Tick bite – how to avoid it, how to remove it correctly

It is the time when city dwellers are eager to relax in nature, and the garden plots require care and attention. But we should not let our guard down. Early spring is the time of activation of ixodid ticks, blood-sucking arthropods that inhabit the forest and wooded areas.

How dangerous is a tick bite?
Because of its size, the parasite is almost invisible until it pumps blood. Once on the body, the tick starts looking for a suitable tender place to suck on a person. This can be the groin area, armpits, collarbone area, abdomen and back. There is no pain after a tick bite – the saliva contains powerful substances with an analgesic effect. After three to four days, the parasite swells several times with blood and falls off.

The danger of ticks is not in the bites, but in the fact that they spread pathogens, transferring them from animals to humans through the blood. Parasites carry encephalitis, a serious disease that affects the central nervous system. These spiders can also infect plague, tularemia, borreliosis, brucellosis, typhoid fever.

Where can you find the tick
These blood-sucking parasites inhabit mixed and deciduous forests, sometimes found in urban parkland. They are afraid of heat, so they are active in the early morning, on cloudy days or in the evening. The tick waits for prey by sitting in the grass, on trees or bushes. Clinging to a passerby or animal, it takes quite a long time to find a place to bite, so you can get rid of the parasite even before the bite.

What does a tick bite look like?
Detect a tick in the skin is simple: a black dot with a slight redness around it may actually be this arthropod. Signs of a tick bite appear when the parasite’s saliva enters the wound. Itching and redness of the tick bite is accompanied by such categories as children, the elderly, allergic people and people with weakened immune system.

How to remove a tick correctly?
Having found out how a tick bite looks like and having found the parasite on the skin, it is necessary to remove it immediately. The bloodsucker is extracted with tweezers, turning it around its axis. The tool should be kept perpendicular to the surface of the skin.

How do you get a tick with thread? A strong thread is firmly tied in a knot directly near the head, then the ends of the thread are pulled apart and gently rotated counter-clockwise, thus unscrewing the tick.

The tick should be removed very carefully without squeezing the abdomen, because you can accidentally squeeze its contents together with pathogens into the wound. Nor should the body be torn – segments left in the skin can lead to suppuration and inflammation/.

If the head does remain in the wound, the bite is disinfected with absorbent cotton soaked in alcohol, and then a flame-quenched, sterile needle is used to remove the head. Even if there are no symptoms of a tick bite, the removed bloodsucker should be tested in a laboratory to exclude the possibility of infection with borreliosis or encephalitis. In this case, you should always have a first aid kit with everything you need on hand.

Tick-borne viral encephalitis
If bitten by a tick, there is a possibility of contracting encephalitis. In those who fall ill:

appear quite severe headaches,
General malaise is observed;
joints and neck aches;
Sometimes the temperature rises;
Nausea and dizziness may occur.
These symptoms and a tick bite do not always mean that a person has become ill with encephalitis, but it is necessary to consult doctors. It is worth remembering that the disease is transmitted not only by the encephalitis tick, it is infected by drinking milk, so this product must be boiled.

Borreliosis
Borreliosis is a quite common disease that is transmitted by ticks. The main symptoms of the disease are reddening of the bite site and slight itching. Borreliosis can run symptomless and only after a month will manifest itself in malaise, swollen lymph nodes, muscle and joint pains.

In general, if found a tick bite, what to do almost everyone knows, too often this situation occurs. At the same time in the arsenal of modern medicine there are effective means to restore health after a parasite attack.