: 3
3- Most general practitioners know SH#T about Lyme Disease. My wife has had it with a relapse and a neighbor girl has it. In both cases the regular Docs knew ZILCH about diagnosis and treatment. Find a Lyme literate Doc if you think you've got a problem. It won't be cheap. They will send a blood sample out to a qualified lab. If you've got it, the proper treatment will be months of oral antibiotics. Really. If Doc tells you it's three weeks of antibiotics, she's a quack.
4- The treatment approved for payment by the insurance companies DOES NOT WORK. see item #3
5- Lyme can go into remission and recur years later if not completely treated the first time. This happened to my wife, after 2 weeks of daily IV antibiotics, she tested "clean" by the "approved" method. Years later it came back.
6- Good news: latest research indicates that the tick feeding cycle goes something like this: Tick lands on you and seeks warm area of skin (yummy, blood infused skin). e.g. crotch, buttocks (my wife), neck, scalp, small of back are the most likely areas. But check everywhere just in case.
So after the little brute gets his head buried he injects an anti-coagulant, as a mosquito does. Then he takes a good long drink: 24 - 36 hours. During this time, the blood is going INTO the brute. When he's had enough he regurgitates into your blood and then drops off. That's when the spirochete invades you.
7- If you get the brute out within 24 hours or so, your likelihood of getting Lyme disease is low, even if the tick has it.
8- as previously mentioned: the red surrounding skin is diagnostic of Lyme disease. However LACK of RED SPOT doesn't mean you don't have it!
9- best way to get rid of the brute in the field: crush it between your fingernails. At home we keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol and ticks that come off the dog (or us) go into the alcohol. When we're sick of looking at the mess we flush it down the toilet.
10- removal. No particular trick, longish fingernails help. Get him with your fingernails as close to the skin as possible and pull straight out. Occasionally the head will stay in. This is not likely to give you Lyme disease (see #6) but can get infected other ways.
11- In my personal experience, tick removal is most painful just as they're digging in with their hooked claws. Man, that can hurt for days.
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kaholatingtong
Trad climber
Nevada City
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^^ some interesting info that i was unaware of, HT, kudos. so apparently, their injecting the anti coagulant doesn't run the risk of giving you lyme, its just the process they go through once they fill up that does.
i have spent a lot of time in the woods exploring in areas where there are lots of ticks. i have pulled them off myself, multiple, multiple times, but due to being very paranoid about them, and rather vigilant as such, i have yet to get bitten.
to me this just reinforces what everyone is saying here, just be vigilant.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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REALLY bad ticks in CT this year.
Heavy applications of DEET work very well.
Pulled an embedded deer tick off my kid less than half the size of a poppy seed.
Chronic Lyme is no joke as posted above. I know of a great Lyme literate doc in Orange if anyone needs one. PM me... You will need a couple thousand in cash for extensive labwork and the initial visit. Insurance not accepted.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Just finished my antibiotics for lyme disease about a month ago. Another grad student I work with is doing her thesis on the stuff and she said I was the second case in Tulare County in like 10 years or something (I don't remember her numbers exactly).
If you catch it early then the antibiotic treatment is pretty mellow and only a few weeks, but once you get symptoms that indicate it's moving around to organs and stuff it can be an intense process (I'm working with a guy in Sequoia NP who just got back from TN for a special treatment).
If you think you might have it get the antibiotics! They're cheaper than the test, and it's not that reliable unless you go to a special (expensive) tick person. I hate napalming my flora with antibiotics but lyme disease freaks me out and I had all the symptoms.
(I like parentheses)
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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Mar 16, 2014 - 05:48pm PT
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March 16, and my buddy and I each picked up a tick at Black Wall today. I don't much care for the idea of ticks on Donner Summit, but March 16?!?! If the Ixodes ever make it up here, I'm going to be very, very disappointed.
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overwatch
climber
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Mar 16, 2014 - 08:52pm PT
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Pretty interesting movie on netflix...under our skin or something like that...pretty disturbing if half of what that movie claims is true
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Mar 25, 2018 - 02:27pm PT
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We're getting into tick time here in Yakima. I hate the f*#kers. Was up on goat Peak in the snow last year and the f*#kers were coming out of the snow at the summit.
Any good repellent recommendations? Lots of people are saying DEET doesn't really work.
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couchmaster
climber
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Mar 26, 2018 - 09:14am PT
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I've always suspected that Jeff Lowe's issues are due to ticks. I emailed Connie Self with my concerns years back and she said Jeff had been been tested. Then I recently read about this little girl who'd been tested negative multiple times before finally catching on and getting a positive back which made a huge difference in her life and was thinking of Jeff Lowe again wondering. Google has multiple stories of folks tested many times being told they didn't have Lyme when they did. Now there are a bunch of new multiple types of tick borne diseases, some not called Lyme (in addition to the old ones, Rocky Mt Spotted fever etc)
Anyway, here's what my post is about. Possums are tick eating machines AND THEY DO NOT CARRY LYME THEMSELVES. This dog unfortunately killed 4 of them last year (but got some payback from the last skunk she went after), all pretty much bigger than her. I was only able to save 1 possum. Seen here with squirrel. Read up on it:
http://lymediseaseguide.net/opossums-natural-tick-killers
https://www.truthorfiction.com/opossums-kill-ticks-help-stop-spread-lyme-disease/
I didn't know they were so awesome and am more careful in watching the dog now. Support your local possums, feed em, breed em, thank em, give up the Marsupial love. They eat up to 5000 ticks in a season. Spread the word. Spread the garbage, we need more of them.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Mar 26, 2018 - 11:47am PT
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Hey Wino, I've never heard of a repellent that works, it sure would be nice!! Maybe there is? I tried eating bulbs of garlic nightly with no success(on many fronts!) I've had buddies get rocky mountain spotted fever and I'd like to pass on that! We have them bad here, especially in the Bitterroots, where A LOT of good climbing/biking/hiking is. In the summer, we'd shave heads or cut it back super short. I had 2 on me Saturday. I imagine one will walk out from behind my ear anytime. Once I get them, I have phantom-tick-feelings for a couple days.
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couchmaster
climber
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Mar 26, 2018 - 01:13pm PT
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^^^Sounds like someone needs a "Crag Possum™™™™™™™™™"^^^
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Jul 11, 2018 - 08:30am PT
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From Journal of Medical Entomology, 24 May 2018
Abstract
Clothing treated with the pyrethroid permethrin is available in the United States as consumer products to prevent tick bites. We used tick bioassays to quantify contact irritancy and toxicity of permethrin-treated clothing for three important tick vectors of human pathogens: the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae); the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (L.) (Acari: Ixodidae); and the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis (Say) (Acari: Ixodidae). We first demonstrated that field-collected I. scapularis nymphs from Minnesota were as susceptible as laboratory-reared nymphs to a permethrin-treated textile. Field ticks examined in bioassays on the same day they were collected displayed contact irritancy by actively dislodging from a vertically oriented permethrin-treated textile, and a forced 1-min exposure resulted in all ticks being unable to move normally, thus posing no more than minimal risk of biting, 1 h after contact with the treated textile. Moreover, we documented lack of normal movement for laboratory-reared I. scapularis nymphs by 1 h after contact for 1 min with a wide range of permethrin-treated clothing, including garments made from cotton, synthetic materials, and blends. A comparison of the impact of a permethrin-treated textile across tick species and life stages revealed the strongest effect on I. scapularis nymphs (0% with normal movement 1 h after a 1-min exposure), followed by A. americanum nymphs (14.0%), I. scapularis females (38.0%), D. variabilis females (82.0%), and A. americanum females (98.0%). Loss of normal movement for all ticks 1 h after contact with the permethrin-treated textile required exposures of 1 min for I. scapularis nymphs, 2 min for A. americanum nymphs, and 5 min for female I. scapularis, D. variabilis, and A. americanum ticks. We conclude that use of permethrin-treated clothing shows promise to prevent bites by medically important ticks. Further research needs are discussed. Does anyone know about using permethrin? Toxicity?
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perswig
climber
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Jul 11, 2018 - 08:53am PT
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^^
We've used natural and synthetic permethrins and pyrethroids for decades in veterinary medicine and there are some important variations in systemic absorption and toxicity between species and obviously in routes of delivery (oral vs topical, etc).
Info I found re: human topical application and/or contact (i.e. treated clothing) suggests 0.5% of *applied* dosage systemically absorbed; lipophilic in all species so will concentrate in fat stores; first-order elimination route with both kidney and liver/GI excretion and *ORAL* doses clearance measured in days but majority in 12-24hr (based on rat studies).
Some of metabolites are inactive, so you're mostly worried about the actual applied product and a smallish % of metabolites. Coupled with relatively low topical absorption rates and the fact that impregnated clothing would be different than direct application, seems pretty reasonable use?
Have not looked into specific human toxicity mechanisms.
Dale
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