Lyme Disease Ticks

The bacterium that causes Lyme disease lives in certain animals such as mice, birds and small animals. The bacterium is harmless to the animals but affects humans.

Ticks are small spider like creatures with little legs and are a dark shade of red the size of a pin head. Ticks are parasites and suck blood from animals like mice and sometimes humans. This is how ticks get infected with the bacterium that causes Lyme disease and in turn infects humans. Thereafter, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease is not passed from human to human. However, only ticks infected with the bacterium will cause Lyme disease. Tick bites do not necessarily cause Lyme disease.

The Lyme disease ticks are very clingy and are very difficult to take off the skin; they become especially clingy once they bite you. The ticks carry the bacteria in their gut, and it travels to your skin through the tick's mouth. If you find the tick on your body within 24 hours after it has bitten you it is possible that you may not develop Lyme disease, even if the tick is infected.

It is not known for certain if only infected ticks that bite. Humans may not notice the Lyme disease causing tick clinging on to the skin. This is often due to the tick being very small and tick bites do not hurt. When a physician queries from a person diagnosed with Lyme disease if they were bitten by a tick the patient would not be in a position to answer.

After the infected tick bites you the bacteria multiply and travel in the bloodstream to other parts of the body and spread the symptoms. The part of the human body that is affected by this bacterium is the skin, heart, joints and the nerves.

If once bitten by a tick, even though it is not known if the tick is the carrier of the Lyme disease bacterium, one should not panic. Use a pair of tweezers and grasp the tick's body as close to your skin as possible and pull it upward until the tick comes out. Do be careful not to squeeze or twist the tick's body. If there are any parts of the tick left in the skin, carefully remove them with the tweezers. Rub in a good antiseptic to the bite area and wash your hands with hand-wash or bacteria killing liquid. If a rash develops see a doctor.

Discuss It!