LIMITING LYME: LIFE-SAVING TIPS TO KEEP TICKS AT BAY
Ever wondered if you should go to the doctor for a suspicious looking insect bite or treat the bite at home? If you like to garden, walk your dog, hike, camp, picnic or just enjoy the outdoors, please read on and learn how to protect yourself from ticks.
Gloria Kim is the co-founder and president of Limiting Lyme, an organization that offers tick-borne disease awareness and prevention education. WFWP Hackensack invited her to give an educational presentation about the dangers of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses on Sunday, September 15th, 2019, at a restaurant in Moonachie, New Jersey.
Gloria’s eldest son contracted Lyme disease 13 years ago and he has not fully recovered, so she feels it is very important to raise awareness and regularly offers workshops to inform people how to protect themselves and their loved ones from disease-carrying insects.
Here are some of the tips she gave us:
Before venturing outdoors, apply an insect repellent with minimum 20% DEET or picaridin. For a long-lasting effect, spray 0.5% permethrin, which has a bonding agent, to clothing and shoes to repel ticks and mosquitoes for up to 30 days (but be sure to keep permethrin away from cats - it is toxic to them).
When enjoying outdoor activities such as hiking, walk in the middle of the path, not on the side, so as to avoid contact with ticks searching for their next meal in the grass and bushes.
Wear light-colored clothing and tuck in loose shirts into pants and pants into socks.
When you return home, do tick checks on your body, especially behind the ears, in your hair, underarms, between your legs, behind the knees and private areas.
It is also good to shower within two hours from coming home to wash away ticks that have not latched on to your skin.
Ticks do not like heat. To be very safe, put your clothes in the dryer for 20 minutes after coming in from the outdoors. If dirty, then wash them in hot water and dry them. Why? Because ticks can live in very warm, wet environments for extended periods of time.
In addition to giving us this advice, Gloria also shared about the benefits of being a citizen scientist, collecting ticks you find and having them tested for data.
Each participant then received a little kit of items for tick prevention that included pamphlets, insect repellent lotion, tick identification cards, tick remover cards, etc.
Gloria, we salute you in your efforts to further educate the public of this very serious illness! Thank you for coming to Moonachie to share your expertise!
For more information, you can contact Gloria at gkim.limitinglyme@gmail.com or
visit her website at limitinglyme.org.
Editor’s Note: WFWP Hackensack member Olivia Vozza also contributed to this article.
