How to Recognize Infected Tick Bites and What You Should Do Immediately

After a few weeks or even years, symptoms of Lyme disease can appear and when they do, it is as if it wasn’t directly associated with the tick bite. Symptoms tend to vary depending on the persons body chemistry, and when left untreated, symptoms can linger for months and even years.

• Nausea
• skin rash around the bite site
• flu-like symptoms
• fever or chills
• sore throat
• headache

• extreme fatigue
• shooting pains, numbness or tingling sensations in limbs
• swollen lymph nodes
• blurry vision, eye pain or swelling
• night sweats or unexplained chills
• Neck stiffness and migraines
• Muscle spasms

• Partial body paralysis
• Nervous system disorders (even seizures)
• Brain fog, state of confusion or memory loss
• Difficulty breathing, eating, talking and sleeping
• Intermittent pain in tendons, joints, muscles and bones
• Abnormal heartbeat

A tick can be as small as a pea, and found primarily within bushes and tall grass. They are able to jump onto clothes and our legs and animals throughout their fur. When warmer weather arrives in the start of spring into fall, they begin to come alive and wreak havoc. These small, blood-suckers are part of the arachnid family, and come with 8 limbs.

Often harmless, tick bites can pose no threat. When there are infected ticks, there is a deadly problem.Ticks thrive in moist areas of the body. Once they hop on you, they crawl up you searching for a spot to bite and suck your blood. Ticks stay attached to your skin after biting, and grow from the blood being drawn up. The Lyme-infected tick will inject the borrelia bacteria deep into the skin and into the blood stream, causing an infection to spread quickly. Lyme disease is spreading deep into southeast Canada and across the United States. It is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in North America.

If you plan on hiking or walking through forests and overgrown grass where ticks hang out, you will need to protect yourself from infected ticks:

• Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming from outdoors (within 2 hours) to wash off and find ticks that may be crawling on you.
• Check your children and pets thoroughly for ticks that may hide under the arms, in and around the ears, inside the belly button and in their hair.
• Examine clothing and/or put them into a dryer on high heat to kill ticks, if any.
• Wear closed-toe shoes and pull sock over pant legs.
• Wear long-sleeved shirts or use an insect repellent.
• Avoid walking through wooded and bushy areas with tall grass.
• Wear light-colored clothes to spot ticks easier.

Ticks will cling to your skin, so removing them within 12 hours is important to be safe from infection. Be very cautious and not to crush or rub the tick off your skin as it can break off the head and leave the sting penetrated in your skin. Crushing the tick with your fingers can squish out the bacteria onto your skin. Like insects that sting/bite, the bacteria or poison is within the stinger. Here are ways to remove a tick from your skin:

If the mouth-parts are already broken, try to remove them as much as you can without causing further distress to the affected area.

Clean the bite area with alcohol or a disinfectant. Undiluted apple cider vinegar can work as a natural disinfectant as well.

Put the dead tick in a sandwich bag, write the date you were bitten, and take it to the doctor when you start experiencing any of the symptoms mentioned above.

Use a fine-pointed tweezer, and with a steady hand, grasp the tick as close to the skin surface as possible.

Slowly pull the tick straight out without twisting or jerking to prevent the mouth-parts to break and remain in the skin.

A biologist who has studied tick biology and anatomy, and spent most of his life examining ticks/mites, and insects all over the world. He says this: A tick detaches if we irritate it, try to smother it or rub it off. You cannot smother a tick as they need only very little oxygen. It would take days, not minutes.

If you make the tick detach by itself, it has to dissolve the “cement” that holds their mouthparts in the skin. They secrete the “cement” into the skin when they first attach. That is why it takes some force to pull a tick out—their mouthparts are glued in the bite wound. So they have to dissolve the “cement” to get away. They do this by regurgitating stomach contents into the bite wound.

Since the Lyme bacteria (spirochetes) and other pathogens (Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Babesia, Bartonella, and many others) stay down in the tick’s stomach for some hours after the tick attaches, you don’t want the tick to bring up the Lyme and inject it into you.

If you pull the tick off the right way, before the pathogens move up out of the stomach and into you, that won’t happen, and you won’t get sick. If you make the tick detach itself by applying Vaseline, shea butter or coconut oil (as many sites suggest), you have a good chance of getting very sick for the rest of your life. The best approach is to do a thorough tick check at least every 12 hours (more often is better), and pull that tick off using a safe method.”

Believe it or not, cannabis can actually help to reduce the severe symptoms of Lyme disease.

Many studies are showing that cannabis reacts strongly against infections, and a book was written about it. Shelley White, the author, goes over her experience with lyme disease and how cannabis reacted with her condition.

She expressed that cannabis works effectively against peripheral neuropathy, a severe condition in those who suffer from lyme disease. Cannabis provides a healthier alternative to pain relief, with no side effects rather than opioids.

Lyme disease effects everyone in different ways and can be easier to treat in some than others. It don’t matter what stage you are in, cannabis can work to stop seizures, alleviate pain, improve sleep, and provides peace of mind.