Tick Diseases
There Are Quite A Few More Tick Diseases Than Meet The Eye
Lyme Disease, one of the most prominent and feared tick diseases reported, is often fatal and is contracted through the smallest ticks. The deer tick, the Lone Star tick, and the black-legged tick are the usual culprits, primarily spreading their poison during their nymph stages when the spring time feeding frenzy is running full steam ahead. Common preventions for tick diseases include DEET and permethrin as repellents for outdoor use on both the skin and the clothing, wearing tightly fitted long sleeves and pants with the legs tucked under the socks, and avoiding dense brush, field, forest, and swarm areas during the spring and early summer months. During this rampant feeding time, you should always inspect yourself, your children, and your pets after a romp outdoors.
Some tick diseases cause flu like symptoms, and can hit you hard even if you don’t realize that you have been bitten by a tick. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is one of these baffling and inconvenient diseases, and is caused by the tick with the same name, the Rocky Mountain Wood Tick. The American dog tick, not to be confused with the common and harmless brown dog tick, is a carrier of this disease as well. It can also be responsible for the spread of both Tularemia and Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis. When an insect or animal is capable of passing a disease from their species to the human body, it is known as zoonosise. They are not thought to be born with the diseases that they pass on, but are thought to pick them up from one host and give them to another.
The Lone Star tick is responsible for many tick diseases in both animals and humans, include Lyme Disease, Human Monocytic Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Tularemia. The Lone Star Tick closely resembles the black-legged varieties of ticks, but is differentiated by the white star dot on the back. Found as far east as southern Florida, this tick frequents the warmer climates of North America and has family all over the globe.
Getting back to the tick diseases caused by the dreaded Rocky Mountain Wood Tick, we must not leave out his unique gift for causing tick paralysis. Colorado Tick Fever is a nasty illness , and those infected with it have a rather rough road ahead to recovery. And this brings us to the next most common tick, the Golf Coast Tick. Closely resembling the American Dog Tick, and thus the Rocky Mountain Wood Tick, this small to medium sized tick is not held responsible for any major diseases or illnesses. He is merely pesky, like the brown dog tick, and wants to suck your blood.