Aspenn Alerts

Lyme disease remains one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the United States – and kids are especially vulnerable to infection. But one educational project in Santa Cruz is attempting to help, with a free class specifically designed to help kids learn about the dangers of tick bites and how to prevent them.

Free Skool Santa Cruz is a grassroots educations project independent of the California school system. Decentralized, they hold free classes in people’s homes, social spaces and even parks.

For the New Year, one exciting class they offer is Lyme Disease Prevention for the Whole Family. Hosted by anthropomorphic animals Dick the Tick and lovable Jo the Doe, it features Lyme disease prevention tips for kids and adults presented in the format of a two-hour show filled with music, games and fun.

And while the class is intended to be fun, it’s also educational. Because toddlers and preteens like to play outside, and aren’t aware of the risk of tick bites, they remain one of the groups most susceptible to the bite of ticks infected with the Lyme causing borrelia burgdorferi bacterium. This class helps parents and kids learn how they can protect themselves and each other.

For parents, a good tip to help prevent tick bites is to make sure your own back yard is tick free. Over 70% of all tick bites occur near the house, so getting rid of ticks in your yard or garden will significantly reduce the chances of your kids getting bitten.

A good place to start is by speaking to a tick control specialist, like one of the experts from Aspenn Environmental Services. They’ll be able to offer practical tick control tips, plus perform a yard spray for ticks that can help eliminate ticks during the most vulnerable stages of their life cycle.

In addition, follow up tick control treatments can help make your property tick safe all year round – and allow your kids and pets to play outside without facing the risk of tick bites and Lyme disease. Because kids are so vulnerable, this is an investment sure to pay off in the future.
 

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, North America has been hit with a remarkable acorn drought; with oak trees in New York, New England and Canada producing just a fraction of the number of acorns that they normally do. This has led to a tick control crisis.

As a result of this anomaly, authorities are preparing for what they believe will be a dramatic spike in Lyme disease infections.

“Oak trees and acorns are the fuel for the ecosystem that supports Lyme disease,” says deer tick expert Larry Dapsis, who serves as an entomologist in Barnstable County, Connecticut. “If there are no acorns, the mice population will crash and ticks in the nymph stage will be more likely to attach to a human or pet as a result.”

Statistics back up this theory very convincingly, with the Lyme disease risk hitting a two-year cycle that makes the year of an acorn shortage significantly more dangerous for people in tick-risk areas.

"When there is a decrease in the mouse population there is also a decrease in the tick-population,” Dapsis explains. “The problem is that there is a lag between the decrease in the mice and the decrease in the amount of ticks. Next year may prove to have a lower risk of Lyme disease, but we have to get through this year first."

For homeowners in high-risk areas, there are some things you can do to help protect your family during this high-risk season. The first, and possibly most important, is to get rid of ticks from your yard or garden.

You can do that in partnership with a tick control specialist; like the experts from Aspenn Environmental Services.
They’ll be able to help you eliminate ticks with a yard spray for ticks and tick spray treatment. Given that 70% of tick bites occur in the garden, this will go a significant way towards reducing your risk of tick bites and Lyme disease.

What’s more, just as the Lyme disease statistics indicate in years with acorn shortages, reducing the tick population from one season to the next helps keep ticks manageable; making future tick control efforts easier and more effective.

With Lyme disease set to be a bigger danger this year than most, investing in effective tick control is more important than ever. Make sure you start planning your tock control strategy today.

Lyme disease remains one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in America; and that uptick shows no signs of slowing. As more people are affected by the disease, some experts have come to agree that the most effective “treatment” for the disease is to prevent infection in the first place.

To this end, researchers from the Colorado State University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published a study in the Journal of Medical Entomology that highlighted the four important things that communities need to do in order to learn how to keep their residents protected from tick bites and Lyme disease:

• Identify how many animals in their community are infected with Lyme disease; and establish a causal link between animal infection and human infection. What percentage of animals need to be infected with the Lyme-causing Borrelia Burgdorferi bacterium before people start catching the disease?
• Study the geography of the community and identify “high risk” areas for tick bites and Lyme disease infection. Particular attention should be paid to woodland, forests and fragmented areas of grassland close to human habitations.
• Assess how successful past attempts to control Lyme disease have been. Studying, in particular, attempts to cull the wild deer population and tick spray treatments that have been performed by the township.
• Establish any links between human behaviors and infection rates; noting potentially increased Lyme disease rates in groups like hunters and farmers.

Gathering this information can help paint a fuller picture of Lyme disease region-by-region; and help communities identify the trends that cause increased infection rates.

However, facts and figures alone will not prevent tick bites or Lyme disease.

Although this research is valuable, our own tick control specialists at Aspenn Environmental Services have some more practical tips about how to prevent tick bites and protect your family from Lyme disease.

One of the most important is to establish some kind of tick control program in your home and garden; such as a yard spray for ticks or tick spray treatment that eliminates ticks.

Over 70% of tick bites occur in and around the home, so getting rid of ticks from your property is the one step that has perhaps the biggest impact on preventing tick bites and Lyme disease.

Just like with deer culling and township spraying, community attempts to reduce Lyme disease are worthwhile and important; but none of them can take the place of your own tick control efforts; so be sure to talk to an tick control expert about how to keep your property tick-free all year long.

We recently obtained details of a new Lyme Disease clinic being opened up in British Colombia – and there’s much we Americans could learn from it.

Lyme disease isn’t just an American problem – it occurs throughout the eastern seaboard of Canada as well. To meet the increasingly demand for treatment, the British Colombia’s Women’s Hospital is opening a new complex and chronic disease clinic intended to treat Lyme, in addition to chronic fatigue and fibromylgia.

Some of the details of this new clinic are interesting – and perhaps show how American Lyme disease clinics could be created to give a better quality of diagnosis and treatment.

Firstly, the clinic is almost entirely funded by the taxpayer – to the tune of over $1 million dollars. In the United States, many clinics are paid for by insurance companies, private hospitals or sponsored by pharmaceutical companies – creating serious concern about conflicts of interest.

Secondly, only 5 or 6 patients a day will be seen by physicians and trained nurse practitioners at the clinic. This is because major emphasis is being placed on symptomatic diagnosis, rather than the results of a blood test, which can take hours. It beats the traditional in-and-out diagnosis currently popular in the states.

It’s also an improvement over American diagnosis techniques because blood tests for Lyme disease are notoriously unreliable; giving false negatives in as many as 30% of tests.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the clinic exists because the public demanded it – something American medical establishments would be well advised to take note of. As Lyme became a growing problem, advocacy groups demanded a response from the Canadian government.

In the United States, advocates of so-called “chronic Lyme disease” comprise a much more powerful and vocal lobby – but continue to endure the derision and disdain of the mainstream medical community.

This lack of response ignores the very real possibility that current American protocol towards diagnosing and treating Lyme disease had serious flaws; and thousands of Americans might be living with the disease without knowing about it as a result.

Canada’s increasingly pro-active approach to dealing with Lyme disease – with the British Colombia clinic serving as a perfect example – highlight how inadequate American Lyme disease treatment continues to be; and how Lyme disease is a very clear and present danger to thousands of American families.

One way you can protect yourself and your family is to prevent the tick bites that carry the Lyme-causing borrelia burgdorferi bacterium. A good first start is to talk to a tick control specialist – like one of the experts from Aspenn Environmental Services. They can help get rid of ticks from your garden with a yard spray for ticks – and help keep your property tick free all year round with follow-up tick spray treatments.
Until American Lyme disease treatment catches up with its Canadian counterpart, tick control remains the best form of preventing the spread of Lyme disease.