This year’s most useful Lyme disease package comes from Rodale’s Backpacker magazine, and the most useful link in the ten-part feature offers these tips on How to Avoid the dreaded disease:
Steer clear of marshy areas, and minimize your contact with high grass, brush, and woody shrubs.
Wear long pants and tuck them into your socks to prevent ticks from crawling up your
legs. Tick researchers wind duct tape around the sock-pant junction to
keep ticks out.
Wear long sleeves and tuck your shirt into your pants to keep ticks off of your torso.
Wear light-colored clothing so you can spot ticks more easily.
Spread deet on your skin, or spray the insecticide permethrin on your clothing.
At least once a day, do a tick check. Think little-nymphs, which spread Lyme disease
far more than adults, are usually smaller than a tiny freckle.
I’m in the Bay Area south of San Francisco and have been picking the ticks out of my clothes and off my body pretty much every weekend since March — it was a rainy spring and the little buggers were out in force. Fortunately all mine were of the dog tick variety (knock wood).
I found that every time I got off trail in tall grass, I’d end up with a half-dozen of them on me. My motto was “when you stop, they hop.”
Other hikers might be interested in a hiking related blog I have at http://tommangan.net/twoheeldrive … it’s updated most days.
This is a great blog, I plan to link to it from mine — keep up the good work!
Writer Wants Cases
Crofton, Maryland – USA: Rebecca Nunno is a mother, sister, runner, friend and technical writer who also happens to have chronic Lyme disease.
Like many with this debilitating disease she has suffered for years from a variety of physical, neurological and psychological symptoms before she was able to find an accurate diagnosis and safe and effective treatment plans.
Nunno is now writing a book about Lyme disease and hopes to use what she has learned during her ten year struggle to help others.
She would like to invite people who have the disease to send their personal stories for possible inclusion.
Nunno is currently collecting Lyme disease case histories on her website entitled http://www.sickfromatick.com. If you are interested please forward your case.
Lyme Sufferers can use her book to:
Find accurate diagnostic tools for detecting lyme disease
Find safe and effective treatment plans for lyme disease
Find lyme-literate practioners
Steps to overcome the challenges ‘when life gives you lymes’
Help for pregnant mothers, newborns and children suffering from lyme disease and their co-infections
Understand why Lyme disease is often missed in children and how to avoid having your child undiagnosed or misdiagnosed as having a behavioral problem when the source of their health problem is lyme disease
Steps to avoid receiving and transmitting lyme disease to others (intercourse, pregnancy, breastfeeding, blood and organ)
What to do when antibiotics fail
How to heal when you have both lyme disease and heavy metal toxicity
Understand the legal rights of lyme disease victims in cases when denied health care freedom, access to accurate health information and needed health care resulted in personal injury, disability, discrimination and financial ruin
How to avoid becoming one of the many lyme disease sufferers who are routinely misdiagnosed or undiagnosed for years (Mental Illness, Multiple Sclerosis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Behavior Problems, Alzheimer’s Disease, Lupus, Parkinson’s disease, Trigeminal Neuralgia, Attention Deficit Disorder, Autism, Asthma and Blame the Patient/All in Your Head)
How innumerable cases of undiagnosed/untreated lyme disease cases end in public tragedies and crime (advanced lyme neuroborreliosis)
Find the best types of safe and effective protection against ticks
A brief description of the cost of lyme disease to consumers
Learn how money keeps things ticking against lyme sufferers and practitioners who want to help them
Who is profiting from the denial?
An explanation of the risks and ineffectiveness of lyme vaccines
For more information contact Rebecca Nunno, rebeccanunno@sickfromatick.com