Tips To Keep Yourself Safe From Ticks, Lyme Disease
By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - With the fall season well underway, there's something you might want to think about after spending time outdoors: ticks and Lyme disease. While this is a bad time of the year for both, there are preventative measures you can take to protect yourself.
Tick season runs from the end of summer through the fall, but Ram Nambiar, acting director in the Bureau of Epidemiology at the Pennsylvania Department of Health says most cases of Lyme disease are reported in the fall because, "they could get the tick bite in the middle of the summer, and then some people are not going to immediately go to the doctor. Then it gets reported and that's when we get all our cases."
Nambiar says Lyme disease comes from a specific type of tic which can attach to someone who spends time outdoors in a grassy area with a lot of trees or leaves.
So what's the best way to remove a tick?
"If you have some tweezers, you're trying to grasp the tic as close to the skin as possible in an upward fashion with even pressure, making sure that the mouth is removed from its attachment with the skin," Nambiar said
He adds if you're spending time outdoors, "wear protective clothing, you're using DEET and inspect yourself. Everyone should be pretty good with that."
After all, there's a lot to do outside this time of the year.
