Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball and cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball. Let it stay on the repulsive insect for one minute, after which the tick will come out on it's own. If the tick is not stuck to the cotton ball, wipe the area gently with a washcloth and the tick will stick to the washcloth. Repeat if necessary.
This is the safest and best way to remove a tick because there is no chance of part of the tick breaking away under the skin. I can't see where this could be harmful to anyone unless of course the person has an allergy to soap. I've had this tip saved for a while and had the opportunity to try it today on my husband. It worked perfect on the first try and he was more than impressed and grateful:)
Source: Received in an email from my friend Debbie who lives in Tallahassee, FL who said it came from a school nurse who learned it from a Pediatrician.
By Donna from Crystal River, FL
This page contains the following solutions.
I saw this on Facebook and tried it this morning. It works!
I live in a woodsy area so when I'm working in the yard with plants or mowing and cleaning up, I do pick up a tick every so often. Most of the time people just pull them off and this results in a sore.
The most recent information on tick removal is to simply grab the little bugger with tweezers. Grab them behind the head so you hold the whole body with the tweezers, and pull it right straight backwards, out of your skin.
The best way to remove a tick, use tweezers or a tick removal device and pull the tick off. Grab the tick as close to the head as possible. With steady, gentle pressure, pull the tick out of the skin.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I need to know how to remove a tick. Do I just pull it out? My cat, Calvin, and I both thank you for the help.
fab4mom from Walker, LA
While everything I have read suggests using tweezers to slowly pull the tick out while spinning it (as if unscrewing it), we have found it very helpful to drop a few drops of tick repellent on the tick first. Since pulling the tick out too quickly may cause the body to be removed while leaving the head in your pet (possibly causing infection), it is difficult to take the necessary time.
I used to be a groomer and when I found ticks we smothered a cotton ball in alcohol and covered the tick with it for a second or two and then used tweezers to pull the tick off. Always use a "twisting" motion and pull gently. If they are stubborn about coming off, having another person hold the cotton ball over the tick while you are grasping with the tweezers and pulling, usually helps a lot.
I foster dogs, we counted on 8 new dogs that came in, 56 ticks on all 8. We used a thick dish soap, like ajax, it suffocates them and is antibacterial for the wound.
Our hospital emergency room removed ticks from a young woman's hair by coating the tick with KY Jelly. The tick let go immediately and was remved. Can also use Vasoline Petroleum Jelly.
Ooh, don't pull it out - it'll break apart and leave its head in there (I know, it sounds gross.) Rubbing alcohol has always been the best method for us.
To the person 'living in the woods' where do you find 'Cloud 9 Herbal Dip'?
Apply Tea Tree Oil to the live tick or leech and surrounding skin. Leave for 20 minutes. The tick may fall off. If not, remove it carefully (make certain no part of the tick is left in the skin).
According to Drs. Foster and Smith:
"To remove a tick, use a pair of fine-tipped tweezers. To dislodge it, grab the tick by its head and pull directly outward. Cleanse the bite wound with an antiseptic and remember to wash your hands afterward."
I found a tick on my dog. How do I safely remove it?
Thanks,
Lewis
I have tried, a cottonball with proxide (soaking cottonball) and place on tick.....Also Nail polish remover on cottonball, dabbing tic. till it starts to back out. also, If your quick, light a match, blow it out, and lay HOT match on tic. you may have to repeat afew times to get tic to come lose.
We did the same. A lit cigerette and carefully placed it on the butt of the tick and it backed right out. You then have to practically smash them with a hammer to kill the dang things! I hate them. LOL
I used to do dog grooming and I can assure you that here in Iowa ticks are a major problem, especially in the spring and summer months! The way I removed them was to soak a cotton ball in alcohol. Then, take a pair of tweezers and grab the back end of the tick. Then cover the end of the tweezers and the tick with the cotton ball. The alcohol will make them back up. You should use a gentle twisting motion as you pull them out because pulling straight out will cause the head to stay in if, perchance, the tick hasn't completely withdrawn it's head. Good luck!
Using a match or anything hot risks burning your pet. Coat the tick with oil or vaseline. Wait a little while and the tick will suffocate. Then remove it with tweezers, being sure to get all of it-head especially.
You can use ice. Peanut butter works also because it smothers the tick
Can u tell me how to remove the head of the tic? I tried to remove it but the head stayed in.
We used a combination of all the responses. First, I held cotton ball with peroxide on it to the tic for about 60 second, and then used a hot match and it worked like a charm! Thanks for all the great advice! :) I would have been lost without all the help!
What about if the tick is dead? Sometimes they die when they are still attached and I need to remove the head. One of my dogs has a tick, but she is a small dog and I am looking for a way to remove the tick quickly and painlessly, as this will probably be a problem once in a while. I just got two shih tzu and they are happily taking over our lives.
Someone had suggested putting some kind of lotion on the tick and it will back out. I can't remember what it was. Help!
By Anne
How To Remove Ticks - Melissa Kaplan
Ticks, including tick larvae and nymphs (the two life stages that precede the metamorphosis into the adult tick form) favor a moist, shaded environment, especially areas with leaf litter and low-lying vegetation in wooded, brushy or overgrown grassy habitat. You do not need to be an avid outdoorsperson to come into contact with infected ticks. Since many mammals other than deer and dogs are hosts to the Ixodes ticks that carry Borrelia, Babesia, Bartonella and Ehrlichia, infected ticks may be brought into suburban and urban settings by wildlife moving through the areas during the day and night.
Your dog or cat can bring them into the house, or you may get them sitting out in your yard. Other types of animals are hosts to ticks carrying these organisms, including other mammals and other mammals. Other arthropods, such as mosquitoes, may turn out to successfully carry tickborne organisms.
In fact, one of the biggest sources of ticks isn't wild animals, but your pet dogs and cats. The other major source of ticks is just being outdoors in areas where ticks are likely to be. Borrelia, and possibly other parasitic organisms living in the ticks, drives the ticks to climb up weeds and grasses and remain there during the day, waiting for a warm-blooded host to walk by close enough to grab onto their clothing or skin.
When you are walking on hillside paths, the ticks will be congregated on plants on the uphill side of the path. So, the very ground on which you walk, the grasses you brush by or picnic on, and the fallen log you rest on are the most likely places humans will come into contact with Ixodes pacificus in California, Oregon, and Washington.
Thus, one must become familiar with all the signs of these tickborne diseases in order to seek appropriate testing and proactive, preventive treatment. Since only 50 percent or less of people finding ticks actually get the bull's-eye rash (erythema migrans) - or any rash - from a tick bite, one cannot rely on the presence or absence of such a rash to determine likelihood of infection.
Remove the tick properly. Using sharp pointed tweezers, or specially made tick tweezers, grasp the tick as close to your skin as possible, as close to its embedded mouthparts as you can. If you squeeze the body or head, you risk compressing the guts and salivary glands and expelling even more organisms through their mouth into your body.
Do not twist the tick or turn the tweezers as you pull out the tick. Pull out straight with a slow, steady motion. Twisting may force more organisms into your body, and may result in the head or more of the mouthparts being left in your body.
Do not apply any substances to the tick before removing it - no alcohol or nail polish, no petroleum jelly or other ointments, and do not try to burn it out or otherwise convince to let go of you. It won't let go. It will just happily keep on sucking your blood and pumping pathogens into you.
Western Black-legged Tick
Ixodes pacificus
American Dog Tick
Dermacentor variabilis
Rocky Mountain Wood Tick
Dermacentor andersonii
Save the tick or any nymphs or larvae that you find on you. Store them in a clean glass jar or film container, tightly lidded and labeled with the date you pulled the tick off you and the location you were when you acquired the tick.
Ideally, you should have the tick tested right away to see what it contains. Ixodes pacificus is currently the only western tick associated with Babesia, Bartonella, Borrelia and Ehrlichia, but other ticks, such as the Dermacentor variabilis (American Dog tick) can carry pathogenic organisms causing diseases in humans and domestic pets (in this case, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia); Dermacentor andersonii is also a vector for RMSF.
Ouch, is it on you or a pet? I want to say I've heard that if you put some rubbing alcohol or peroxide it will dry it out and kill it?
Get a cotton ball and wet it with just dish detergent or liquid soap. Hold it on the tick and it should make the tick back out in about 3-5 minutes.
In case you did'nt read all of my earlierpost.
"Do not apply any substances to the tick before removing it - no alcohol or nail polish, no petroleum jelly or other ointments, and do not try to burn it out or otherwise convince to let go of you. It won't let go. It will just happily keep on sucking your blood and pumping pathogens into you."
I do know from long, horrible experience that box elder bug will die if you spray them with water that has dish detergent in it. I't s surfactant that somehow prevents them from breathing through their surface, which is how they breathe. So maybe this is why dish detergent would work to encourage a tick to back on out.
What is the best way to remove a tick from a human?
Mary from Washington, MO
Just saw this on Oprah, Dr. Oz said to pull the tick straight out with a pair of tweezers. You can leave the head in, the body will work it out. I think he said if you are in a Lyme disease region to then take the tick to your dr. to have it checked. Do not try to burn, smother or drown the tick out, they don't work.
One of my friends sent me an email recently about this very thing. They said to put a glob of liquid soap on a cotton ball, put it on the tick for a few minutes and the tick will come out and be sticking to the soap. You can throw away the whole mess. Unless you need to have it tested. It's supposed to work but thank goodness, I never had the need (knock wood) to test it.
MY GRAND-DAUGHTER HAD A TICK IN HER ARM WE JUST USED ALCOHOL WE DUMP IT ON AND IN ABOUT 2MINS THE TICK JUST BACKS OUT OF THE SKINS. I WOULD SAY THERES NO BETTER WAY.
I have Lyme disease and have become and expert on this terrible disease. It all starts with a tick bite, typically in it's nymph stage, the tick is the size of a period (.) and is skin colored. Once he starts to fill up on your blood, he becomes dark in color and is larger. If you remove a tick improperly and this tick is carrying any of the tick borne illnesses, most notably Lyme disease, then you most likely will contract the disease. Here is a website that tells of the proper way to remove a tick, NEVER use alcohol, soap, a match or anything else, as this may upset the tick and he may expel his toxins into your body!
The most important part of this tutorial is using a fine nosed tweezers and actually try to get below the bite, this will entail pulling some of your skin with the tick and it will hurt... This is the safest way to prevent tick borne illnesses.
Trust me, you don't want to contract this disease and then be one of the 20% that antibiotics can't help and have to live with this disease. ALWAYS check for ticks every time you bathe and every time you come in from a wooded area... Ticks are everywhere, on all continents, in all countries and in every state in the USA. Most people think ticks are carried only by deer, but all warm blooded mammals including all birds carry them and thus they are widely dispersed.
Currently, 23,000 cases of Lyme are reported to the CDC yearly, but this disease is widely underreported and the true figure is 10 to 100 times this amount, meaning 230,000 to 2.3 million yearly.
This is spoken from a true Lyme warrior,
Jim in Jax
I haven't used this on ticks, but pure glycerin kills any other insect on contact by dehydration; it actually draws all the water out of the insect body (kills all bacteria it contacts the same ways, too.) So I would expect that a drop of pure drugstore Glycerin on a tick would instantly kill it, and probably it would drop out as it would be rather shrunken.
Just to compare with some of the responses above: using soap or alcohol is likely NOT a good idea; even if you get the tick out that way after a minute or two, it may have ejected its salivary gland and/or stomach contents into the skin first -- which is the cause of infection.
Since the glycerin kills INSTANTLY by dehydration, I doubt there could be any such reaction.
Is there an easy way to remove ticks? I heard of one using cotton balls, but can't remember what the cotton ball was dipped in. Thanks and God bless.
By Joan from Lewes
Cotton Balls or Qtips dipped in alcohol. Let it sit for a few seconds. Then grab the tweezers. It is vital that you tweeze as close to the skin as possible so that they head doesn't stay lodged into the skin. pull it out and flush it down the toilet!
You can get the info from Google. Do NOT use alcohol as the previous poster suggested.
Do not twist the tick or turn the tweezers as you pull out the tick. Pull out straight with a slow, steady motion. Twisting may force more organisms into your body, and may result in the head or more of the mouthparts being left in your body.
Do not apply any substances to the tick before removing it, no alcohol or nail polish, no petroleum jelly or other ointments, and do not try to burn it out or otherwise convince to let go of you. It won't let go. It will just happily keep on sucking your blood and pumping pathogens into you.
I bought a neat little tool for tick removal at "Pets at home". Looks easy to use and was cheap to buy. As yet I haven't had a need to use it. I believe that you must always remove the head of the tick. Hope this helps you.
Hello,
Do Not use alcohol! You can get a tool to remove them at your local pet store or you can always go to a Veterinarian and they will remove the tick for you.
Thanks to all who responded. The liquid soap email (which is supposed to be false) is the one I was looking for. I plan to at least try it before I agree its just household lore. Thanks again and God bless.
I need to know how to remove the head of a tick.
Normally you can use a pair of tweezers to do this with. However, if the tick is very large this won't help. You will need to use a pair of needle nose pliers. When you remove the tick from your dog's skin, you'll need to remove the part of the tick that has embedded under the skin at the same time. Afterwards, kill the tick or burn the tick.
What is the best way to remove a tick from a human when it has started to bury in?
By Barbara
Go to google.com and type in "removing ticks." There will be many sites for you to look at.
I am looking for a holistic tick remedy.
By lori
I would not trust any holistic remedy for something as dangerous as a tick bite. I would be off to see my doctor or the er room if I had the symptoms of a tick bite.
