Go Retire Psychiatrist

I was struck by how much ticks and tick-borne illness is in the news lately, although it shouldn’t be surprising as it’s that time of year for people to be outside in the garden or the woods.

There’s a great podcast on Rounding@IOWA on tick borne illness that I thought was pretty interesting. I was also reminded of the time just last month I picked a tick out of my wife’s hair. That was the day she neglected to apply DEET.

The first 40 minutes of the podcast is pretty much for doctors and science nerds (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). But in the last 10 minutes or so there was excellent guidance for preventing tick-borne illness.

This tends to be really simple things like wearing DEET but also includes “nerdy” things like wearing really bright colored clothing (makes the ticks really stand out) and sticking your pant cuffs inside your socks, which makes it harder for ticks to find your skin.

Another interesting and helpful thing I learned from this podcast was that sometimes, if you find a tick on your skin and pick it off with tweezers within 24 hours, that may sometimes prevent illness from occurring in the first place.