Alpha-gal tick virus

[Art Caputo]

Sorry to hear you have contracted A/G, and hope that you recover. How long have you had it? Were/are you under any kind of medication/antibiotics?

Here in the Northeast we have been plagued for years with the tiny, Lyme disease carrying deer ticks. I spend a great deal of time in the woods training/hunting with my bird dog, deer/small game hunting, as well as flyfishing the small streams. I have developed the dreaded “ring”, and required the antibody regiment four times. The key is early detection and treatment. If it goes undetected, the disease will manifest itself in your system. I have two buddies that were ultimately confined to wheelchairs, and even seen hunting dogs succumb to Lyme. While permethrin, Deet, etc. can be effective, they are quite toxic, and not always practical(at least for me). After hours of tick seeking, pulling, and praying at the end of an outing, I have now gone a a few seasons with few, if any deer ticks on either myself or my Brit.
For my dog, I keep a Sorresto collar on him at all times……it works! He is also inoculated annually for Lyme.
For me, I have found “cedar oil” to be non-toxic, and very effective for deterring ticks. I apply it to all exposed skin/hair, as well as boots/clothing. While ai initially used pure cedar oil obtained from one of my Port Orford arrow shaft suppliers, when they discontinued the product, I switched to Cedarcide which works as well if not better. I buy it by the quart and use it liberally before entering the woods/field. Yes, it does have an odor, but I don’t find it obnoxious. A good shower rids the odor. It also works superbly for mosquitoes and chiggers. I also use this in my grandkids after having had numerous panic requests to “pull out the tick!”……..always keep an eye out for signs of a ring, etc. if the tick was imbedded for more then a day or two, I’d consider one of the Doxycycline “quick shots”…….

 

[Brokennock]

Sorry to hear you have contracted A/G, and hope that you recover. How long have you had it? Were/are you under any kind of medication/antibiotics?

Here in the Northeast we have been plagued for years with the tiny, Lyme disease carrying deer ticks. I spend a great deal of time in the woods training/hunting with my bird dog, deer/small game hunting, as well as flyfishing the small streams. I have developed the dreaded “ring”, and required the antibody regiment four times. The key is early detection and treatment. If it goes undetected, the disease will manifest itself in your system. I have two buddies that were ultimately confined to wheelchairs, and even seen hunting dogs succumb to Lyme. While permethrin, Deet, etc. can be effective, they are quite toxic, and not always practical(at least for me). After hours of tick seeking, pulling, and praying at the end of an outing, I have now gone a a few seasons with few, if any deer ticks on either myself or my Brit.
For my dog, I keep a Sorresto collar on him at all times……it works! He is also inoculated annually for Lyme.
For me, I have found “cedar oil” to be non-toxic, and very effective for deterring ticks. I apply it to all exposed skin/hair, as well as boots/clothing. While ai initially used pure cedar oil obtained from one of my Port Orford arrow shaft suppliers, when they discontinued the product, I switched to Cedarcide which works as well if not better. I buy it by the quart and use it liberally before entering the woods/field. Yes, it does have an odor, but I don’t find it obnoxious. A good shower rids the odor. It also works superbly for mosquitoes and chiggers. I also use this in my grandkids after having had numerous panic requests to “pull out the tick!”……..always keep an eye out for signs of a ring, etc. if the tick was imbedded for more then a day or two, I’d consider one of the Doxycycline “quick shots”…….
View attachment 91986View attachment 91987

Interesting timing.
I've been experimenting with oure cedar oil sold for soap and candle making. I've been mixing it into a combination of melted Shea butter and refined coconut oil (no odor) then mixing while it solidifies. I kind of like the earthy odor.
I'm even trying to get the consistency right on a small batch that I have mixed some very fine powdered cosmetics charcoal into trying to create a bug repellent black face concealer to darken the brighter highlights on my face while hunting.

 

[Sam squanch]

It just makes you allergic to red meat I guess. No treatment. Just avoid red meat for now.

 

[Sam squanch]

Time to take up turkey hunting…

 

[Sam squanch]

With plenty of repellent…

 

[4575wcf]

Wonder where all these weird diseases from insect bites are originating? In my first hometown on the Payette River ID, we had a huge canal system all about town, and the mosquitos were ferocious in the warmer months. Everybody got bit a lot, but nobody seemed to get sick from it. I remember the Old Man pulling ticks off the Labrador Retriever and stepping on them on the cement after about every bird hunting adventure, but she never seemed to get sick. Every time we caught a fox in our traps we had a regular epidemic of fleas in the house until we bombed them, but other than miserable itching bites for a week or two, we came out fine. The rascals always seemed to find a way into the bedding, and would devour you until you dealt with them. Seems I was well out of high school before I heard of Lyme disease, or any of the other afflictions. You sure have to play it careful these days though.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Wonder where all these weird diseases from insect bites are originating?

They really aren't weird. We have better information and it is more easily available, and transportation allows us to move in hours or days what used to take weeks and months... plus medical science is doing much better at avoiding a misdiagnosis.

Lyme disease is named after Lyme and Old Lyme CT, but the disease was described as early as 130 years ago, and research has found it goes back 60,000 years at least. When humans stopped using deer as a primary meat and leather source, and then allowed the deer population to expand as it is now, we unwittingly also caused a surge in deer ticks, and the bacteria that causes the disease.

Malaria wiped out military garrisons in the early 19th century..., in Michigan.

If it wasn't malaria, it was yellow fever. Folks don't know a canal was tried in Central America several times. Not until the 20th century and DDT to kill off the skeeters did it get built.

Folks, especially some that don't like hunters, blame the loss of the massive bison herds on hunting and a deliberate effort to wipe out the bison to impact the Indians. The idea that hunting succeeded in doing this is Complete Balderdash. Ticks from Spanish imported cattle migrated to the Bison, which were not able to deal with the tick borne diseases as well as their European cousins.

Add in the transportation. Aircraft trap skeeters in wheel bays and fly to America. A DIY guy gets a pelt from a hunt, and ices it down for the drive home. Some hours later and maybe a thousand miles, that pelt gets tacked to the fence OR laid fur/hair side down and staked and salted as stage one in processing into brain tan .... OR Hunters pick up ticks or fleas onto clothing while hunting thousands of miles from home, change clothes, drive/fly home, then set their hunting clothing outside to not get any modern odors like soap...., the vermin drops off, and voila, a new bug is "in town".

LD

 

[tom_in_vt]

What a terrible virus! I hope you make a speedy recovery.

 

[4575wcf]

Wow. Maybe I owe our miraculous health in those candid days of my youth to DDT. It was in common use here until it drifted into the Birds of Prey area on the Snake River and killed an unprecedented amount of bald eagle nesting pairs. That was the end of it.

 

[SOLANCO]

Lemon eucalyptus oil on the skin keeps the chiggers and ticks at bay and no harm to humans other than it can be a little HOT on certain, sensitive spots.

I had developed some allergies to certain foods, and the Dr immediately said "alpha-gal", but I had never had a tick imbedded. Too, he was convinced that I already had Lyme, but the results on various Lyme specific tests were really low. When I do have a food triggered reaction, usually 4+ hours after eating, never immediate, I take Benadryl to unclog my sinuses.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20428608

Years back I took the lyme disease vaccination. Never had the disease, but still titer positive for it so antibodies are still in my blood. At the time, our home was surrounded by a tree plantation which surrounded a reservoir. Thick with deer and ticks.
Now on a hilltop with only miscellaneous shade trees. Despite the presence of deer and other critters have only found 3 ticks on us or our pets in ten years.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Wow. Maybe I owe our miraculous health in those candid days of my youth to DDT. It was in common use here until it drifted into the Birds of Prey area on the Snake River and killed an unprecedented amount of bald eagle nesting pairs. That was the end of it.

DDT works just fine and is still used in controlled settings with lots of monitoring
Where the problem happened was letting any Joe off the street buy some and use it, and misuse it, and over use it....,
Currently hundreds of kids die each year in Africa, because of Dengue fever, because the UN won't allow its controlled use on skeeters, with the fear it might impact the African Eagle...

The DDT that I reference was used in Panama btw. Doubtful it was used for skeeters where you grew up... malathion is what is used today

LD

 

[4575wcf]

DDT, according to those who used it worked on skeeters, bed bugs, and all sorts of nasty critters. And supposedly all of them are coming back.

 

[Ironoxide]

I hope you get better soon.

Thanks to your post I found out ticks in Europe too have been found carrying this. :-( one more thing to worry about. The one tick-borne disease that makes me worried is tick borne encephalitis. Lyme disease can be treated with antibiotics if caught early. One can buy cheap self administered "drop of blood" type tests to check for early stage lyme disease, but there is no drug that helps for TBE. Basically, you're either lucky and it just feels like a cold, or you're unlucky and you develop brain inflammation. You can imagine the consequences

There is a vaccine for TBE. However getting it is quite involved around here. Still I'll most likely get it.

Also, one can send a tick to be tested for various diseases to a lab. The tick has to be refrigerated after it was removed. I did that last time I had a tick. It was expensive and took 3 weeks, but it was worth it to know the tick was "healthy".

I also would like to take this opportunity to warn people of "tick testing lab" scams. When I was searching for a lab to test my tick I found few labs that had very low prices. They promised results in 24 hours and they said you don't have to use refrigerated transport for the tick. Well, that's great, right? Until I found out that none of those 24h labs have official accreditation (like all medical labs have to have around here). Also when I asked them for exact method they use to test they described a method that in my opinion may be fine for Lyme and other bacteria, but not viruses like TBE. So I recommend not to waste money on them.

 

[Eric Krewson]

There is a type of acupuncture that is supposed to reset the body and do away with allergies like Alpha Gal and many others one acquired over the years.

I have been meaning to look it up because my allergic reaction to wood dust is getting worse and worse. A few people on the Archery boards said they had the treatment and it worked.

At Acupuncture Works the solution offered is Soliman Auricular Allergy Treatment (SAAT) to treat Alpha-Gal Allergy.

 

[4575wcf]

I did a brief stint in a furniture shop in my early 20's. I got assigned to finish a mahogany tabletop and I learned about wood dust allergies first hand and on the spot.

 

[hanshi]

Some years back I picked up a quart of highly concentrated Permethrin; enough to last a lifetime actually. The directions were for mixing up a gallon at a time. I doubled the amount for a super strong mixture and still have enough left for mixing a 50 gallon drum of the double strength stuff. It is mixed with water and is beyond cheap compared with the half strength spray cans sold in stores.

Thirty or so years ago on back to my youth (Georgia) the only ticks I ever encountered were a few on free-running doggies. I spent summers in the woods hunting, roaming, including deer hunting, and never got tick ONE. Fast forward to the late 1990s and ticks were all over the woods. I got plenty of them a season or two in the early 2000s and bought a can of Permethrin which worked wonders. Then I bought the concentrate and spray my outdoor clothes every year. No ticks since then! Permethrin is great stuff but I'm still nervous about ticks.

 

[Ironoxide]

Some years back I picked up a quart of highly concentrated Permethrin; enough to last a lifetime actually. The directions were for mixing up a gallon at a time. I doubled the amount for a super strong mixture and still have enough left for mixing a 50 gallon drum of the double strength stuff. It is mixed with water and is beyond cheap compared with the half strength spray cans sold in stores.

Thirty or so years ago on back to my youth (Georgia) the only ticks I ever encountered were a few on free-running doggies. I spent summers in the woods hunting, roaming, including deer hunting, and never got tick ONE. Fast forward to the late 1990s and ticks were all over the woods. I got plenty of them a season or two in the early 2000s and bought a can of Permethrin which worked wonders. Then I bought the concentrate and spray my outdoor clothes every year. No ticks since then! Permethrin is great stuff but I'm still nervous about ticks.

This got me interested so I did a little research. I never heard about this product before. However permethrin is available in Europe in powder form. It is sold to be used as an insecticide.

Unfortunately, it appears to be very toxic for cats :-( Allegedly it is so toxic to them a cat can get poisoned by touching a dog that had permethrin flea treatment. It is safe for dogs.

I was about to order it, but when I found out the above I decided against it as I have two cats.

I guess a TBE vaccine, plus diligent checking for ticks will have to do for me. I don't know about alpha-gal, but with both Lyme and TBE the chances of infection are supposedly very low if the tick is removed entirely in first 24h.

It is essential to remove the entire tick and not to leave any pieces remaining. I don't know how true it is, but I was always told to never use anything(like vaseline, butter, lard etc) on a tick that is in place because there is a risk it makes the tick puke whatever bacteria or viruses it might have in its digestive tract right into the blood of its host.

The best method to remove a tick in its entirety I found is to use a pencil shaped plastic tweezer-like remover to grab it. Then twist it gently (choose a direction and stick with it, don't rotate left right left right!), finally after maybe half turn start pulling gently. It should let go easily.

If you don't have the remover buy it, I bought mine in a pet supply store. Just make sure you get this
And not this.

The grey one is useless for tiny ones. It is meant for dogs and their huge ticks.

 

[Sam squanch]

I remember when dad burned off the property when I was little. Every spring. No ticks then, but you can’t do that where I live anymore!