Ticks are really bad this year! A client that’s been coming to me for several years now, was telling me that she is currently being treated for Lyme disease. She says she has seen 14 ticks this year while gardening in her yard near Roxalana Road in Dunbar, WV. This includes three black-legged ticks which are the type of ticks that cause Lyme disease. Last year, she didn’t see a single tick!
She says that when she first saw the tick, she thought she had a black speck of dirt or something on her leg. She quickly brushed it off, or at least, she thought she did. The next time she saw it, it had embedded itself in her leg. A week later, she saw that she had developed a red rash around the area of the tick bite. The doctor treated her with 10 days of doxycycline. Apparently, if caught early enough, 10 days is all that is needed, not 21.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time she developed a bullseye rash. In 2016, she didn’t see a tick bite her and wasn’t aware of the significance of a bullseye rash and the doctor told her that it looked like she’d gotten bit by something. She thought he meant a spider and didn’t get treatment for an entire year. Over the course of that year, she started getting random joint pains in her knees, hands, etc, and other symptoms that all went away after treatment and haven’t come back.
Of course, not all black-legged ticks carry Lyme disease, but WV is among the top 16 states in the United States for Lyme disease. There has been a recent significant increase in the number of cases of Lyme disease according to an article I recently read.
You may be wondering why I chose to talk about ticks in a blog focusing on hair. Well, ticks can get picked up by your hair. This is especially true for those with long hair that spend time outdoors. For instance, long hair is more likely to come into contact with grass while bending over gardening or plant and tree leaves while hiking. Ticks cling to grass and other plants, waiting for humans or other animals to come along.
It’s important to do a tick check when coming in from outdoor activities. You may want to consider getting a lice comb. The kind with the metal teeth work the best. In addition to lice, the comb could remove ticks picked up in the hair.