Forest walks or country picnics on summer days often result in a meeting with permanent forest inhabitants -. And it’s good if it’s just a meeting and no one gets hurt as a result dangerous pests, because they pose a real threat to human health.
During a bite, the tick injects its saliva into the wound, which contains substances that have an analgesic effect, so the affected area cannot always be detected in a timely manner - it does not bother the victim.
With the saliva of the pest, they can be transferred into the human blood dangerous diseases: tick paralysis and borreliosis, typhus, encephalitis, etc., many of which threaten not only the health, but also the life of the patient. That is why you should promptly seek medical help after a bite, but it is even better to prevent it altogether.
To prevent ticks from getting close, special preparations are used, made in the form of aerosols or creams, as well as folk remedies prepared from natural ingredients, having a pest-repellent odor.
Traditional recipes for protection against insects
Ticks are quite sensitive to certain odors and try not to approach if there is a smell of the following herbs and spices:
- sage;
- mint or lemon balm;
- geranium;
- rosemary;
- garlic;
- marigolds.
Many insects, including ticks, are repelled by the scents of essential oils. For example, mint or geranium oil often helps out if you need to go out of town: you just need to dilute the drug with water in a 1:1 ratio and lubricate it with the resulting composition open areas skin.
A product based on geranium oil and almond oil, which are also mixed in equal proportions, is very effective. In addition, this drug can be stored in the refrigerator for quite a long time, and before going into the forest, you should simply lubricate the skin with a few drops ready-made product.
It would not be a bad idea to apply the mixture to clothes. When applying, try to avoid the area around the eyes as this may cause severe irritation. By the way, geranium can be replaced with palmarosa oil; their properties against mites are almost the same, while the second one is much more affordable.
To repel ticks even more effectively, you can prepare a composition that will subsequently be used to spray clothes against pests: to do this, mix geranium or palmarosa oil in an amount of 2 tsp, a glass clean water and alcohol. The mixture should be placed in a small spray bottle and used as needed. It is advisable to repeat the procedure during a walk as the smell dissipates from clothes.
In addition to essential oils and fragrant herbs, ticks are repelled by the smell of birch tar, so before going on a trip out of town, you can use it as a means to treat clothes.
Of course, in a park where there are a lot of people, you won’t be able to take a walk with such a strong aroma, but for going for berries or mushrooms it will be very effective. It is worth knowing that tar has a very persistent odor that does not wash off for a very long time, so clothes should be selected specifically for such purposes.
Summer and late spring mean sun, pleasant wind, rustling grass and active ticks! To protect yourself from walking through forested areas and densely overgrown parks, you need to know what ticks are afraid of. What threat can ticks pose to humans?
Ticks are small arachnid insects, ranging in size from tenths of millimeters to 15 millimeters. Therefore, they are very difficult to notice with the naked eye. They do not have eyes and navigate in space through developed olfactory receptors. Therefore, a pungent odor is the only thing that a tick is afraid of.
The tick often gets close to the source of the smell, feeling the warmth, but sharp, strong, tart ambers can turn away the uninvited guest.
- medical – timely vaccination;
- mechanical – wearing protective clothing;
- chemical - use of repellents;
- folk - the use of natural ingredients.
Application of repellents
Domestic and foreign industry has become adept at synthesizing this kind of scents, but they do not repel ticks. Their method of action is to mask a person’s odor over a long period of time. But drugs have side effects, making themselves felt after some time, especially when they are used to protect children:
- pain: headaches, joints, muscles;
- labored breathing;
- inflammation and redness: eyes, skin;
Redness of the eyes in children is one of the side effects medicinal product
- fatigue or weakness;
- unclear speech;
- sleep disorders.
In very rare cases there are serious precedents, especially with long-term use:
- depression of varying degrees;
- memory impairment;
- Negative influence on the central nervous system;
- neurosis;
- seizures.
Such effective method protections as repellents cannot be completely denied. But in order to level them out negative impact, it would be ideal to use folk remedies against ticks.
Time-tested methods
Traditionally, at domestic latitudes, locally grown grass with rich aroma. Over time, access to essential oils created from plants from different parts of the world has become available.
Their use in everyday life attracts people with their simplicity and sufficient efficiency.
Today, herbal tinctures are made more often to protect animals, but essential oils must be added to them for greater effect.
Plants:
- catnip and pennyroyal;
- pink geranium;
- rosemary;
- sage;
- marigold.
Additionally:
- tar;
- vanillin.
Effective recipes
| No. | Name | Components | Volume | Manufacturing method |
| 1 | Wormwood decoction | Wormwood leaves dry/fresh | 40 grams, 100 grams | Chop the herb very finely, add water and bring it to a boil. Cool the resulting broth until room temperature, spray onto the animal's fur. |
| Water | 800 ml | |||
| 2 | Garlic broth | Garlic | 4–6 cloves | Crush the garlic or chop it very finely, add water to the mixture and leave for 8 hours. The coat is oiled only on the back and withers. Otherwise, the animal will lick the mixture and become poisoned. |
| Water | 1200 ml | |||
| 3 | Soap made from essential oils and tar soap | Tar soap | 4 pieces | Grate the soap on a kitchen grater and mix with the resulting oil until a homogeneous consistency is obtained. |
| Essential oils: juniper; grapefruit. |
4 drops each | |||
| 4 | Vanilla powder tincture | Vanillin powder | 4 grams | Infuse the mixture of vodka and vanillin for 7 days. Then lubricate the fur on the withers and back. |
| Vodka | 200 ml |
Cooking recipes for people
Folk remedies against ticks for people remain an irrefutable remedy before purchasing products. The main thing is that their natural origin will not cause allergic reactions and can effectively repel ticks.
But you must additionally make sure that you are not allergic to one or another component before use.
Essential oils may cause an allergic reaction
Experts advise mixing a few drops of one or two types of oils, if they seem most suitable to a person.
For adults:
- basilica;
- palmarosa;
- lavender;
- baiyevoe;
- cedar;
- mint;
- rosemary;
- thyme;
- eucalyptus.
| No. | Name | Components | Volume | Manufacturing method |
| 1 | Vinegar spray | Essential oils | 24–30 drops | Mix everything in a bottle with a lid. The shelf life of the solution is 6 months. Spray on skin and clothing. |
| Table vinegar | 8 tsp. | |||
| Water | 4 tsp. | |||
| 2 | Alcohol spray | Essential oils | 4 tsp. | |
| Ethanol | 4 tsp. | |||
| Water | 400 ml | |||
| 3 | Soap star | Vinegar (apple) | 100 ml | |
| Liquid soap | 20 ml | |||
| Water | 400 ml | |||
| ointment-oil Asterisk | pea | |||
| 4 | Valerian cologne | Valerian drops | 20–30 drops | Apply to a cotton pad and treat bare skin before going outside. Shelf life 6 months. |
| Cologne | 2 tbsp. l. |
Products used for children
Scent of essential oils for children:
- tea tree;
- sweet almonds (oil);
- geraniums
- dried flowers, ;
- vanillin in powder form.
Children's noses cannot tolerate strong odors and recipes for them are more gentle. Adults are not suitable for them.
| No. | Name | Components | Volume | Manufacturing method |
| 1 | Spray (children). | Tea tree essential oil | 20–30 drops | Mix everything and pour into a spray bottle. Shake before use. Spray clothing, skin and hair. |
| Water | 100 ml. | |||
| 2 | Oil (baby). | Almond oil | 4 tbsp. l. | Mix the oils until smooth. Shelf life 6 months. Apply a few drops to bare skin. |
| Geranium essential oil | 30–40 drops | |||
| 3 | Decoction (for children). | Cloves (culinary) | 2 tsp. | Pour water over the carnation flowers and make sure the water boils. The decoction must be infused for 8 hours. Wet a piece of cotton wool and treat bare areas before leaving the house. |
| Water | 400 ml | |||
| 4 | Water (for children). | Vanillin | 4 grams | Dissolve vanillin powder in water and boil. Wait for the solution to cool to room temperature. Wet a cotton pad and treat bare skin before going outside. |
| Water | 2 l. |
Skin eating mite
– this is irregular hand washing or increased cleanliness. A person just needs to be attentive to his social circle. Notice rashes on the hands and other visible parts of the body upon contact.
Most of all, the “scabies mite” is afraid of loneliness, no matter how strange it may sound. It lives without its owner for only 5 days.
It’s easy to kill itches (this is another name for mites) on your skin yourself, using improvised means.
Oil – rub lavender oil into damaged areas overnight.
Tincture - curdled milk (3 parts) mixed with gunpowder (1 part). Infuse in a warm place for 3 hours. It is necessary to stir the mixture regularly, the medicine is applied to the affected areas at night for 5 days.
Soap – grate laundry soap. Add a little water and melt in a water bath. Grind or crush the onion/garlic head in a blender. Boil, cool, form into a bar. Take baths while rubbing yourself with this soap. Can be used by pregnant women.
Ointment. Mix melted lard 1 tbsp. spoon, grate 1 tbsp laundry soap. spoon. Add no more than a teaspoon of tar, sulfur, 2 tsp to the mixture. Melt in a water bath while stirring. Pour into a storage container. Apply to sore skin at night for a week.
conclusions
Their bites do not pose a particular threat to human health; the viral and bacterial diseases that they carry are much more dangerous.
All such drugs can be divided into the following types:
Review of the most effective means
Today on the market there are a large number of a variety of anti-tick products, below is a review of drugs that have proven their high effectiveness in practice and have proven themselves to be the most positive:
Review of the most effective products for children
Criterias of choice
When choosing a specific tick protection product, you need to consider the following factors in order to purchase the most suitable option:
Since the problem has been known to people for quite a long time, there are various folk remedies to combat and protect against them. In some situations, they are less effective than store-bought drugs, but such methods have not lost their relevance to this day because they are safer.
Below are some of them:
- Mix several glasses of white vinegar and one glass of plain clean water in one container. Add about 30 drops of eucalyptus extract there, then mix thoroughly. The resulting product can be sprayed from a spray bottle onto clothing and skin.
- Mix a few spoons olive oil, one spoon of aloe vera, add about 20 drops of lavender extract and the same amount of geranium extract.
- Mix the mixture thoroughly, after which it can be used as an aerosol for treating clothing and skin. Using eucalyptus and geranium essential oils in any form can repel ticks
, since these components have a pungent and repulsive odor.
Prevention measures 
In order to avoid unpleasant tick bites, it is recommended to follow the following preventive measures:
There are about 50 thousand species of ticks in nature. They live everywhere: in meadows, dachas, forests, parks. Most of them pose no danger to people. However, some of these arthropods feed on blood, sucking it from the victim, which causes irritation, inflammation and itching of the skin. In addition, they carry dangerous diseases. A number of diseases such as ehrlichiosis,, typhoid, tularemia, Lyme disease, Q fever, rickettsiosis, babesiosis and many others, are transmitted to humans through bites.
We list the main and most dangerous types of ticks to humans:
- argassy (Persian);
- ixodid (forest);
- encephalitic;
- (demodex);
- ear;
- (tick);
- bed.
The industry produces a lot protective equipment from ticks. They are designed to protect against these blood-sucking predators.
- Repellents have a repellent effect. They are applied to skin and clothing.
- Acaricidal preparations contain substances that produce a nerve-paralytic effect on bloodsuckers. They can only be applied to outerwear.
- Insecticidal-repellent protective preparations combine a repellent and acaricidal effect.
How to protect yourself from bites
Natural apple cider vinegar will help protect you. They should periodically lubricate exposed skin while under trees in the park. Insects do not like the smell and taste of this substance.
Take 100 milliliters of apple cider vinegar, add 400 milliliters to it warm water and 20 milliliters of liquid toilet soap. Add 2 drops of lavender oil or a little “Star” oil here. For sensitive skin, you can also add 30 milliliters of aloe juice to the composition.
You can also protect yourself with tar water. It is prepared like this. Take 700 grams of tar (birch, pine or cedar) and pour 2 liters of warm water into it. Stir until smooth. Then let it brew (at least 9 hours). After this, the water is poured into a separate glass container. Seal tightly and place in a cool place. Use as needed during the critical season. Lubricate exposed areas of the body.
You can prepare such an effective tick repellent. Take vinegar (one bottle). Add to it: water (250 milliliters), eucalyptus (or any citrus) essential oil(15 drops). Stir and pour into a spray bottle. Treat clothes, backpacks and open areas of the body before walking in the park, forest or working in the garden.
You can also make a repellent spray at home. Take 180-200 milliliters of water, pour a tablespoon of clove oil into it and add a little alcohol. Pour the composition into a spray bottle. You can carry the protective spray with you when visiting the park or working in the garden. They are used on clothing and exposed skin. It also helps against bed mites. They need to treat the pillows and blankets.
It is not difficult to prepare your own mixture that will repel ticks. Mix: half a teaspoon of tea tree oil with a third of a glass of water. The composition is rubbed onto exposed areas of the body before leaving the house. The same product is sprayed on clothes.
Ticks are repelled by the ant smell. You can hold your outerwear for a few minutes on a large forest anthill, and then shake it off and put it on. Bloodsuckers won't cling!
Before going to the forest or park, the skin that is not covered by clothing is lubricated with spruce oil. This protects against arachnid bites.
Ticks cannot tolerate the smell of garlic and will not touch a person who has recently consumed it. The same goes for onions.
Take three tablespoons of sunflower oil, add one spoon of aloe juice, a teaspoon of rose oil and the same amount of lavender. The composition is shaken for several minutes. Apply to bare areas of the body and rub in. You are safe!
Treatment of bites
After removing the tick, check whether the insect's head has come out. The wound can be lubricated with garlic juice or a mixture of garlic and honey applied to it. If inflammation has developed, it is necessary to make compresses from this composition twice a day.
Onion juice helps relieve itching and redness after a tick bite. After removing the proboscis, apply crushed onion. It is laid out on a clean cloth and bandaged to the bite site. Wash off with laundry soap.
When bitten encephalitis tick In the old days they were treated like this. For 3 days, a Russian bath was prepared for the patient and he was intensively steamed there for at least one hour. They also gave me a decoction of aspen bark and pine needles to drink.
It is useful to take royal jelly. Method of administration: 30 grams before meals daily.
Afterwards, the patient was given an infusion of sedge buds to drink as a bactericidal and antiviral agent. One tablespoon of raw material was added to a cup of boiling water. Insist and take 4 tablespoons orally before meals.
To prevent complications, traditional medicine recommends drinking Echinops tincture. 10 drops are diluted in a tablespoon of water and drunk three times a day.
Green tincture will help relieve swelling and redness walnuts. The fruits need to be crushed, filled with them in a jar and filled with vodka. They insist for 30 days. Take one teaspoon three times a day before meals.
The main method of combating this “biting evil” is to avoid places where ticks potentially live and use other preventive measures. Over many centuries, in endemic regions, local residents have accumulated considerable practical experience, including dealing with the consequences. It is worth noting that not all of them are recognized official medicine effective, but many actually work. True, they are found among folk methods frankly ridiculous and even unhealthy recipes.
How to protect yourself from ticks using folk remedies?
The first barrier, as we have already noted, is a repellent, which can be prepared at home. To do this, you need to take two glasses of ordinary table vinegar (if it is strong, you can dilute it with a glass of water), and add 20-30 drops of pine or citrus essential oil. Also good result shows eucalyptus, however, its smell is somewhat pungent and a little “hospital” for others. The resulting mixture can be poured into a container of used factory repellent or use any other spray bottle.
You can use this anti-tick agent only during short walks, since it dissipates relatively quickly; also, to be sure, it is better to go out well dressed and apply the solution to the fabric. The second version of the recipe is to replace vinegar with aloe vera gel (one glass) and a couple of tablespoons of sunflower oil, add 10-15 drops of geranium essential oil. This drug has a very pungent odor and is applied to the skin, but it lasts a little longer.
Another recipe for anti-tick repellent is classified as risky and can be used solely at your own peril and risk. It has been used for quite a long time; this “tick repeller” was especially popular in the gold mines in Soviet time. To prepare the drug, you need a glass of water, one or two tablespoons of tar and a fifty-gram glass of any cheap cologne, like Triple or Chypre. For greater effectiveness, you can add a little tobacco infusion and/or any strong-smelling essential oil. The ingredients that make up this folk repellent preclude its use within the city limits, or in any other somewhat crowded places due to the rather nasty stench.
There is another rather exotic method in the North, which can show spoiled city dwellers something of a joke. But, nevertheless, it works, and if you have long-term (several days or more) contact with ticks in places where they are very likely to live, then it’s worth using it. It consists of buying two pairs of strong women's tights that allow air to pass through well, but at the same time feel a little “slippery” to the touch. The first pair is used in the “traditional” way on the lower body, while the second pair cuts off the feet and makes a head-sized hole where the crotch is in the pantyhose, to end up with a “pantyhose hoodie.” It sounds somewhat humorous, but such anti-tick overalls perfectly protect the body and eliminate the need for constant distraction to inspect clothing and body.
If a tick bite does occur, then the most common consequence in most regions of Russia is borreliosis. The insidiousness of this unpleasant illness lies in the fact that it does not appear immediately, but, as a rule, after two weeks, sometimes even a month later. In taiga areas, where the availability of medical care is not very high, there is a method of unique prevention. It is difficult to vouch for how effective it is, but extreme conditions This secret might also come in handy. Prepare herbal tea: mix dried rowan, calendula and birch leaves in equal proportions. Take a tablespoon of this “anti-borrelia” mixture and pour half a liter of boiling water, leave for half an hour to an hour. You should drink a whole cup of this tea at once, all day, and even forcefully.
After a bite, subsequent proper removal of the tick and disinfection of the wound, an obsessive feeling of burning and itching may appear. To reduce the negative impact of these symptoms in folk medicine There is a tincture of motherwort that should be used to coat bites and make compresses. The best way Its preparation is to pour two tablespoons into a thermos, pour boiling water and leave for 8-10 hours. Second, more quick method– add water, boil for 15-20 and leave for half an hour until it cools.
A separate topic related to ticks is the consumption of meat from bitten animals. Unanimous opinion Modern scientists have no idea on this matter, and both camps provide very convincing arguments in defense of their views. But just in case, in order to avoid the risk of contracting Lyme disease, it is better to avoid eating such food.