Ticks are really small, but they can cause serious harm to your health. Here are some ways to pull off feeding ticks:
1. Check your body for ticks. If you’ve been doing outdoor activities, you might have picked up one of these small mites. Inspect your body for a tiny, dark brown or gray spot, with a size ranging from the size of a dot, to about the size of a head of a pin (it can inflate once it starts sucking in blood). You should pay special attention to your chest area, groin area, and the backs of your knees. Also, if you find one tick, don’t stop there: there may be more of them on your body.
Since a tick bite is usually painless and almost unnoticeable at the onset, it pays to inspect your body for ticks thoroughly after outdoor activities. Do check your body also for symptoms that you’ve been bitten; eventually, a spot bitten by a tick can develop itching, redness, burning, and some pain.
Once you do spot a tick on your body, it’s very important that you get it off right away, since it would feed on your blood and could transmit disease to you when pathogens in their mouth secretions get into your skin and blood.
2. Know how to pull off the tick. When you do spot a tick on your skin, it’s very important that you practice extreme care when attempting to remove them. That’s because there’s a possibility that the tick’s mouth could get detach from it and get dislodged in your body, and this could cause more pathogens to infect you. Never use your bare hands to attempt to pick out the tick.
Carefully place the tips of the tweezer as close to the mouth of the tick. You should also try to grasp the tick as close to your skin as possible.
With an even pressure, try to loosen the tick’s grip on your skin. Do not squeeze the tick’s body. You may have to work around the tick’s body for a few seconds to make it loose its hold on your body, before pulling it out firmly from your skin.
If you do find that the mouth has been dislodged, don’t panic; just try to pull off that remaining part after you’ve pulled off the body. This may be a trickier thing to do, though, so it’s also good that you consult your physician.
If you don’t feel comfortable with pulling off the tick, then ask somebody with a steady hand to do it for you.
3. Know what to do after. It’s a good move to keep the tick inside a plastic bag, for identification purposes. This is because some symptoms may appear a few days after you’ve been bitten, and it will help with the diagnosis if the doctor knows what exactly caused it, in the first place.
Sterilize your tweezers with alcohol, and clean the area you’ve been bitten with soap and water. You could also use a disinfectant like Betadine. Wash your hands thoroughly.
There you have it! These are just some of they ways to pull of feeding ticks. Good luck, and hope this helped you out!