No matter how small a tick is, it can transmit dangerous diseases. How do you prevent a tick bite? And how do you remove a tick if you have been bitten?
How do you prevent a tick bite? You get most tick bites in the summer while gardening or taking a walk in nature. So when it’s hot, and when you walk around with uncovered body parts.
Dress well
A few simple measures can prevent a tick bite:
- When taking a nature walk, stay on the trails and avoid contact with grasses, shrubs and other vegetation.
- If that goes too far for you and if you really want to stroll through bushes, make sure you wear well-fitting clothing.
- Tuck your trouser legs into your socks, don’t wear shorts and put on a cap.
- What can also help is injecting your clothing with an insect repellent containing the substance DEET.
It is very important to check yourself thoroughly for tick bites in the summer, for example every evening, and certainly every time after you have been in nature. In general, ticks prefer skin folds, such as the groin, but they can appear anywhere on the body.
Remove as soon as possible
If a tick does bite you, remove it as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours. You can go to the doctor for this, but doing it yourself is also no problem.
Do it carefully and calmly. Do not jerk, pull, twist or squeeze the tick. Then you run the risk that the tick empties its stomach into your blood, with all the possible risk of infection that entails. Also do not start with oil, ointments, fire or alcohol, this also only increases the risk of infection.
What should you do then?
- Use special tick tweezers or tweezers.
- Clamp the tick as close to your skin as possible at the tick’s head, taking care not to pinch the tick’s back body. You should also not pull on the back body, because then the tick can tear in half.
- Gently pull the tick straight out of the skin, with slowly increasing force. Ticks often stick a bit crooked in the skin, so not perpendicular to the skin.
- Then disinfect the wound that has arisen with 70 percent alcohol or iodine.
- Don’t forget to disinfect the tick tweezers or tweezers themselves!
Lyme disease?
If you have removed the tick properly and quickly, the chance that you will become ill is very small. Also, just to reassure you, not every tick bite automatically means Lyme disease. Pay close attention to whether you get a red ring around the site of the bite in the weeks after the bite. Is that the case? Then consult your doctor!
