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Paralysis Ticks
Hi All,
The purpose of this post is to provide a heads up on a little pest I encountered on Saturday afternoon, somewhere around Bantry Bay or the track behind the nursing home that runs onto Allambie Oval.
When visiting the bathroom post ride I found one of these guys with its head burrowed into my upper thigh under my trail shorts.
The reason I mention this is that the wonderful guy who ran the primary and high school academic coaching place that helped both my kids through school had a life-changing experience from one of these little bastards, which had a major impact on his business and family..
OK, enough of the alarmist stuff. Early detection, removal and cleansing of the bite site minimises exposure to the neurotoxin and risk of tick-borne parasite infection.
The article in the following link outlines current first aid best practice for tick removal:
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Good read, thanks for the post
...
They are worth watching for. I back onto the bush above Serrata trail and it is literally littered with ticks. There are both bush ticks, the brown ones, and paralysis ticks, more of a pale colour. In any given season I'd have up to 10 tick bites; my kids will generally have a few as will the dog. I'd say 5-10% are paralysis ticks.
Around 6 months ago I had a fairly nasty encounter. It was probably more from multiple bites over a period of time but I started to get a neck ache, head aches, sore lymph nodes and began getting a rash; small blisters over my body. I'm a bit of a skeptic for things like Lymes disease but after a quick "Dr Google" was off to the doctor very quickly. While there is no official evidence for Lymes disease in Australia there are absolutely issues of immune responses to ticks that can continue for a long time if the issue is not treated.
A good course of antibiotics later and I was sorted and now watch out for any affects more than a mild itching of the bite site a couple of weeks following.
With regards to removing ticks; either get a tick removal tool; any local pet shop will have them or tweezers. The trick is to twist while you pull. I've been told that it's not that big an issue if the head is not removed although it's not ideal as you're body is going to want to get that out... so the bite area can get infected.
One of the joys of our sport hey!
The practice being advised for tick removal this season (2015/2016) is to first dispatch the tick by application of a commercially available wart freezing device.
Classy!
There have been enough media reports of cases in Australia for me to have formed the view that their is a political blindness on this issue. The unwillingness of the hierarchy to engage Lyme disease protocols forcing sufferers to head overseas for effective treatment is pretty disgusting.
A mate of mine was a Veterinary Surgeon on the North Shore. About 5 yrs ago he developed arthritis that got so bad he had to stop being a surgeon. They then thought he had Parkinsons disease. Finally a couple of yrs ago he had to stop work completely. I heard a couple of months ago they now believe he has Lyme disease and there is a treatment in Germany that basically reverses the disease and you make a full recovery.
-double tap...
We back onto bush in the Blue Mountains and I have had a few ticks over the years. Recently I got home from work and our dog had a slight limp from his back left leg. Being a crazy dog I assumed he had just injured it running around stupid but I still checked him over. I found a tick on his front right shoulder that turned out to be a paralysis tick. Luckily we found it pretty early and he was back to normal by the next day.
Thanks for the great reminder!
there's a growing body of evidence to suggest they may also be responsible for meat allergies
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1993930...
lets hope it doesn't evolve to beer...
My son has Anaphylactic reaction to nuts and during a hospital test we met some people that had been bitten by ticks from Northern Beaches and had developed the meat and milk allergies. Very life changing for them. Cant imagine never having meat or milk again.
Pharmacists now recommend a cream to put on the tick and leave on, and the tick will drop off and die. Its is scabies cream Lyclear. Worth carrying some in the backpack. It stops the risk of trying to remove the tick and squeezing the toxins into you.
For dogs there is a new product called Nexgard. Its been out 12 months and so far they're finding it works well.
... when I lived in North Turramurra. Both in the garden and particularly when waking or riding in the gully between North Turra and Golden Jubilee. Tick and leech heaven down there. I've even managed to take a small tick to Melbourne with me, flying down for work on a Monday after working in the garden on the weekend. Used to get both the bigger (horse?) ticks and the smaller (grass?) ticks, the latter of which I understood had become more of a problem with the re-introduction of bandicoots to the suburbs after a decade or so of wild dog baiting around Ku-ring-gai Chase NP and surrounding bushland.
Had to be treated with antibiotics for a severe amount of biting around my left ankle and it is still an area of skin that gets dry and itchy from time to time. Reaction to the bigger ticks was also getting slightly worse each time, with bites causing swelling and weeping like a leech bite for days.
Fortunately, having moved only a few suburbs, I have had no further encounters in the past 5 years, even though we have bandicoots and rabbits in the back yard pretty regularly here in Killara. Must be on the drier side of the Pacific Highway ridge??
Double post
After a large red spot developed with an itchy area around it about 2/3rds of an A4 sheet of paper I went to see the quack last night.
Antibiotic and steroid cream for the next 10 days.
So no UCI sanctioned races for me for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully the out of competition testers don't pay me a visit.
Just stumbled across this great (or gross?) picture of this tick before and then after eating:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixodes_holocyclus
In the news yesterday
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-11/lyme-disea...
The investment in the position that Lyme disease doesn't exist here and persecution of those attempting to treat those with symptoms... you have to wonder about the motivation. Perhaps they perceive it as a threat of some kind to an interest they hold?
You would hope they'd be prompted to examine testing procedures if offshore labs are findings positives and they aren't, instead of digging in.
I'd have thought the strongest statement you could make is "We haven't found it yet". Saying "it doesn't exist here" ... how could anyone be so certain as to punish a doctor for treating a patient presenting with symptoms?
Don't believe the crap about Lyme disease.
The tests that exist for Lyme disease are very inaccurate.
The $10,000 test that everyone talks about and want the government to fund throws out around 40% false positives!! This is admitted by the company that produces it!!
Most people (Like me!!) had a bad reaction to the treatment for a tick bite. That bad reaction takes up to two years to get over. It manifests as Arthritis, lethargy. sleepiness and flu like symptoms, and there is no test to confirm that you are suffering from a reaction so many doctors think it is psychosomatic.
Miraculously, you recover in about the same time frame as the poor suckers who spend $40,000 going to Germany for what is simply a homeopathic remedy that no other country recognises as effective.
The best treatment is to avoid gluten and lactose for a year.
Grass ticks are simply nymph ticks.
Bandicoots have nothing to do with the spread of ticks. Bandicoots groom their young and eat the ticks. The baiting of foxes has allowed rabbits to proliferate and now they are the main host for ticks.
The reintroduction of bandicoots has actually seen the population of funnelwebs decline as bandicoots eat them.
The main predator of ticks is the bush turkey. But feral cats and dogs are chasing them away from suburban bushland.
My personal experience is you can (I did) develop an intolerance of Lactose which exists in milk and any mammal meat (Beef, Lamb, Pork etc.)
That intolerance dissipated over time and disappeared entirely within two years.
I know one poor child whose mother had kept him milk and meat free for 6 years (she thought it was permanent)until we had a chat. He now eats burgers and steak almost every day.
for the update. Very interesting.
I still have issues with the apparently hardened position of those saying it doesn't exist here.
Some degree of open-mindedness and humility around it would go a long way, instead of persecuting and sanctioning those trying to treat patients presenting with Lyme-like symptoms.
It's a bit like saying nobody cheats with drugs in cycling because no-one has tested positive, or - as was once said to me - that "no-one in my ($1.1bn turnover) company has committed fraud" because you haven't caught anyone yet. It just means the testing is way behind the where the cheaters are at. The best that can be said is that you haven't found a confirmed instance of it ... yet.
Do them ticks actually have a season? I am riding, trail running, and living in Australia since 5 years now and didnt have one single bite yet.