An Ounce of Prevention or a Pound of Cure

Lyme disease has been reported in all 50 states, and is most common in areas with woods, mice, deer and humans all residing in close proximity. While it can be a very serious disease, it's relatively easy to protect yourself and your family from being infected in the first place. 

1) Check for ticks

After working in the yard, hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, playing at the park or engaging in other outdoor activities, always do a "tick-check" when you're done. This includes both looking for ticks, but also running your hands up and down in both directions over your arms, legs & trunk. Have someone help you check your back, neck & scalp. Ticks are tiny, (the size of a poppy seed or smaller) and can look like a tiny, raised freckle, so make sure you look closely. How does this help? Experts believe that ticks have to be attached to you for at least 24 hours before they are able to infect you with the Lyme bacteria, so doing a tick check several times a day while engaged in outdoor activities is the best way to ensure that you won't be infected. 

2) Go long, or stay home.

While it's not always plausible, experts recommend wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts when hiking, camping, hunting or fishing to keep the ticks out. Further, they recommend tucking your pants into your socks, or using rubber bands to close off open pant legs. At the size of a poppy seed, you don't want to give these critters even one inch to make themselves at home...giving up the outdoor fashion statement is a lot better than giving up your good health...possibly for the rest of your life.

3) Use bug spray with DEET.

DEET can cause problems in too great quantities, so be careful with this one. I know a guy that became deathly ill on an African Safari, and after several months of tests back here in the US, they discovered it was DEET poisoning. This should not be an issue for the occasional family camping trip or the annual hunting trip. Personally, I would rather take my chances with the DEET poisoning, than deal with Lyme disease. Just as DEET products help guard against West Nile Virus by repelling Mosquitos, so too it repels ticks. Use it. You can buy it at WalMart.

4) Stay away from tick hotels.

Avoid tall grasses, (including sea grass) underbrush, weeds or other types of vegetation that are overgrown. When hiking in the woods, avoid brushing up against branches, grass or underbrush hanging in the trail, as this stuff is a favorite tick hang out. Don't kick, play in, or under any circumstance, roll in fall leaves. Make sure your kids understand this as well. Ticks love dead leaves and they are very opportunistic. When hiking, camping, hunting or fishing, DO NOT SIT AGAINST OR ON TREES OR TREE STUMPS. You may as well roll out a welcome mat. Ticks live in the bark of trees, and by doing these things, you are literally walking up to their front door.

5) Watch for rashes.

If, after any amount of time outdoors, you develop any sort of a strange rash, you should go to your doctor. Most people believe that Lyme disease causes a "bulls-eye" rash, but this is true in only about 30% of cases. Far more people develop solid, raised, red rashes, round or oblong shaped, that don't itch or burn. Most of them are large, with a circumference of more that 4". If there is any question about a rash, you should go to your doctor. Keep in mind that most doctors will not recognize a rash as being Lyme related unless it is a bulls-eye, so you have to be insistent that a test be done. Request to have a Western Blot done, which is far more accurate than the commonly used ELISA test. Since most people will not have enough antibodies at this stage to get a positive result, most Lyme specialists will do the antibiotics as a precautionary measure.

Since the rash is the skin's reaction to the very start of the bacterial infection, if you are treated with the standard two weeks of doxycyclene while the rash is still present, your chances of never developing full blown Lyme are very, very good. By the way, I went to a doctor in September 2003 for my rash, and was told it was an allergic reaction to something. Had I known about Lyme back then, and insisted on a test, I could have avoided years worth of illness, as well as the time and expense of trying to get better.

6) Be aware of the symptoms.

There are many people with Lyme disease that have no recollection of having been bit by a tick, or ever having had a rash. These people are usually the ones that take the longest to be diagnosed, thus giving the bacteria a free ticket to move about the body at will, wreaking havoc by doing two different things. First, the bacteria themselves release neurotoxins as part of their normal function. In late stage Lyme, the effects of this build up of neurotoxins can be dramatic and devastating. Secondly, the bacteria drop pieces of their protein lining all over the body's tissue as they migrate to different areas. Some scientists believe that this is one of the reasons for the extensive inflammation attributed to late stage Lyme, as the immune system tries to seek and destroy these proteins, and ends up attacking it's own healthy tissue. 

The most common symptoms of early Lyme are joint pain & swelling, muscle aches, weakness, fatigue (varying from mild to severe), unexplained fevers, and sometimes confusion and short term memory loss. In late stages, Lyme is often misdiagnosed as Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, MS, Parkinson's, ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease), and Alzheimer's. Obviously, by looking at that list, you can see how devastating this bacteria can be when allowed to take over. I have a list of my own specific symptoms in the post, "Lyme Symptoms."

I think I could have avoided getting Lyme in the first place, had I known about it at all, what to look for, and what to avoid. I had heard of Lyme, but had no clue about what it actually did, or what it would look like in real life. Hopefully, through my own experience, caused by lack of knowledge, I can help other people avoid coming down this same path.