What should I do to avoid ticks other than wear particular clothing?

Question

Today I've learnt that one can't vaccinate against Borreliose, also known as Lyme Disease. I've thought that I can't get that (yeah, that was stupid) and so didn't really care about ticks. However, since one really has to care about them, what should one do to avoid a bite in the first place?

Edit:

I don't ask for clothing only. I ask for tricks (like put your pants in your socks), chemical tools (creams etc.), natural tools ("cover yourself in honey" or something =)), landscapes/specific places to avoid, time periods to deny and maybe even special kinds of movements to make or to avoid (and so on).

Answer 1

You will pick up ticks by spending a lot of time outdoors, but I routinely find them after walking across 10 ft of grass between my car and my front door. No matter how much prevention you practice, keep an eye out for Lyme symptoms, and go to the doctor for antibiotics if they show up. A vaccine would be much nicer.

The socks-in-your pants method is very popular, but I've never been convinced it actually works: I usually find ticks around my head and neck, and deer ticks (the type that spread Lyme disease) are so tiny that it takes very little for them to hide. I feel like I'd need a skin tight light colored jumpsuit for this to be truly effective. Lighter colored clothing makes it easier to see ticks, but they still look like specks of dirt.

DEET is very effective against mosquitoes, but only slightly effective against ticks. Permethrin treated clothing is much, much more effective. You can buy treated clothing (such as InsectShield), or you can buy the chemical and do it yourself (Read all instructions carefully). I don't have the reference with me, but I read one study where ticks that walked on the clothing fell off and died within a foot of crawling. This is what I prefer to use when I'm hiking. Treated pants at the least, and a treated shirt if it's available.

The other thing to do is check yourself often. Look at your legs and clothing every time you stop. When you stop for the day, look yourself over as much as possible. If you don't have a mirror, have someone else check your back, where you can't see.

Ticks prefer to hang out on the tips of plants, usually in the sun. They have an instinct to reach the highest places possible. This does not mean you won't find them in the shade, but if you walk through a sunny field during tick season, you've got a very good chance of picking one or more up.

They prefer to bite you in the warmest places possible, ideally someplace with some cover. The head and groin area are most popular, but I've also had one on my hip and on my neck.

Answer 2

Probably the single most important thing I do is to tuck the bottom of my pants into the socks. Ticks like to crawl upwards. If they drop onto your feet, they will crawls upwards on your leg looking for the first bit of soft skin with blood vessels close to the surface. If they can get inside your pants, they will find such skin eventually. Otherwise, they'll crawl harmlessly on the outside of your pants where they may drop off after a while and where you have a better chance of spotting them before they get to your neck.

Of course this only works if you are hiking with shoes and long pants. Hiking barefoot with long pants is the worst tick-wise, and not recommended for that reason. Hiking in shorts works because you can sense the ticks crawling up your legs much better when pants aren't rubbing against them. The hairs on your leg can do their job and act as a early warning system. In that case, barefoot is actually a little better tick-wise, because you have more of a chance to feel ticks on their journey upwards.

I've never had a tick attach anywhere on the feet or legs. I think the skin isn't suitable for them there.

Answer 3

Coincidentally one of the physicians of Tropical Disease at a major Toronto Hospital has recently done a write up on ticks and how to deal with them. You can find the full article here.

Here is the relevant part in case the link breaks in the future.

What you can do: Insect repellants are effective at keeping ticks away. Dr. Keystone also recommends wearing long sleeves and pants when visiting areas where you know there may be ticks, and tucking your pants into your socks.

Dr. Keystone also stresses the importance of tick checks after leaving an area where ticks are common. He recommends checking your whole body, paying particular attention to the hairline, underarms, groin, ankles and behind the knees. He says the tick will look like a small mole.

If you find a tick, carefully remove it using tweezers.

“Do not use your fingers and do not apply anything to the area. You need to grasp the tick right up against the skin, and pull it off in a smooth motion, making sure to remove the tick and its mouth bars,” says Dr. Keystone.

If you find a tick on your skin 36 hours after being exposed, Dr. Keystone says not to panic, but to seek medical attention.

“What we now know is that if you receive a single dose of doxycycline within 72 hours after removal of a tick that has been attached for more than 36 hours, infection can be prevented,” he says.

Public health experts recommend that if ticks are removed they should be placed in a Ziploc bag and sent to the lab for identification.

One thing mentioned in the article is you needn't be too paranoid about catching Lyme disease from ticks as:

...not all ticks carry Lyme disease, and Dr. Keystone says if a tick has been on the skin less than 36 hours, you aren’t at risk of contracting the disease.

So just keep vigilant and check yourself, or buddy up and have each person check the other, to make sure there aren't any ticks hitching a ride.

Answer 4

• avoid grass and shrubs;
• keep your clothings shut tight, i.e. there should be as less places for the tick to get to your body as possible; wrap socks around pants, wear long-sleeved shirt, put something on your head;
• inspect yourself from time to time - especially after you've been to dense plants area;
• very simple, but still effective (saved me a couple of times), stop for a couple of seconds and listen to your feelings - when tick is crawling through the hair on your leg it is very easy to feel, but you should stop moving, because otherwise this feeling would be overrided by one from pants rubbing against your body;
• tick will try to get to some specific areas of your body - underarm and crotch are the most popular - it would take some time for the tick to get there and these areas must be checked when you're off the wild or before going to sleep in a camp.

Answer 5

Ticks are arachnoids and have an interesting life-cycle that you must understand if you want to avoid them.

What this diagram doesn't explain is how the tick seeks a host. There may be as many as five blood meals in the life of a tick. Each is followed by moulting after which the tick climbs tall grass. It hangs from the end of a frond, waving barbed front legs in the air. When a potential host brushes the tick or bumps the plant ticks drop. If they land on the host they climb. When a suitable site is found, a barbed proboscis is inserted into the host and gorging begins. Those that miss the host must climb the grass for another try. Casualties to birds are tremendous; each tick lays about ten thousand eggs of which only two survive to lay more eggs.

Moulting requires moist conditions. As a result, ticks seeking a new host are most common two to three days after rain breaks a dry period. In dryer climates like Australia (where I live) you can avoid ticks altogether by staying away from long grass in the week after rain.

If you own the property of interest then I suggest acquiring some guinea fowl. They are voracious bug hunters and will annihilate the local ticks.

Answer 6

(I'm adding this as an answer, because it addresses some points in the original question as well as supplementing the tips given by other answerers, but although it's kind of supplementary, it is too long to be a comment. If that's not correct SE etiquette, please let me know, but I thought the guidance was important enough to be added here.)

Avoidance through terrain choice

While a lot of good advice has been given here about dressing, self-inspections, and chemical repellents, I'll skip directly to your question about avoidance: while found everywhere, ticks prefer warm, damp climates and tend to be most populous on islands and coastal areas. Going inland and to higher ground (where there is less vegetation for them to hide in, and also fewer mammals to attract them) would help here. The CDC has an interesting set of species distribution maps for ticks in the USA. In short, weather and location have a great effect on your likelihood of encountering ticks.

Avoidance with darker-coloured clothing

Some studies have found that ticks are more likely to be attracted to you if you wear lighter-coloured clothing. Darker colours, on the other hand, seem to be less favourable.

Removal tool

One item which I would always carry in an outdoors first aid kit is the tick removal tool. They greatly reduce the risk of squeezing the tick when attempting removal, as can happen with fingernails or tweezers, which can force it to vomit inside the bite. They do this by being specially-designed to grasp the tick firmly, while avoiding lateral pressure on the tick's body. There are two main styles of removal tool:

• the fork type, where you slide a narrowing V just behind the tick's head
• the pincer type, which has a spring-driven pair of pincers, and continues to hold the tick after removal

Removal technique

With or without a specialised removal tool, tick removal technique is still a much debated issue: should you pull straight, or twist as you remove it? The current position of the CDC is to pull straight. This is because twisting can cause the head to break off (the exception here is removal tools which are specially designed to use a twisting motion), and thus presents a lower risk. The general guidelines are:

• the tick's body must not be compressed, as this can force out saliva and gut contents which may contain disease-causing organisms
• the tick should not be irritated or injured, as this may result in it regurgitating (vomiting) saliva and gut contents along with any disease-causing organisms
• the mouth parts of the tick should be cleanly removed along with the rest of its body

Keep the specimen in case of infection

If you have any concerns about the nature of your tick bite (or especially if you see any redness around the bite area - concentric red rings are a sign of Lyme's Disease), seal the tick in a Zip-Loc bag and freeze it. This is because in addition to Lyme's Disease, ticks can also carry and transmit dozens of other nasty things (also listed at CDC), including bartonellosis, ehrlichiosis, encephalitis, ricketts, and more.

Bringing the source tick to your hospital if you find an infection can help the medical staff to quickly identify what the creature might have been carrying.

Answer 7

Disclaimer: I have to deal with the possibility of 'mingling' with Ticks on an almost daily basis during the summer. And generally speaking am pretty up to date on 'tick stuff' however do not only take my word for it - Lyme Disease is serious - definitely look stuff up.

• First off, Lyme Disease is only transmitted by certain 'subspecies' of ticks. (If you're in Canada, those subspecies aren't as prominent so you're already in for some luck)

• Second off, when a tick feeds on you, they stay latched on to feed for up to 3 days, it is in the latter days that they begin secreting stuff (read up) and that's when the risk of contracting the disease increases (IF the tick is a carrier).

• And third (edited: see comments) in my experience, ticks do - like other bugs - die in extreme heat and become comatose in cold, in my case I have never found any on me after a hot shower.

What this means is that regardless of precautions and prevention, if you check yourself out quickly and take a nice (long) hot shower everyday, you should be fine.

If you get bitten and find it right away there are very little chances of contracting the disease, obviously you should play it safe and keep the tick by removing it with tweezers and having it checked out. If they find out it is carrying the disease you can get treatment before symptoms start showing - which normally guarantees you'll be fine. The disease is nasty when it develops unchecked with no prevention/intervention - once it's done its damage, it's mostly irreversible.

Myself, I almost go and roll around in tall grass and stuff so I like taking a few extra precautions. Permethrin on clothes really works like a charm, if you're lucky enough to spot one that lands on you, you'll see them making a run for it. It even tends to repel mosquitoes... Obviously wearing clothes that aren't loose and cover you, make it almost impossible for any to get to you. (Unless you go sleeping in a tick infested area)

Ticks like letting themselves drop on heat sources below by climbing to the top of tall blades of grass, or branches etc... If there's nothing around from where stuff could drop on you, that's just again, less chances of getting in contact with the nasty bugs. It isn't true that they'll jump from the ground into your face.

Answer 8

I'm a bit surprised to see that nobody else as suggested this, but powder the top of your shoes/socks and bottom of your pants with sulfur. Powdered sulfur is available at local feed/ranch stores, and maybe even Wal-Mart or Lowes, depending on where you are. It's inexpensive and you can use an old sock as a very effective applicator.

So as the others have suggested, tuck your pants into your boots (or socks if you don't have boots), but then powder around the opening on both sides with sulfur.

Answer 9

Stay inside. Being outside is fraught with dangers. There is good advice here. I lean more to the "inspection after the fact" camp. I don't think prevention is statistically better than inspection enough to warrant the expense and time required to do so. I believe it would detract from the experience and start the excursion off with a mindset of fear instead of awe and wonder.

Nature is wild and wonderful. Our interactions with it require us to be prepared. Become educated in locating, killing, and removing ticks in the manner you can do so reliably. The best method of preventing Lyme Disease is the action you will consistently perform. Not some fancy tool or chemical you can't use effectively or regularly.

Answer 10

Around where I live, there is a very small species of tick that does not carry the disease, but causes a very unpleasant itch. Seeing them (before or after the fact) is difficult (magnifying glass stuff). The one tip that seems to work is adding about a cup of Dettol to your bath water (this product may not be available where you live). Also seems to work on other species, obviously.

I have spent a lot of time outdoors when younger and still do occasionally now. Had tick bite fever too, many years ago - not pleasant. My experience is that you can not prevent being bitten 100%, but you can do a lot to prevent getting the disease. It should be sufficient to check yourself every evening. Unfortunately they do tend to crawl up to body areas not always easy to check by yourself (back, arm pits, crotch, and between buttocks) so it is helpful if you have a non-squeamish partner that can go over such areas of naked skin very thoroughly - else a hand mirror is probably the best you can do.

Do note that the information below elicited contradictory comments, and in fact is contradicted by some "official" websites (while corroborated by others). As always, you yourself are ultimately responsible for your actions and choices. It would seem prudent to get professional advice from the appropriate healthcare professional.

As you probably know, once you find a tick, do not pull it off. Its mouth parts may break off and remain behind in your skin, which will still infect you with the disease. The easiest for me is to paint the critter with nail varnish, so it suffocates and falls off by itself (they have breathing openings somewhere in their body, not their face like humans). Other methods may be covering it in petroleum jelly (which sounds as if it can rub off), or press the red-hot tip of a twig from the camp fire (or a blown-out match) against its body to kill it (you need a steady hand for that... not recommended).