ticks

Maudi

Hi .i do a fair bit of mountain biking and hiking ..hill walking etc here in the beautiful wicklow mountains..im hearing more and more about lyme disease.apparently caught from a parasitic tick..how serious a threat is it to those of us who spend a lot of time in the hills and woods..and what can be done to prevent contact with this nasty bug?

F.R.

Maudi wrote: »

Hi .i do a fair bit of mountain biking and hiking ..hill walking etc here in the beautiful wicklow mountains..im hearing more and more about lyme disease.apparently caught from a parasitic tick..how serious a threat is it to those of us who spend a lot of time in the hills and woods..and what can be done to prevent contact with this nasty bug?

Check Tick Talk out should answer most of your questions.

Alun

It's very serious, prevalent in Ireland, and unfortunately not all doctors here are even aware of it's existence let alone of how to treat it correctly. Until recently it wasn't a notifiable disease in Ireland so there were no real statistics on it, and many doctors believed incorrectly that we didn't have it in Ireland, but that has recently changed.

There are other nasties that can be transmitted by ticks as well as Lyme disease, such as TBE (Tick Borne Encephalitis.)

The best way to protect yourself is by checking for ticks after every walk. They'll manage to find a way in even through the tiniest chink in your clothing, so there's not a whole lot you can do really to prevent them getting in. They generally hang around in long grass so ankles and calves are a favourite place.

If you do find one, don't panic, remove it by pulling it out with a pair of tweezers around the mouth parts and keep an eye out for any red marks around the bite site, especially the famous bulls-eye rash that is indicative of Lyme's. You can bet special tweezers that make the job easier, available in all good pet shops (Dogs and cats get a lot of ticks too!)

By the way previous advice was to remove the tick by twisting it, but that advice has recently changed. Do NOT, smother it with vaseline, burn it off with a match head or any other method you might come across, this will only piss the tick off and cause it to disgorge it's stomach contents into your bloodstream which is not what you want.

As the poster above said, the TickTalk Ireland website will give you more details.

mecksimay

Wicklow Mountains National Park information: http://www.wicklowmountainsnationalpark.ie/LymeDisease.html