Getting Tough With Lyme

This is the best, most concise article I've seen regarding Lyme disease. The book, Beating Lyme by Constance Bean is excellent. Thank you Reader's Digest!

Please do not use tweezers-- you can safely remove a tick with a neat Snap action, with a product made in the USA, called Ticked Off. Widely available, they can be found at WalMart or vets, or pet or hardware supply departments in a lot of stores .They are on the Internet for ordering as well. I am proud to say the creators of the product are our friends and neighbors, in Dover, New Hampshire-regular people who are farmers and found a solution to a problem.

I realize that new tick-handling ideas take some time to circulate, but, I am disappointed you and the author you quote have not taken time to think of how the wording and the concept/actions you and she put forth in the "How To" comes across--namely as unfortunately ineffectual, almost apologetic in tone, and really potentially harmful! First, she suggests, in "Get it Out" that the tick spotter grab the tick with a tweezer. I would say this is dangerous, in the average person's hands, as using a tweezer can cause the tick's contents (any and all microbes and infectious material, including Lyme Disease, contained in the tick) to be squirted into the person to whom it is attached. Then, in the next paragraph, "Save It", the author offers, "If the tick comes off..." IF??? This is most unsettling. And, I think, unnecessary. I hope you forgive my strong tone, but our family and thousands of others have been using a thorough, elegantly simple and effective tick remover for years, which avoids all of the above, and I am still shocked to see the whole tweezers thing suggested. A cleaner alternative,sold both here and in Europe,( and I can't think of using anything other than it), is The Ticked Off Tick Remover. It is made with pride in the USA, invented and sold, as it happens, by our friends and neighbors, Rick and Mary Hebbard, here in Dover, New Hampshire. Please check out their website (Google Ticked Off) for information for both yourselves and your readers. Ticked Off is readily available- they can find the product at Wal Mart, local veterinarians, health food stores, and hardware and pet supply departments in many many locales, and can request it be stocked, plus it is also available by mail order over the Internet. The Hebbards do their best to get the word out, but there are bound to be gaps in the public's information. I hope you can set things straight, and REALLY tell folks how to deal with a tick, successfully. Thanks for your time, and I hope you don't need this product anytime soon, but this is one of those things, if the occasion calls for it, you'll be quite glad you got one.