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The Claim: Remove a Tick From Your Skin by Burning It



By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
Published: July 5, 2005

THE FACTS Ever notice a tiny speck on your skin and then discover that what looked like a piece of dirt was actually a tick? For most people, that moment is about the only time exposing an arm or a leg to an open flame can seem like a good idea.
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But while burning a tick into submission is probably the most popular removal method, studies show that it can also be the worst. Getting the tick out as quickly as possible is crucial, since the likelihood of contracting Lyme disease or another infection rises steeply after 24 hours. But traumatizing the insect with heat or too much force also carries the risk of making it regurgitate, further increasing the likelihood of infection.

In 1996, a team of Spanish researchers studied 52 patients who sought treatment at a hospital after extracting a tick. They found that those who accomplished this by squeezing, crushing or burning the insects were far more likely to develop symptoms of Lyme disease or other complications than those who used the proper removal method: grasping the pest as close to the skin as possible with tweezers and then gently pulling it straight up.

Any remaining pieces should be pulled out and the site should be cleaned with a disinfectant.

Smothering Vaseline or nail polish on the tick is also a bad idea, since it can be hours before it dies from suffocation. As a precautionary step, some doctors also recommend taking antibiotics to ward off infection.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/science/05real.html

In boyscouts they taught us to cover the area in oil\vaseline, then remove the tick with tweezers, then disinfect the area of skin, then reapply the oil to drown the head just incase it might still be in there.

Having tromped through tick-infested woods for most of my formative years, here's what always worked for me and my buddies. First off, check yourself thoroughly when you get home. Put any ticks you find in a jar of rubbing alcohol until they're good and dead.

If you find one later that's settled down for a meal, use good sharp tweezers to grab him down by the mouth parts and pull him straight out, preferably in one swift motion. If you give him advance warning, he'll hold on tighter. If he's dug his head in, swab him with some rubbing alcohol and he'll start to back out. Once the tick is out, clean the area with the rubbing alcohol, then apply a little white glue and let it dry. This will smother any remaining pieces, and once it dries and you pull it off, it will usually pull out all the little remaining mouthparts too.

Also, it's recommended to seal any ticks that have bitten you in a ziplock with a wet cottonball inside. If you get any mysterious rashes in next four weeks, take the bag with you to the doctor's office.

For the record, the same advice applies to leaches. The "cigarette in the ass" method and the "salt the bastard" method both increase the likelihood of infection. The best strategy is to use your knife or fingernail to pry the little guy off while you pull firmly on the tail.

Always treat with a topical antibotic afterward.

I've lived in the most tick infested state in the country all of my life, and I can tell you for a fact that burning is bad. The heat will actually travel down thru the tick's body into your skin and burn you too.

I use tea tree oil to get them--it makes them let go and kills them too. Then it's easy to get them out, and is mildly antibiotic. That's important for me because I am very sensitive to their bites and one can hang around itching me for months and will easily get infected.

The absolute best remedy I have found for healing them fast is a plantain salve that I make myself. It's just plain old garden weed plantain, cooked in a crockpot on low with the lid off, in some coconut oil. About 24 hours I guess. A little beeswax helps to set it. It works so well for healing all skin problems that it will go on our RTW trip with us next fall. It even heals exzema.

That's a good suggestion about keeping the dead body Liforce. I never though of it, but truthfully they itch so bad that I don't think one ever managed to stay in me for 24 hours!

To further the "burning off ticks is bad"....

Don't ever burn ticks off of your dog or cat!! Not only do you increase their risk of infection but you will more often than not cause your pet to jump (they don't know what's going on back there) and then you will give them a lovely burn spot. I've seen pups that looked like pimple infested teenagers after their owners were supposedly done removing ticks. Great, now your poor dog only has 30 burns on it.

If you are having a hard time removing ticks from your pets please take it to a vet. Checking a pet for ticks can be a long process depending on their size and coat type. If you don't check your pet there can quite easily be enough ticks on it to cause some pretty bad illness from blood loss- let alone infection and lyme disease. Common spots for ticks on a dog or cat: around the collar rim or harness edges, belly, armpits and inner thighs.

quote:

around the collar rim or harness edges, belly, armpits and inner thighs.

I've seen them there on you too.

gogirl.........
What's a normal garden variety translation of garden weed plaintain - is there a particular variety of weed or any broad leaf type weed?

The best way to make sure you do not get infections from ticks is to make sure you don't get bit. bath in a very oily bath, baby oil will do, before you go out. if you get a tick, same thing, as this smothers the ticks pretty quickly or smear on vaseline mixed with eucalyptus oil.

They taught us in the army that the ticks are attracted to the carbon dioxide that we excrete....so you could just hold your breath.

Rubbing alcohol should work as insect have a low alcohol tolerance (except for fruitflies who always end up in my pint of cider in the pub garden and--after I fish them out--stagger along a bit before taking off in anything but a straight line...). So, does that stuff kill hem quick so they drop off dead soon after you've applied it?

The ticks in Sri Lanka are something to behold. They are the size of a fingernail (before gorging themselves) and even have scary patterns of their carapaces. The owner of the restaurant where I contracted one set to it with tongs (rather than tweezers) and for a while it looked as if the beast would take a good piece of my flesh with it. The bite hurt, but applying tamarind paste to it amazingly helped!

I got a tick from walking in the woods yesterday. It was a tiny little thing, the size of a pin head, but it could swell up to the size of a pea. More importantly, tiny as it is, it could contain any number of lyme disease viruses, but I guess by the time I spotted it, it was too late to worry about that.

Anyway, I don't have any strong spirtits or solvents in the house, so I applied a thick blob of vaseline to the spot for at least three hours then went to bed. The vaseline rubbed off overnight and the tick was waving its little legs at me--still alive.

The solution? Clove oil! It's a universal anaesthetic (I used it to knock out aquatic invertebrates--sea lice in my case--with 5 drops per litre of sea water). It worked, but the downside is that I now smell of cloves!