Bad Year For Ticks in California

The winter of 2012 is proving to be one of the worst seasons for ticks in California. Ticks which transmit diseases such as Lyme disease can be found everywhere from the California coastline to the coastal foothills to the Sierra Nevada foothills. Ticks typically hang onto grasses and brush near ground level. I saw a patient this week who after a hike at Folsom Lake, found that her dog was covered with over 40 ticks!!!

 How to avoid ticks and Lyme disease :

1. When hiking, stay on trails or dirt roads and avoid narrow, single-track trails.
2. Keep your dog on a leash and don't allow your dog to wander off into the grass and brushy areas.
3. Consider using special tick repellents such as a “Preventic” tick collar or a liquid repellent such as “Frontline Plus” on your dogs.
4. Wear full length hiking pants, not shorts, and tuck them into your socks.
5. Before you get home from your hike, or as soon as you get home, check your dogs for ticks. Use a tick comb to carefully go through the hair on head, around the ears, and on the neck, chest, shoulders, front leg pits and the abdomen.
6. Remove any attached ticks using a special tick removal device such as a “Tick Nipper”, or tweezers.
7. When you get home, change your clothes while standing in the bathtub or shower.  Look for ticks on your clothing, or even shake your clothes to see if any ticks fall out. Do a “tick check” by looking at your naked body, front and back sides carefully. Look for small ticks, which are as small as the size of poppy seeds. You might need a friend or family member, to do the looking for you, on the back side of your body. Wash your clothes in the washer hot cycle immediately, and dry the clothes at the highest clothes dryer temperature.
8. Ticks tend to crawl on your skin for an hour or two before they settle down and bite you in a dark, moist, protected spot. Common areas for tick bites include behind the knees, in the groin area, bellybutton, armpit, or even on the back of the neck.
9. If you find a tick attached to yourself, remove it carefully using a “Tick nipper” or tweezers. Put the tick in a plastic container or a Ziploc bag with one drop of moisture on a cotton ball, to keep the check from drying out completely. The tick can be tested for Lyme disease by a local laboratory. If you get a tick bite, seek medical attention right away. Consider taking prophylactic antibiotics. Look for a bull's-eye rash at the site of the tick bite, which is 3 inches or more in diameter and occurring after 7 to 21 days. Also watch for a flulike illness within days to weeks of a tick bite.