Transcript: May You Feel Every Tick — Avani Vitalis #014

0:01

No one is going to get butthurt about us killing ticks, which is nice, right?

So we can just talk like brutal honest murder about the ticks.

So every tick is murdered.

Maybe people are wondering, hearing us, you know, why we don't treat our dog?

Essentially, the option is to poison your dog.

0:18

So treatments that put a toxin into the dog's bloodstream that kills the tick that feeds on it.

The.

Saddest one to me is is hearing that people are staying out of the forest as a result.

Or the fields too.

Are yes staying out of nature?

Usually it's by the impulse items, by the register.

0:35

They'll have all these like tick removing devices and it's what, a hokey like tick keys and all this stuff where you're like guys, like it was completely unnecessary.

With a tick it's almost a bit mysterious.

You don't see them like you do other bugs.

0:51

We constantly say to each other, may you feel every tick.

We pray that we say it to people, we write it to each other.

My guest today is Avani Vitalis.

Growing up, she was a national level swimmer and synchronized swimmer.

1:08

Later on, she went on to compete for Canada in freestyle kayaking and went to the World Games, which is pretty cool.

For the last 27 years she's been a school teacher.

The last eight or nine of those she's actually worked privately right out of our home because she's also my wife.

1:30

We've been married for eight years, which has probably been the most challenging part of her career, but she's done very well.

She specializes in literacy and numeracy with children.

So she works privately, like I said, here out of our home.

And she lives in the heart of tick country with me.

1:45

And we're pretty outdoorsy people.

So we're going to be sharing today a bit about our journey.

Avani Vitalis, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Daniel.

It's good to have you down here.

It's.

Great to be here with you.

Yeah.

So let me just go back a moment.

I was just saying that you did I get all that right, So you.

2:03

Yes, Yep.

So swimming competitively, but but with a focus on synchronized swimming.

Yeah.

Well, I started as a competitive swimmer from the age of 8 to 12.

And then from there I switched to synchronized swimming and that became really like my career sport for through my teen years and was a big focus of my life.

2:28

Your.

Breath holding skills are still pretty legendary.

I left out that you're a CrossFit coach today too.

Yeah, Level 2, Level 2 CrossFit coach.

Loving doing that now and continuing to stay active trying to find my land legs.

Yeah, right after years.

2:44

Yeah.

It's funny because being a swimmer obviously is such an upper body dominating sport.

And then sitting in a kayak, same kind of thing.

And then when we started to train together in the gym, you know, it's like, Oh yeah, squat and lunge.

Yeah, yeah.

It's been a big learning journey for me.

But it's been good, yes, To balance out the the land with the water, yeah.

3:04

You're doing great.

So as you know, the last couple of weeks I've been interviewing people about ticks and Lyme disease and all the associated what they call Co infections.

And so I've had on, you know, the scientist whose focus is on, you know, the scientific study zoologically of ticks.

3:21

And then I've had on the woman who did the deep dive on the bioengineering of ticks for weapons programs and whether or not some of these diseases might be actually like lab escape the Cold War era weapons programs.

And turns out they probably are.

3:38

But I think you and I are uniquely positioned to talk about the lifestyle of living with ticks because while neither of us are like experts on them, you know, specifically, I think there's this phenomenon sometimes where professionals don't have as much field experience as as much as they have intellectual experience, right?

4:00

So I think some of the people that I've talked to, while they know a lot about, you know, their subject matter, they're not living with ticks day-to-day like you and I are.

On a given day during peak ticks season, how many ticks do you think you've maybe seen a day?

On just myself.

No, it'll be you and the dogs and climbing on the walls and all that.

4:17

I'd say about 2020 to 25 a day that's.

Crazy, right?

Yeah, Yeah.

Total.

Yeah.

And so that'll be where like whereabouts we find them.

Geez, all over myself.

My, you know, can be anywhere on my body, anywhere on the dogs, can be in bed at night.

4:37

It can be, as you said, crawling on the walls, on our clothing.

Yeah, yeah, just kind of like.

Ubiquitous here, yeah.

Yeah, that's what, yeah.

Like if you were a super superstitious person, you might almost feel like they just appear because it's kind of sometimes seems obviously they come from somewhere.

4:53

Like a lot of times when they're on the walls, I think they've come off our clothes or off the dog bed or something like that.

But it does sort of feel like they're suddenly everywhere.

There, yeah, I'll look down at my arm sometimes and it just seems like it's suddenly on my forearm, whereas a few moments ago nowhere in the surrounding area.

5:11

So I always find that quite fascinating.

And we're primarily dealing with two species here where we live in Maine.

So we see the black legged tick, which is the one that's like we call the bad tick.

Yeah.

And then we see the wood or dog tick, which we kind of think of as the good tick because they don't transform as much disease.

We're lucky that we're not yet seeing Lone Star ticks here where we live, right?

5:31

We know they're here, but in.

Southern Maine, I believe.

Right.

Yeah, Yeah, exactly.

And then you're from Quebec, Canada, which is really in the early stages.

They're like where we were 15 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, Some of my family members are now saying that they find them on occasion a better cottage on the lake they're checking, but.

5:50

Finding one for them is still kind of a big deal.

Maybe one in the week that they're there.

Right.

Yeah.

I remember a few days ago when we had guests from there and you're sort of talking one of them off the ledge a little bit about a tick.

They felt really guilty about a incorge tick they found on their dog.

6:07

Yes.

And you were like, yeah, we're.

We're pulling like 5 or six of those off a day sometimes.

Like, you don't have to.

Yeah, You don't have to worry about it like you didn't.

Like she's so worried that like her dog might have developed a disease or died.

From that.

From that tick.

And it's like, well, OK, but our dogs are, we call them grapes and we're pulling all the time.

6:24

So.

But.

But that said, we have these two species we're dealing with.

Describe the range of sizes that you see, because some of these ticks can be, you know, when they're in their nymphal stage.

I mean, how small do you see them?

Sometimes, Yeah.

Well, I, you know, something I want to say before I, I dive into describing a tick, I, I want to say how much I understand.

6:46

I understand how people might be nervous, nervous around ticks and nervous about what they can do to us as humans.

And so I want to start by saying that I empathize or I, yeah, I really understand because that's where I started when you and I started dating 11 years ago.

7:05

So I just want to say that because I'm, I'm speaking now from a place of 11 years into this journey with ticks.

And 11 years ago they made me extremely nervous.

I'm glad you're saying that.

Yeah, we're battle hardened, right?

Yes, like that's.

7:21

You're so right.

Because now I'm, I'm sort of a little calloused to it, but they haven't been around my whole life.

And 11 years ago it was just kind of getting going.

Now it's just part of life, right?

Yes, and I, I mean, 11 years ago, I didn't have an understanding yet.

7:39

I didn't understand the language of ticks.

I didn't understand how I could work with them to still feel comfortable out in nature and trust that it's going to be OK.

And I had a very, you know, abrupt introduction to, to ticks.

7:56

And I want to answer your question though.

I you know the size again, it's like I see the Super tiny ones, ones that you can like barely see crawling on your skin like a.

Period on a page smaller.

Yes, and I'm I'm sometimes in awe and I'm able to catch that or feel it too.

8:19

But and then some are bigger and easier to see.

But I would say 11 years ago, there's no way I would have felt those small ticks or understood that there were different sizes and what what those ticks were.

Yeah.

Now it's just experience.

8:35

And yeah, but that abrupt story.

Yeah, I want to tell that story because it's very funny.

But I, I guess actually, I should say at the outset that what we're going to discuss today is how we are living strategically with them and still enjoying the outdoors because there's all these different strategies.

8:53

But I don't, I think we would be doing a disservice to speak too much to some of these strategies because we don't really use them, right.

So like 1 is like people wearing all light clothing or people like taping their pant leg to their sock or all these different things that people do using Permethrin or DEET or any number of strategies that have different levels of efficacy.

9:12

But for you and I, we're living a very natural lifestyle with him and our method is to spot and or feel every tick, primarily to feel them, but often to see them as well, which might feel like some people like, you know, I think about that documentary of that guy who climbed El Cap with no rope, you know, and you see that and you're like, what is this guys psycho?

9:33

Like, why would he, Why not just use a rope?

And maybe some people hear this and they're like, wait, why not just use bug spray or why not just tuck you?

But, but actually for us, this is the freer way to live, the easier way to manage this.

And and I will say in these eleven years that we're talking about, and for me it goes back further right there.

9:51

Yeah, neither of us have ever had an engorged tick on us or developed a tick borne illness.

Now, I don't say that to be arrogant or cavalier like I'm.

I say that I hope with enough humility.

Like, thank goodness.

Yeah, and also like humility like is still got to be on top of it every day.

10:07

But but I think us sharing this is not to say this is the way you need to do it, but it's to say, hey, here's one option and it's worked for us and we live in the in high density tick country.

Yeah, yeah.

You want to tell the story of your first tick encounter.

Jeez, so we were dating at the time and I was up visiting for the weekend.

10:31

I had driven from Montreal like I did most weekends to come spend time with you.

Place where you never have to think about it really, right?

Or didn't Ben?

Yeah, and you had errands to do 1 particular Saturday, I believe it was.

So you you said to me, hey, why don't you go forage some wild strawberries in the neighborhood?

10:51

And you drove me to a spot in the neighborhood that wasn't too far from our home, but you dropped me off with some containers.

Those are the green card.

Yeah, and I went at it and I, you know, just wanted, I wanted to impress you.

I was so excited to forage these teeny, tiny little lost strawberries.

11:10

Those two at the time, it was amazing to me compared to the strawberries I had been used to.

Right.

So I was like, seeing how long it took to gather them.

I was out there for, I think 2:00 to 3:00 hours is how I remember it thinking, wow, Daniel's going to be so proud of me when I get home, you know, with all these strawberries.

11:26

And I got home and you still weren't home yet.

And I got inside, put the strawberries down, and I felt something crawling on my leg and I thought, oh, I'd better check to see what that is.

So I pulled my pants down and lo and behold, I didn't have one tick on me.

11:44

I had 13, I remember, because I had time to count them before you got back.

But I panicked and they, some of them had started to bite my skin a little bit.

So I thought they're engorged.

I called you right away and said you need to come home.

12:01

I was in a panic, right?

I don't know if you remember that, but I was like you.

Need to come home.

Yeah, because I came.

Straight home gorged ticks.

You're like, I'm covered in ticks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I came in and I remember you were there in the kitchen, your pants down, and there were, like, ticks just pockmarking your legs.

12:18

Yeah.

And I remember it being really funny to me because I was like, oh, you just take them up.

And I was like, oh, no, what you know.

And you're like, no, these you explained to me in that moment, you know, I understood.

OK, these are not engorged.

They're they're just.

They hadn't had a blood meal or anything like.

That right, they're just an.

12:34

Hour or 1/2 an hour, Yeah.

Exactly.

And what's amazing now for me to think about is that I could not fathom 13 ticks managing to get on my body without me noticing Now right today, no, today, today like I, I am sensitive usually to one on me.

12:52

I can feel it or sense it.

At that time I hadn't developed that sensitivity yet.

So to think that 13 were able to get on me while I was out there and walking home, coming, coming inside, didn't really notice only felt one, you know, and it was at that moment that I checked That to me is funny now in retrospect because.

13:12

Now you have like The Sixth Sense for it, which we, we always kind of sum it all up by saying may you feel every tick.

But what we're talking about is like a very deep subconscious sensitivity to the feeling of them being on you.

13:29

And when you develop that, because I, I know one thing I think back on is I started years, many years ago, I started to find him in my sleep and it wasn't like a thing I thought about developing.

I just would.

I would wake up out of his sleep grabbing the tick.

13:45

And I would be in awe of that too.

I couldn't believe it.

I'm like, how is he feeling these in the middle of his sleep?

But.

Now go on just now you do the same.

I mean, now you're doing the same and so so that underlying the strategy of living without the insecticides or without using this whole clothing based strategy.

14:04

And I think the biggest piece is not avoiding going outside and enjoying nature, right?

That's like what we really don't want to give up.

So in order to do that, you have to develop a sensitivity that's very, very finely calibrated to those little legs.

14:24

Because one thing I've noticed about them is they are trying.

They're in stealth mode all the time, trying to conceal from you that they're there.

Yeah, right.

And so you're getting that you now have it, too.

You wake up out of a dead sleep, pulling ticks off you.

I would talk about you and say my husband's able to feel ticks in his sleep.

14:41

He wakes up from his sleep.

I thought it was a superhuman power and it I would say it took me 3 to 4 years to get to that place because in those initial years, I just, I wasn't feeling them.

I wasn't, I didn't have the awareness built in.

15:00

But over time, as I was saying earlier, it's just like it's grown the understanding of how again to work with them.

But you know what the things you listed of of using bug repellent or tucking or tucking our pants into our boots.

15:17

The saddest one to me is is hearing that people are staying out of the forest as a result or the.

Fields too are.

Yes, staying out of nature.

Hey, wait, don't skip through this.

I've got an important message for you.

For years I've been asked when I'll start offering one-on-one coaching or mentoring.

15:36

After years of living on the road making the Wild Fed TV show, I'm finally settled down and opening up my schedule to some video based coaching sessions.

I'm offering individual or ongoing one hour and 90 minute time slots to a select number of people who are looking for mentoring and lifestyle coaching.

15:53

Of course, my areas of focus are food and nutrition, self healthcare, and nature based healthy living.

But I'm also a subject matter expert on wild foods with a focus on getting folks started in the hunting, fishing and foraging space.

And while I'm not a therapist, I'm happy to discuss relational, spiritual and even existential matters.

16:13

Having started a successful business and several other successful projects including my sixth season TV show, Wild Fed, I also have some expertise in creating value based brands.

Now, my time slots are limited, but I'm keeping my rates very reasonable, especially throughout the rest of 2026.

16:30

So if you're interested in working together, contact me at info@danielvitalis.com to learn more.

I am sincerely, really looking forward to getting to know you and seeing you achieve some of your personal goals.

You know, you are probably the most.

16:47

Yeah, you have to be the, the, the had the most appearances on Wild Fed, right?

So out of those 60 episodes we made, you were in it more than anybody.

And you were there from the beginning when the idea came and to make the show.

And you were there for like the whole the whole process.

17:03

And you know that the heart behind it was to inspire people to spend time in nature.

And you know, so for us, let's say it's just been the blueberry season.

We have the blueberries in right now.

We have the raspberries are just finishing and so to go into our backyard, which we don't mow.

17:20

So it's it's pretty wild back there.

All that tall stuff.

If you're afraid of ticks, you're looking out there like there's no way I'm going in there.

So you that means you miss all those berries, right?

And so if you want them, you've got to be tolerant to the idea that you're you know, I'm not going to avoid the ticks.

17:35

I'm going to go in there and then I'm going to have to get these ticks off of me, right.

So I'm kind of curious your thoughts on that component of there are a lot of people now who are spending less time outside.

And actually we're at that moment in history where, you know, 100 years ago, if you're like, I'm going to avoid going outside, it's like, well, what are you going to do then?

17:57

But now it's like, oh, there's endless things to like, psychologically stimulate yourself with, you know, with social media, computers, laptops, phones, AI, podcasts, like all this stuff people can do and so easy for them to not go outside.

And that's my biggest concern.

And also getting our food and nourishment right.

18:15

I I, for me thinking if we go back into the time where we had to go out to hunt and gather our food, as if the hunters and gatherers would be saying, Oh, well, we can't go out today because there's a predator out there that might harm us, we better stay inside.

18:33

It's like it was not an option, right?

Right.

At that time, you went out regardless.

There was no choice in the matter you.

Had wolves, you had bears, you had all these things that could harm you in nature, but you couldn't not go out into nature.

And that's part of life, right?

18:49

And has been as a as a human experience on this earth, we have had to throughout time deal with predators.

And so, and now to think that people are, are opting not to go out in nature because of of this small, small tick.

19:09

Yeah, it's that, you know, it's, it's a parasite.

You know, when we think predator, we think, yeah, big beasts, right.

Which megaphone, Right.

And we also don't think, you know, often we connect predator to like an instantaneous encounter that's dangerous in that moment versus with a tick.

19:29

You've got time.

That's, you know, something I want to say to people who are so nervous to go out in the forest and who are maybe distracting themselves with other things is you've got time.

You're not going to encounter the tick out there in the forest and it's an instantaneous you're sick, right?

19:48

Or you, you get a, a consequence.

You've.

At least with the the ticks and diseases we're dealing.

With now that's true.

But you're right.

No, no, go on.

Yeah.

There's time, you can come home, right?

You, you can, you can be out there for hours.

You can come home.

20:04

And I love how we, what we do.

I mean, we, we really investigate ourselves.

So that's what I would say to people is like, there are ways to work with this.

You come home and you might do an initial check, right?

You know, feel, feel things out.

20:21

It's OK, Take a moment in the bathroom on your own or in your bedroom or wherever you can take all your clothes off and investigate yourself.

And then maybe later you do another one another check, right.

And to to encourage people who are who are afraid to be out there that it's there's ways to do it where you can still feel safe is what I would say to people who are afraid to go in the forest.

20:48

You know, it's like, get out there.

Your point about them being like a predator on the landscape really stands out to me.

If you remember when Luke Story's wife wrote her book, her animal book, and she asked if I wanted to write.

So she had picked a bunch of different people to to write about different animals.

21:07

And everybody, of course was like, well, I want to do eagle or I want to do bear, I want to do lion or what?

All these, like, iconic, charismatic megafauna animals.

And I was like, can I write about ticks?

And so I wrote that piece saying that, you know, 1000 years ago, to go out into nature, you would have had a constant awareness that a predator could grab you off the landscape.

21:31

Today, we've gotten so comfortable, at least here in the east.

I think out West, like, people still have mountain lions and Grizzlies and things like that that they're thinking about.

But out here, you know, coyotes aren't going to attack people for the most part.

And so there's really nothing to be concerned about on our landscape except now that we have this alien invader, these, you know, parasitic arachnids.

21:52

It's what they are.

And they're so dangerous to us that, you know, my joke has always been we need a predator on the landscape.

I always was picturing T Rex or velociraptor or, you know, some kind of thing like that.

But But as you're saying, it turns out that it's the tick, and maybe it restores some kind of human ecological balance where it is important that you interact with nature with some level of fearful reverence.

22:23

Yeah.

It requires us to stay present.

It requires us to be aware.

It requires us to be in touch and with our bodies, right.

And of each other and to maintain a certain level of sensitivity to things versus again the the to the contrary of numbing ourselves or distracting ourselves with things which we're also becoming very good at.

22:50

Yeah, like we're all pros now.

Yeah, the Wild Fed shirt that being granted where it's, I took the tarot card for the Fool and we repurposed it.

So it was like that full card where.

So the traditional tarot image is a is a guy smelling a rose about to walk off a Cliff.

23:08

And the idea is what you're saying is, is that lack of awareness.

And so we changed that to a guy about to walk off a roof of a building holding like a bag of fast food with a pair of like, VR goggles on it.

And that has been happening, right?

You see people like fall off the Grand Canyon taking a selfie or fall into a manhole because they're looking at their phone or, or all this like kind of accidents that happen because people are so distracted.

23:34

And so going into nature, the tick that the blessing of the tick is that it's forced awareness.

Yeah, I think it helps us to stay sharp.

Really.

You know, I and I'm, I'm grateful for anything in life that allows me to be present, present in the moment, present in my surroundings.

23:56

I love walking our path in the morning on our land, walking our loop on the land with the pups.

I feel like my whole nervous system calms.

I feel like I love as you do too, leaving phone at home, right?

24:14

And just going out and being with the trees and being out in the forest and feeling like I can clear my mind and clear my head and just remember the beauty of nature or not remember, be in the beauty of nature.

24:30

Reimburse yourself in it anyway.

Every day, All seasons, Yes.

All weather.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really.

You know that we're here.

It is a daily practice for us.

And I can't imagine.

I can't imagine not doing it because I'm afraid of something that is out there.

24:51

And I, I have some dear friends who have expressed to me that they're hesitant to go out into the forest, you know, to walk their pups or what have you, because they're nervous about this and that.

That makes me a little sad.

But that's why we're that's why I want to have this conversation.

Exactly.

You just nailed it.

25:06

Because we have the option, let's say here where we live, we could walk the dogs on the road.

Yep, right, like every, we used to walk the road a lot more.

Right now we have this beautiful established trail on the land that we do and it allows the dogs to.

I always say, you know this joke I have all the time.

25:23

It's not really a joke.

It's actually quite serious.

It's like what's one of the best things you can do for your health is like get a dog.

You know, because the dog is going to walk you every day, right?

You think you're walking the dog and then you realize you're walking every single day.

And so we every once in a while walk the road and it's kind of nice, you know, there's like the ground reaction force of a solid surface.

25:45

Like I do enjoy Rd. walking sometimes.

Like there's something about that.

It's like very intentional in that you're like, you can walk a straight line, you can work on your gait.

The ground responds in a really nice way, but it's nothing like walking the trail.

26:01

And if I was afraid of ticks, I wouldn't want to do that.

So, and I want to go back to something you said before, which is you have time.

So there's there's some debate about this when it comes to certain tick borne illnesses, Powassan alpha gal allergies from Lone Star ticks.

26:17

These can be transmitted much more quickly, but the tick doesn't get on you and start biting immediately either, right?

So usually it quests on you for a while and you it moves its way upward.

It's trying to find it's like, I think in time we'll understand that it's probably reading your body electrostatically or temperature or so it's finding places you're less likely to discover it, I think, right.

26:41

So it's questing for that spot.

And then like you mentioned before that, that day that you had your first encounter with the 13 unlucky 13 tips, there's an unlucky number to say, right?

So funny, but but sometimes what will happen is they'll get their mouth parts and they'll, they'll grip into your skin and they're beginning the earliest stages of how they're going to attach and you'll feel because you'll kind of pull them away and they'll sometimes pull a little chunk of skin with it.

27:08

But that's not like the kind of bite we're talking about where they fed.

That's just them getting they, they're trying to establish their feeding.

Well, basically.

So you even when I see that I'm not like in a rush, like I got to get this thing off of me in like a cold panic or something, it's like sometimes I'll I'll just, I'm doing something and I'm like, oh, I'll get that tick in a minute, right.

27:29

Yeah, It's become a.

Lot more casual over again over the years, like with anything, you become more comfortable with something because you understand it better, right?

We're, we're most nervous and apprehensive when we, when something is a bit mysterious to us or we don't really fully understand it yet.

27:46

That's where we react in a way that like, oh, stay away, keep away or we react fast, quickly.

But yes, it's true.

Now.

Now I understand that there's time.

I understand that at night, if there's one crawling on me, which obviously it could have been there for some time, that it's okay.

28:07

It's not like I was walking maybe 6 hours before and maybe he's been on me for some time.

I'm not worried that maybe, oh, maybe he was, you know, biting me somewhere else or that that doesn't, you know, it doesn't make me afraid in that way.

28:23

Like you've had exposure therapy because it's like if somebody's like got a snake phobia, then maybe they get exposure therapy where they go and the therapist presents the snake slowly over time they get acclimated to it until that fear starts to subside.

Theoretically, whenever you're afraid of heights, OK, we're going up to the rooftop, we're going to slowly expose you to it.

28:41

So ticks are pretty creepy at 1st and then over time you get more comfortable.

And it's, it has been funny too, to watch when one thing that happens a lot is like, let's say we're here during the day and then we go to the gym.

And for us to go to the gym, it's like 45 minute drive.

Yeah.

We have a gym here at the house, right.

28:57

So we have that.

But.

But if we want to go to the gym, which we go to for, you know, community workouts, Yeah.

It's like a 45 minute drive into a much more urban environment where there's a lot more pavement.

You're just not encountering this, right?

Yeah.

But we'll be in the middle of class.

29:13

You might be like, oh, tick.

And you pull it off and people are like aghast, like they don't see them.

And I, and I remember when that first happened, it, it confused me because I'm the outsider.

I'm from Quebec where ticks are a lot more, you know, not quite as prevalent yet.

29:30

And so I was perplexed when Mainers, you know, I'm not, I'm not considered a mater.

So when Mainers were in shock or even saying, oh, that's what a tick looks like.

Like they hadn't seen him yet.

Right.

I was under the impression that everyone here must understand or understand the tick and understand what it looks like and understand that it can be on our body.

29:55

And yes, many people in that environment will be in shock, right.

Almost like what, what do you mean there's a tick on you?

You know, like during the, the whiteboard brief of our of our class of our workout, I have to step out for a moment to go remove a tick and kill it between two rock surf flushed it down the toilet, right.

30:14

And they're like, what, what do you mean?

What do you mean?

There was a tick on you?

Yes.

Yeah, it's so funny.

Yeah.

Maybe what we should do next is actually define what our, our strategy for dealing with ticks, because we keep hinting at it.

So maybe we should define it.

And I'll say that largely what it has to do with besides sensitizing yourself to the feeling of a tick and then visually getting good at picking them out.

30:38

Because you know how this is, it's like you sometimes will spot a tick on another person from across the room now, right?

Because you're, you're used to you're, you've taught your brain that this is a high value thing to search for.

So it gets good at that, but but the main thing is, is just getting naked in front of the mirror a couple times a day during the peak seasons and just scanning ourselves right.

30:59

So it's.

Morning and evening.

Yeah.

And then honestly like if.

The other times to.

Come in from a walk and I know I probably have them on me.

I'm going to drop all my clothes right there again in front of the mirror, right.

So you just need a, you need a full length mirror in a brightly lit place.

31:15

It is a little challenging like camping and stuff like that.

I will say, like where you don't have that, you know, it's easy to camp in such a way where you don't take your base layers off for a couple days or something like that.

You have to be on top of this stuff, right?

But but for us living out of our home, it's mainly, you know, add anything you think of here, but it's mainly scanning your naked body multiple times a day, but most importantly before bed.

31:38

So you don't have one on you all night and then again in the morning in case one got on you in the night.

And then it's the sensitizing to touch and visually getting good at spotting them, right?

Is that, does that feel like it kind of covers the strategy largely for you?

Yes.

31:54

And I want to say that when we are checking it's intimate, like we're really checking with a full full length mirror as you said, taking off all our clothes and looking at all the nooks and crannies.

Yeah, even.

There I always say to.

People yeah, even there you're checking all the spots that you would not yeah normally look at on the necessarily right.

32:16

I, I say to you, you know, sometimes that I, I, there's something about checking in with your body every day that's pretty cool.

In the process, you know, you get to see certain things or just get familiar with certain spots on your body that you wouldn't miss necessarily look at all the time.

32:33

I think that's a big there's something there.

I think there's two things there.

The first thing I'm going to say is so politically incorrect, you're not supposed to say it, but your overall body composition, you know, so by that I mean your body fat to muscle mass ratio.

32:49

If you're not examining your naked body frequently, it might be a little bit easier to put off doing the things, which is basically diet and exercise that's required to maintain the body composition that would be healthy.

So checking in with your naked body multiple times a day is a great way to just be honest with yourself about where you're at.

33:11

And then the second component, I've just always believed, you know, this has been big part of our relationship is I think I came in at into the relationship almost too aggressive about this.

And then over the years, you've and I have kind of met and found our rhythm with it.

33:32

But my approach to medicine has always been like a self healthcare approach.

I've just been like allergic to doctors.

And, you know, I think when we found our dentist, I mean, I hadn't been to the dentist in a really long time, you know, so maybe to a fault.

I would like not go to these people.

I almost was like, yeah, like it was almost.

33:50

It wasn't a phobia, but it was like, I just have a tremendous distrust for the medical establishment, hence the work I do.

But I believe that a lot because so often as we've seen, you go and you're, they don't do anything.

34:06

They don't know what to tell you and they charge you a bunch of money and you feel like you're getting ripped off or they want to offer you what they have, which is drugs and cutting and burning.

And it's not always the right approach, right?

So I have developed a whole practice of self healthcare and part the the basis.

34:26

It's like if you're going to develop a new relationship with a doctor, the basic is a physical exam.

And when you do what we're talking about, you're physically examining yourself every day.

So let's say that it's like.

Or your partner.

Or your.

Partner, right.

Yeah.

So if somebody's developing A mole that's changing, you're going to know that.

34:43

Or, you know, if somebody's got a rash that's developing, you're going to see that.

Like it keeps you in touch with your integumentary system, your skin, and yeah, you're seeing these parts of your body every day that you're not normally seeing, right?

That's kind of what you're saying.

34:59

Exactly.

And then I want to add to that, too.

Going out in nature and having your skin exposed to the sun.

Yeah.

My dance teacher Yuriel always says, you know, if you want a part of your body to be beautiful, you have to show it to the sun.

35:16

You have to let it breathe.

So, you know, for me, as you know, it's been a mission for me to work on my legs and throughout my life as I develop my later life, developing my land legs and for so long A what's that for my mermaid tail, exactly.

35:33

And, you know, I'm seeing how important it is for my legs, my skin to see the sun and for my legs to be exposed.

And so if I were really afraid and wearing tights every day, I wouldn't have the chance to do that.

So similarly, I not only want to check every part of my body, but I also want my body parts to still get to see the sun and be out in nature.

35:55

Yeah, well, for me and for me to be comfortable, like on hot days, there's no way I want to wear pants, right?

But I've been out and had people be like, well, how can you wear shorts with all these ticks everywhere?

It's like, well, I'm just gonna pick all the ticks off me and I'm just gonna feel them.

So I again, I don't want to be cavalier here.

And then tomorrow I get the tick bite that I, you know, after all these years, you know, I need to, I don't want to sound cocky about it, but I just am very comfortable now.

36:18

And the idea of suffocating myself inside clothes or like you said, missing out on this window of sunlight we have in the summertime, living in northern latitude, it's like that's really important to me.

And the reality is the ticks are going to get worse.

I mean, in our lifetime.

36:34

It's so crazy.

I know I've said this in so many podcasts and people probably heard it ad nauseam, but I just can't believe that I, I only saw one tick in my entire childhood.

And now I see 25 a day just because I walk the dogs.

It's like how and and the reasons that I've been given outside of, you know, ticks being ruggedized in lab experiments, which seems the most logical to me, because the other story I hear is it's climate change, which the absurdity that it's like in my lifetime, I just haven't observed this climate changed dramatically here.

37:10

You know, no matter what they say, let's the hottest day on record, Okay, it's one, it's a quarter degree hotter than the summers that I grew up in maybe or you know, less snow, I guess a little bit, but not still it's like still cold, snowy winters, hot summers.

37:26

It's the same weather that we grew up with.

The other reason I hear from people is that we've changed the habitat significantly, in particular, like developing neighborhoods, creating more deer habitat and that this boom in white tailed deer is, you know, they're the prime food source for the ticks.

37:44

And so they're carrying around and distributing these ticks.

That's that I do think is a component, but I don't think it explains the whole situation.

One of the things that's blown my mind is that we will have a four foot pile of snow in our front yard still from the plow trucks, right?

38:04

So for those who don't live in snow, I should say, and aren't used to this, where you plow up snow like at the end of your driveway when the truck comes in, that snow does not melt very quick.

It's got a lot of thermal mass.

So you might start to have exposure of the forest floor and things are starting to melt away, but you'll still have these big mounds of snow, patches of snow everywhere.

38:24

And we'll be getting ticks and then the tick season goes right on through until now there's.

A little lull right now.

When it gets really hot and dry.

So that's like late July through late August.

It gets too hot and dry for the ticks to function well, so they start to tuck themselves into different cool places and hide out.

38:45

And so we don't see so many right now.

Like, in fact, a whole day can go by.

We don't see one sometimes.

You found one the other day.

I remember on Yeah.

And I remember thinking while he's rolling around in the leaf litter, and that's where they are and stuff.

But so we'll have that little lull.

And then it picks back up through September, October.

39:04

And we're at a point now.

Yeah, we're at a point now until the ground is covered in snow and things are frozen.

I'm still seeing tanks.

Something I've talked about over the years is how few wild foods still make it into our global marketplace.

Most of us have grown up eating almost exclusively domesticated food products.

39:22

There's a very unique food still harvested from the wild each year in the US, and that's the black walnut, not those English walnuts most of us are familiar with.

This is America's indigenous walnut, higher in protein than any other tree nut crop.

The thing is, not many people eat it anymore.

39:39

That's why we've turned it into the cleanest protein powder available anywhere in the world.

Now that might sound like a big claim, but think about it for a moment.

It's a single ingredient wild protein made with nothing but hand foraged black walnuts.

Rather than the cheap high heat expeller press method most companies use to make their protein, use the ultra clean CO2 extraction method, the same process the medical cannabis industry uses.

40:05

If you're looking for a truly clean protein powder that isn't dirty like whey, doesn't cramp your stomach like pea protein, or taste rancid like hemp, check out Sirth Rivals award-winning black walnut protein powder.

Get yours at sirthrival.com.

So their hardiness is.

40:24

Unsettling to me, you know and so we've experienced something that appears to not only be getting worse, but now new species are migrating north and our ticks are starting to spread up into Canada so that our friends up there are starting to have to deal with it as well.

40:40

So it's kind of like, yay, maybe they're moving N, but now alpha gals travelling up from the South and so this isn't going away and so people need to.

Develop strategies, yes.

Yes, yeah.

40:56

So the full length mirror, that's the key.

Camping, we check each other.

Yep.

And I want, you know, this hair.

It's not.

I don't just wake up like this.

OK, the mirror that I'll get.

About you do wake up.

Yeah, my.

Hair is like this morning, but but as you know, I I bring like, you know, it's so funny on wild fed sheets, you know, like we're all I'm out there with all my my guns and my suppressors and Turkey and all my like gear.

41:20

And then I like at this like a vanity hand mirror, you know, to like to make sure my buns right or whatever.

But but the hand mirror is actually really helpful.

So when you're camping, like you can bend over and kind of get a view of anything you need to get a view of and even like around your back and stuff because you need to be able to see every square inch of yourself.

41:40

Yes, that spot you miss can be the spot where the tick is.

Yeah.

And then I would say phantom ticks we could we like to call like so be to to acknowledge the phantom tick because after you've had found a tick on yourself, you think, OK, I found it, it's good, I'm good.

41:58

But then later in the day you can start to feel them as a result.

Like you think you're feeling something but it could just be your mind playing tricks on you because you're over sensitive in that moment.

And often it is just being oversensitive.

But sometimes I've found that the phantom tick is actually. 3040% of the.

42:17

Time, time.

There is something on me, it's maybe on my clothing or it's hanging out somewhere and being very still and then it moves a little bit and then it's very still again.

So I've learned to pay attention to that.

And, and most of the time it, you know, I, I might feel the phantom tickness at one spot of my body and then I end up finding the tick down on my leg, which always that's.

42:43

What's really weird about it?

Yeah.

First I want to say, because this reminds me of when I was a kid.

I remember being at a school assembly.

They wanted to play a video for the entire school about head lice.

There must have been like, head lice must have come through the school or something.

So I remember they brought us all into the auditorium and we watched, like a small documentary on head lice.

43:02

And I remember everybody being like, like, it created phantom head lice for everybody.

We all were like, itching our scalps.

And it's like, you know, what's that feeling?

Do I have head lice?

So when you're looking around.

So when you bring someone into tick country, yeah, they start worrying.

43:19

Do I have ticks on me?

And then once you've actually found one on you, that's where you're like, your brain changes.

It's like, oh, I have to be aware of this, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So what you're talking about is, oh, that was just a mosquito, but I thought maybe it was a tick or, oh, that was just an itch, but I thought maybe it was a tick.

Oh, and I think that's just an itch.

43:37

And then you check it and you're like, oh, that was a tick.

And you learn.

So we have this saying, right?

It's like always, always worth it to check a phantom ticket.

Right and exactly.

And may you feel, may you feel every tick.

But like, don't disregard the phantom tick because a good percentage of the time it's an actual tick.

43:53

And then so you just pointed out something really interesting.

A lot of times I'll feel the phantom tick and the tick is not there, it's somewhere else.

Yes, this happens a lot of times when we sit down at dinner.

I gotta say, we're very lucky and blessed and strategic and disciplined about most nights we sit down and eat together.

44:13

And so I have a lot of memories of it's dinner time.

And I'll say to you, or you say to me like I got a tick on me somewhere.

Yeah.

And you just know it's there because you're feeling something.

Yeah, but you can't find it yet.

But you know it's gonna turn up.

Yeah, you'll ask me sometimes to tech.

Oh, Avani, tick behind my ear.

44:29

I feel like there's a tick there.

I'm like, oh, there's nothing there.

Yeah.

Pro tip because this is what I've learned.

Here's a pro tip.

A lot of times middle of dinner I'll be like, hang on, go in there, strip all my clothes off, check there's no tick, put my clothes back on.

What I've figured out is very often I think the tick is flipped around and he's actually on my inside of my clothes.

44:48

So I'm feeling his back across my skin and as he moves around he it feels like suddenly why do I find him on my?

It's because he comes out my neckline.

This man, we pull our shirt for a moment.

Or a tech for you.

Oh, it's not there.

There's nothing there still.

On the clothes and then eventually he does a 180 and now he's on you and then you find him.

45:06

So sometimes the tick is crawling or questing and so you're feeling something and you know he's there.

And what I've started doing is taking my clothes off, turning them inside out and looking there.

And I also want to add this.

A lot of times, this is from earlier.

45:22

A lot of times when I come in, I find that the place that the most ticks end up on my clothes is in the crotch.

Because as they quest up, they'll get into that, like sort of, yeah, that what do they call that diamond gusset of my pants?

And they'll be right in that spot.

45:39

The other place is if I have a cargo pockets, they'll get up under the seam.

So I've learned when I take my clothes off, where to look, because a lot of times they're not on you, they're on your clothes, and they'll eventually get onto you and then throw my clothes over in the hamper or something.

And then the next day there's ticks coming up the wall from the hamper.

45:57

Yeah, or in our closet sometimes on our, like, clothes that are hanging.

I'm often surprised to find one crawling up the sleeve, thinking, how did you know?

I haven't even worn that piece of clothing in some time.

And there he is, just crawling up there.

Yeah.

How does he get there?

Yeah.

46:12

So they obviously we're distributing them around, but it feels like they just show up.

The other thing I want to say is that I think what ends up happening is people start to make up stories.

They think that the tick jumped out of a tree onto them or it somehow fell out of the sky onto them because it's like how to get up here?

46:27

And it's like, no, they're they're on blades of grass, they're on Forbes.

They're just waiting for you to walk by.

They're super sticky.

They grab on and then they move up there and people are sure.

No, it had to have like they don't jump or have any special abilities like that.

They're pretty tame.

46:43

That part really amazed me initially because most insects, a mosquito, a family, a dragonfly, you see it coming towards you, right?

You usually register the moment that it lands on you.

46:59

Yes, even a spider, let's say.

It's like they're a little bigger and more present.

So you, you, you're, you're, you're with it in that moment saying OK, it's on me and like gonna squish the mosquitoes or brush the flag.

Yeah, well, if it's a mosquito, a nice crush it you always.

47:15

Yeah, why did?

You do that.

You gotta brush it.

Yes, yes.

Brush it off.

You want to blush the blood on me?

Don't inject it at me.

Yeah, but it's amazing to me.

That's it with a tick.

It's almost this, this mysterious again.

I'll use the word.

Does feel a bit mysterious.

47:31

Yeah.

Yeah, magical almost.

Like how?

Like they vaporize into reality?

Yeah, that's it.

Because you walk the whole time, you don't see them like you do other bugs.

At least I haven't.

I don't so much see them out in nature.

Oh yeah, Yeah.

Sometimes I find them on the blade of grass and sometimes I'll find is them Daisy chained where there's a bunch because together the the females will lay.

47:54

I want to say it's like 20,000 eggs or even 100th, I forget now the number.

It's like a really absurd number of eggs that they'll lay.

And so you'll get a whole bunch in one place.

And sometimes they'll all be Daisy chained onto a piece of grass or something on a leaf of grass you walk by and you might get, because if you ever look down, you're like there's 4 right there.

48:12

Like they came together, like they were all together and they got on you from one place.

And so that'll happen too.

They were a team.

Yeah, Yeah, they were a team.

OK, so you find a tick on you.

Yeah.

One of our part of our strategy is we don't release any ticks into the wild, right, Because.

48:29

Yeah.

You feel like you're helping every tick.

Or I'm going to get him back or my dog or you or somebody's going to get this tick if I don't get rid of this tick, right.

So let's go through like how we eliminate the ticks that we.

One thing that's fun about talking about this for years.

48:45

You know, I'm trying to talk about hunting and every time it's like you, you find these euphemistic words because people can't who aren't hunters or farmers, it's hard for them to hear.

So you have to say like, I harvested the deer or how I dispatched that animal.

49:02

You use these euphemistic words.

No one is going to get butthurt about us killing ticks, which is nice, right?

So we can just talk like brutal murder about the ticks.

So every tick is murdered.

How do you typically do it?

Let's.

Let's break this up.

49:18

Sorry to interrupt.

Let's break this up into.

In house and out of the house.

Yeah.

So if I'm in the house, I like to drop them in the toilet and I like to accumulate several in the toilets reach flush before, yes, because it's a bit wasteful to flush with every tick because that can accumulate very fast.

49:36

What I've noticed over the years, and I've spoken to you about this, and I don't know if it's just my my imagination or I'm, I am perceiving something, is they are becoming a lot better at crawling.

If I let one float in the toilet and leave it, he's gonna find his way up the side of the toilet and.

49:56

Try like in this 11 years you've seen an increase in their swimming.

Ability, yes, I feel like they're better swimmers and better prepared now to to find ways out of being in something like a toilet.

It was a hideous observation but, and I could just be imagining this, but I do feel it.

50:15

So.

They get out, they get out there sometimes when I leave.

Center right, Like I drop them dead center in the water because if they're anywhere near the edge they will climb out.

Now you have ticks crawling out of the toilet, which is very nightmarish.

So now I take, which I find sometimes that's it.

It's like you see them crawling down the side, like how did he do that or how did it do that?

50:35

So I've been taking a piece of toilet paper, just one small piece, wrapping the tick inside of that and then putting it in a toilet like this.

And then I feel like he's stuck inside of he's trapped inside of it.

It was.

Irritation, which I I picked up because I was like, oh, clever.

50:51

Now I found if I roll him up in there, it unravels in there and they can get out.

But.

So I typically take the 1 sheet and I set it directly over time.

Yeah, yeah.

Because then it's harder for me.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

And there's The funny thing is so not on us because we don't let ticks get engorged on us, but we will find ticks on the dogs that have had a blood meal and if they've eaten any amount they sink.

51:20

Yes, yeah, it's a plop.

There's a plop when you drop.

You watch so satisfying watching them go down to the bottom and you so those ones are easy to accumulate.

So sometimes like you walk into one of our bathrooms and there's like some toilet paper pieces and you can see the tick under the toilet paper gets transparent when it gets wet.

51:36

And then there'll be a bunch of grapes down at the bottom where they've the big ones that have engorge themselves and they'll be at the bottom so.

And also the toilet paper helps because I've learned too that you can have a tick between your fingers and you go to drop it in the toilet and you think for sure it's in there, and then you look in the toilet and it's nowhere to be.

51:56

Found like where is it?

Oh no.

Yes, exactly.

And somehow it's quickly made its way to a different part on my body.

It knows to crawl upwards, it knows to crawl up as I'm trying to drop it into the toilet.

It knows to make its way out my finger.

52:12

He knows what's about to happen now I keep saying he I know it's not.

It knows what's about to happen.

So in the night, this is one thing I want to say to to be careful if you're taking one off in the dark in the night, which now I feel we're very good at as well.

52:30

I think back years ago I would have needed to turn the lights on if I felt a tick on myself.

Now I can, in the night, feel it on my arm.

There it is, Grab it in the dark, make my way into the bathroom.

Now in this part though, I like to have a bit of light to assure that the tick is left my fingers or gotten inside of the piece of toilet paper because that's the risky place for me because I can feel it there, but then I can't necessarily be sure it landed in the right spot.

52:59

So.

I've had several times over the years where I wake up and I grab the tick, yeah, and I'm holding it in my fingers and I fall back asleep, and then I wake up and it's not there.

So that's like a nightmare.

You're like, I'll, I'll get to it in a moment.

I'm gonna get up in a second, you know?

53:16

Yeah.

Or like you're saying, you go to flick it and then you realize like it's still on you.

Yeah.

And this happens a lot of times.

I'm driving and I find one on me and I want to flick out the window.

Yeah, and you have to be.

I have a strategy.

Sure, y'all.

I'd love to hear your strategy because sometimes you think you flicked it out and then it's it's still prowling on you.

53:33

Oh, I'm sorry to get itchy.

Well, I don't know if it's so much a strategy.

I just have a method that I I make sure the window's down a certain amount and then I place it on my finger in a way where I can really flick it and I see that it's gotten.

53:48

And it goes back to a convertible behind.

Yes, exactly.

That 'd be good.

But yeah, so you got to make sure that you're actually and like you said in the night, you got to make sure it gets off you.

OK.

So we typically now I'll, I'll say in the house, I have two strategies.

54:05

So I'll go toilet like you're talking about, particularly when they've had a blood meal, because my other strategy is if the tick is not engorged and you can tell they just move faster, they're flatter.

Yeah, right.

You when a tick has had even a little bit of blood, you can feel he's fat or plumper.

54:23

Yeah.

And I don't like to pop those ones because they've they're filled with blood.

It's like when you kill a mosquito and then the mosquito you're like, whose blood is that?

Hopefully that's mine.

You know, it's like in a public place, you're like somebody's blood.

But anyway, so same when if it's like the dog's blood or something kind of skews me out.

54:38

So yeah, but I'll just take the tip of the my pocket knife and right into the center of their carapace of of their exoskeleton and there's just a sound when I push that knife tip in that just goes like pop.

I don't know if I can hear it or feel it.

I think it's like a bit of both.

54:54

But I'll kind of feel it penetrate.

And then usually the ticks legs go pretty limp and then I'll just toss them into the compost or the garbage because I know they're dead.

So that's my other strategy that I do and outdoors if I have my pocket knife, which is most of the time, that's typically what I'll do.

55:11

OK, but we have other.

Strategies outdoors, I use two small rocks and I've taught my students this as well and they they're like, oh, Miss Avani.

Now I I've been doing your method, your your tick killing method outside.

Ainsley said that to me the other day.

55:27

She was like, I was out by the book with my friends and we found a tick.

And so I showed them my your strategy.

Yeah, Just take two rocks, place the tick onto one of the rocks, make sure it's in a good spot, and then you take the other rock and give it a good.

55:43

Yeah, Grinding.

Yeah, grinding.

Yeah.

Cuz they're very Hardy.

I remember there was a cartoon character, The Tick.

Some older folks might remember.

It you told me about this.

Just like this dude in the blue suit.

Anyway, in the comic book, one of his superpowers was that he couldn't be crushed.

56:01

So I grew up thinking ticks were like crush proof, and they're obviously not, but they're very Hardy in that way.

So you do kind of need to grind.

And I like to take the rocks.

Don't have to be big like you're moving to.

They can be pebbles, but if I have one that has a bit of a point, I'll actually grind that tip right into them and make sure that I see them destroyed before I One other strategy that I've been doing, We have our dog remote.

56:25

I think I have it actually here.

So like this thing which you know, we use for our dogs, you know, texting function basically to beat the dogs.

So they can run free.

On our walks, so in the carabiner, I sometimes will play, I do this more for my own amusement, but I'll place a tick right into that little notch and then I'll kill it against this edge here when I close it and I'll squish them like that.

56:47

So that's like another thing that I'll sometimes do, but but basically making sure that they're all dead.

Right, our friends, kids, it was Lily or Addy.

What they were telling me that they burned them too.

They light them on with a lighter.

57:04

That's another one I'll sometimes do and I'll burn off their legs and mouth parts cuz then I know that they're at least not capable of feeding again.

But but, you know, it's, it's like I remember when I was a lifeguard on the beach, we would sometimes do this thing because you'd be getting attacked by those big green headed horse flies.

57:22

Yeah.

And every once in a while I'd get in a kind of mood where I'd catch one alive.

And they, they like you bleed from those, right?

They take like a chunk of your skin.

So I would bury them up to their heads, just their heads out.

Hey, man, parasites are freaking.

57:39

And then I would disassemble.

We had those like old school binoculars, right?

It's like a different era.

Before binoculars were cool.

But I would take apart and pull out the lens.

And then I would they just feel like their little mouth, like out of the sand.

And then I would focus the beam of sunlight and burn their faces off.

57:55

Now you have a wife who, like, wants to take the dragonflies out of Rescue them, rescue them all.

Appreciate that with the dragonflies as long as you don't start releasing ticks, but.

I promise I will not do.

But so I think people need a basic tick killing strategy.

Yeah.

And so something like that, two rocks, a knife, I can see somebody not wanting to do the knife because like, you know, it's a delicate thing.

58:17

Like you don't want to like, poke into the tick and then poke into your own skin and then contaminate your own blood supply with whatever's in the tick.

But I think if you're deft with a knife, and that's a good skill.

Which I'm not, so the rocks are great.

Yeah, the rocks are too and easy to work with.

It's satisfying too, right?

58:33

You feel, as you said earlier, you feel like you're you're maybe helping someone else not not get bit by that particular minor.

Yes, I know.

But it feels in the moment, certain days you feel, wow, I've done a good job today at Yeah.

I want to talk about getting them off the dogs, but also getting them off us because one of the things I always notice, I'm sure you see this year, go to like any kind of like outdoor store.

58:57

Yeah.

And, you know, usually it's by the impulse items, by the register.

They'll have all these like, tick removing devices.

And it's what, a hokey like tick keys and all the stuff.

You're like guys, like, completely unnecessary.

In fact, probably a little ridiculous.

59:13

Yeah, there.

You just pull them off.

The best method is to use your own fingers I think.

But yes.

Well, yes, and obviously you don't Now ticks are not like mosquitoes.

I just I'm saying this having just spoken to Doctor Steven Rich recently about this and he was saying a mosquito like to your point and why you're always telling me not to squish mosquitoes on you even though my theory.

59:38

Is blood on my shirt?

My theory is if we brush them away, they're going to come back and feed again, so I like to just quickly get yes.

If it's on your skin, I'm cool.

My shirt, I don't like the blood.

Understood.

You're I'm not saying you're definitely not wrong.

They are like a hypodermic needle that goes to their belly.

59:55

So you watch them and they're like siphoning blood out of you and filling up and you see the blood in them.

And so you can essentially reverse that and push stuff back.

Ticks are not feeding them like in that way.

So what they're doing is they're they're using their mouth parts to saw in opening into a capillary bed.

1:00:11

Then they carve out some tissue, cement their mouth around that little pool that they've created that's filling in with.

Capillary blood and feeding off of that and then puking back into it and feeding.

It's this is disgusting thing that they're doing.

But but if you squish 1, they're not injecting anything into you.

1:00:29

The other thing people worry about, it's like, yeah, but the head's in me.

It's like this is a non issue it has.

It was in our course that we took our outdoor first aid training.

It was the gentleman who taught the course who I remember him saying that, announcing that to the class, like, hey, listen, if the head's still in there, it has no body anymore to function.

1:00:50

When exactly?

So it can't get any of the disease back in.

So that's the thing.

People always worried about right?

Like they think they need the tick key to fully remove.

Like as if it's doing a better job.

But that said, when a tick is on the dog, I say that because I've never had an engorged tick on myself and neither of you right.

1:01:07

So it's not like we're we're dealing with this, but on the dodge, you'll find one where where I find them the most is around their collars, right?

You take the collars off and they've been hiding under there.

So you get one that you're like, Oh, that one's been feeding a minute and you just kind of get both your fingertips as close to the skin between its mouth and the skin and it just, it disengages in a popping sound, right?

1:01:28

You like feel it come off.

It reminds me of taking a matsutake mushroom out of the ground where it goes like pop.

So that's something you don't need any specialized tools for.

And I just think that I understand, you know, I'm, I have businesses, I get when people are like come up with some idea, but but I don't think that that's helping people.

1:01:48

I think it's actually feeding the idea that they're somehow like they're untouchable, they're dangerous.

They're a special tool and again, it's small, but again, it's that disconnection from you doing it yourself with your hand and removing it and becoming good at it too, of like getting at a certain angle, making sure to pull it out.

1:02:10

Well, you know, I feel like over time I've, I've developed a way for that as well to for the ones that are just biting a little bit.

You just saying that made me realize you're right.

Because you, you pull in the like whatever direction it's body, the plane of its body is going to the skin.

1:02:27

You kind of pull in the exact 180 direction, right?

Like you wouldn't pull up or sideways.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just like a splinter.

It's a great way to say it.

And, and, and maybe people are wondering, hearing us, you know, why we don't treat our dogs.

Oh, I'd love to talk about that.

1:02:42

Yeah, just hearing you say that we find them all over and our reasoning behind that.

Yeah, because, I mean, essentially the option is to poison your dog.

Yeah.

So treatments that put a toxin into the dog's bloodstream that kills the tick that feeds on it.

1:02:58

But that's just that's, again, you do what you want to do, but this is just not our way.

We're not looking to do that.

And then?

That's poison not being very good for us.

Yeah, like we're not looking to interact, like I don't want to poison my dog.

And then there's topicals or collar based things.

1:03:15

You're now engaging with that all the time too.

And so or, you know, I'll say this, we've we've got people not far from us who make the decision to poison their whole lawn, right.

So people are treating their yards and you and when they do it, they got these little signs up on their yard with like a skull and crossbones and you see their kids out there playing in that grass where you're like make the connection that you're poisoning your against people.

1:03:37

The irony of having a front lawn.

Where we're meant to be right out there, sitting out there enjoying the space, right?

It's not meant to just be looking at.

We're meant to sit with our family, have a picnic.

As you said, the kids are meant to play there.

1:03:53

And then we see these signs.

I just can't.

I can't understand that people would poison.

They're a lawn.

They're to look home their own yard.

Yeah.

It's so that is so.

Perplexing to me and I'm thinking of someone in particular right now.

Who does that and got Lyme disease?

1:04:10

So you're like kind of pointless.

Now you have a poison lawn and Lyme disease, and all your kids are playing in carcinogens and your grandkids are playing in carcinogens.

And so, yeah, these strategies are not for us.

So hence our dogs are part of this.

1:04:26

It reminds me a bit of what if you watch like, a documentary on primates where you see them like, you know, yes, grooming each other.

Grooming each other.

Yeah.

So we have to kind.

Of daily do that with the.

Dogs during high tech season 2 and so we're those are the days with the toilet ends up with quite a lot of ticks and they're right.

1:04:42

And you know one of the things that will happen is is let's say you're sitting really comfortably with one of the dogs and the dog's heads on your lap and you'll find a couple ticks if I'm up and about you'll be like hey babe, can I pass you this tick Yes and vice versa.

We pass each other ticks all the time, right?

1:04:59

Which we should demonstrate in a minute, but OK.

But very often, yeah, we're handing off ticks and or because the other thing will happen is you'll be like, hey, babe, can you take this tick?

And I'll take it.

And then I'll come back in the room and you'll be like, oh, I got it.

Two more.

And then I'll come back in the room and you'll be like, oh, another one here.

And it's just like, sometimes there's 5 or 6 or 20 that the dogs have ticked up in the evening.

1:05:20

And it's always interesting.

To me too, at the beginning of the tick season, after winter, the dogs are a little apprehensive about us removing them.

They're a bit nervous and they jump a bit, you know, and then we get to the stage where they know exactly what we're doing.

1:05:35

They stay so relaxed, almost like they're thanking us because it's uncomfortable for them as well.

And so and how about this every tick that we take?

Off of them, they want to smell it, Yes, they want to see and smell every single tick.

And like they know the smell of a tick.

Yeah, 'cause they also find them for us.

1:05:51

Like sometimes the dogs will Bay a tick on the floor or on the wall and or love it.

Ellie does that thing where she can sometimes get one off of her, but it's in her mouth.

We know it because there's foam and saliva.

Everywhere like.

Her method is, like, kind of messy, but she'll get it off, and then we'll find like, oh, there's the tick, and you can kind of tell by the foam and the way she's acting that she's onto a tick.

1:06:11

Yeah.

And Diaz will well, as you said.

He'll that's it and he will stay so focused on it.

And I'm like, good point.

He is so good.

Yeah, like you said in the beginning of the season, they're jumpy about it.

And then.

As the season progresses, they're quite grateful about it.

Like us, I feel too.

1:06:27

It's true, right?

At the beginning of the season, I'm a little, a little not, not not quite as as at ease with it as as I become as the season progresses.

Well, well said.

And so the places.

On the dogs, you know, so, so we have short haired dogs.

1:06:43

I should start with that, that I think if you're deep in tit country and you've got a 2 double coated long haired dog, man, it must be.

I can't even speak to the challenge our plot hounds have.

You know, there's not hair all around our house like a lot of people have what their dogs are on our clothes because our dogs have short hair and they don't need to be bathed very much because their hair is so short.

1:07:04

You can see their skin pretty easily.

So even just running your hand down them, you quickly identify the ticks.

And I think you and I have both gotten pretty good at seeing little ruffles in their fur and you'll be like, I think there's a tick there.

But there's a lot that are just easy to find.

They can be anywhere and those ones are easy to find, but there's the the places where they can be easy to overlook.

1:07:26

And I'll start by saying around the collar because, you know, you have to remove the collars basically.

But like, it's not that we don't do that often, but sometimes it's like the next day and you're like, oh, I found a couple of one that I've really fed.

So around the collars is 1.

Where would you say In the ears, In their ears?

1:07:42

In the folds of their?

Ears.

Yeah, they have that little earlobe flap thing that dogs.

Have where it's like you can kind of open up that little space and they definitely get in there and then deep in the ears.

Those are the ones I'm usually pulling out and those ones are pretty nasty sometimes because they'll they'll get a good meal.

There's a lot of blood flow in there.

1:07:58

I think they engorge more quickly in the ears in my experience because there's so much capillary blood flow.

You have to get a good hold of them when you're deep in there and.

Especially because it can be they can have ear wax on them that.

Kind of can be gross every once in a while, but not often I'll find them between the toes.

1:08:13

That's a place where they can hide out or under the pad a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

But otherwise they're pretty easy to to find on the dogs.

But that's the that is probably where most of the ones that we're finding in the house, because sometimes it's like making the bed and it's like, wow, there's just a tick on the bed, right?

1:08:31

It's just like gross to me that you would go to sleep and there's ticks in the bed.

But yeah, but it's just part of it.

Part of it.

Yeah, it's part of it.

You want.

To live with the outdoors, it's just going to be.

Part of it now, right?

That's the world we've made for ourselves, essentially, so we don't need another reason to not go.

1:08:48

In the outdoors, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So the the checking the.

Dogs is I mean what 10 minutes a day maybe of of just yeah the morning time I feel when I I'm.

Snuggling, snuggling with Diaz in the morning with my coffee.

1:09:04

That's a time where I'm checking him and then in the evening, so similar to us, you know, the dub twice a day and it just becomes part of well, actually it's.

Kind of a bonding experience with them too, maybe like how that, because I know that that behavior amongst chimps, let's say, or bonobos, it's part of how they manage intimate relationships.

1:09:24

And so that is sort of like maybe spending quality time with your partner, talking and making eye contact like so grooming with the dogs is one of the ways that we deepen our bond with them.

And so and like you said that they definitely appreciate it.

So that's component shows care and I think they feel that they.

1:09:42

Feel that care.

So I want to demonstrate how.

We pass a tip and I'll skew it up by.

It's funny because if anybody's ever been a joint smoker, they'll know about this.

Yeah, because it's the classic way that you.

1:09:58

Pass like a a.

Joint that's like a Roach basically so it's like you've got it in one hand you transfer like your index finger to thumb and then lift and then that person peels away, right.

So we do that because as you know, if you anytime we varied this, you drop the tick and then when you drop a tick, it's this awful feeling that you know that there's it reminds me of like anybody who's seen the movie alien where there's those like facehugger things and there's some scenes where they're like run under something everyone's like oh God, where'd it go?

1:10:28

You know it's like a horror movie.

So you drop a tick and it's like, Oh no, where is it?

They reminds me of at the gym that day that one of the.

Members had a tick on her back and she came up to us and she lifted her shirt.

She's like, I think there's a tick on me.

I said yes, there is.

And I pulled it off and then I turned to you and then we did the tick pass and then you took it and brought it into the toilet and everyone was standing there like, like we just done open eye surgery or something.

1:10:53

Yeah, it.

Was really sweet.

We had all it was the seamless.

Our method that's a seamless pass, right?

But out of.

Out of born out of the struggle, because if you do it wrong, you lose the tick.

It seems like everywhere you turn, everyone's promoting colostrum these days.

1:11:10

Endless claims not just about the effects but also the sourcing.

And I get it.

I've been using colostrum daily for almost 2 decades and I've been in the colostrum industry now for 18 years.

Here's what you need to know.

Yes, colostrum is all that they say it is, but most of these companies aren't selling you what they tell you they are.

1:11:31

They sell a cheap D fatted fractionated product.

They almost never sell whole colostrum, but worse, they sell it in overpriced tiny amounts to maximize their markup and their advertising budgets.

They make money, you get the industries lowest grade product.

1:11:48

Sir Thrival is different.

We sell whole colostrum, never defected or fractionated, and we sell it in bulk, like our One and 2K sizes because our customers like me, are serious users.

Pound for pound, we've got the very best product at the very best price.

1:12:06

So whether you're using it for recovery, as a sophisticated protein powder, for gut health or immuno development, Sir Thrival has set the industry standard for colostrum for 18 years running.

Find the very best at sirthrival.com.

1:12:23

But yeah, like often times you get to where you're spotting ticks on other people because they're they haven't developed.

That's the scarier place to be.

I would I'm so much more comfortable where we are because we've we've engaged this so much that I'm, I'm hyper vigilant right to it.

1:12:40

Like somebody who's been in combat becomes hyper vigilant.

What's scarier is being a little bit oblivious.

But going into tit country that I think that's where most of the problems occur is people aren't that vigilant about it.

Or they do the thing of like, how about this?

You get into bed at night and you're like, lay down and you're really comfortable, and then you're like, I didn't do a tick check.

1:13:00

Yeah, it's the worst.

And we have to turn the lights on and.

Bright for me.

If I have to turn on like a bright overhead.

Light it just it's hard for me to go back to sleep after so and you're tempted for a brief moment, not just.

You, I mean, I think anyone would be tempted in that moment to say, yeah, it's OK, I'll check tomorrow.

1:13:19

That's it.

That's what I'm saying.

We can't and and it.

Yeah, I think too, as you get older, the desire to just be like comfortable, right?

It's, it's, it's takes a lot of initiatives.

So it's nice when you your partner is doing a tick check because you're like, oh, I should go in and do 1 real quick.

1:13:38

Yeah, it inspires, motivates, motivates you to do it.

And then it is.

Important if you've gotten into bed to be like, you know what, just get up and do it because but unfortunately, yeah, it's not a thing you do in candlelight, right?

You need you need some light, so it's best if you can do and this is hard because it so I interview a lot of people about light and circadian rhythm.

1:14:01

I have for years this story and you see you maybe don't see this because you're not really you're incredible in that you're not online Every time somebody tries to tempt you to like get into social media and I'm like, guys, shut get a day.

What I say to you.

Somebody was talking to you about Instagram and I was like, yeah, it's kind of like if you smoke cigarettes and you talking to somebody who doesn't smoke cigarettes and you're like, Oh no, you should try them.

1:14:23

It's like, no, don't try them.

Like it's addictive.

Yeah, but you might not see this, but a lot of people I interview about light, they show up to the interview and they're wearing those orange blue blocker glasses, you know all that, you know, And I'm always thinking and they're, they're really big on like after a certain time of night, your body is not meant to be exposed to blue light anymore, right?

1:14:42

That's like, for sure real.

And that's a fast.

Yeah.

But it's like, sorry, I live in tic country.

Before I go to bed, I need to see that there's not.

I would rather have like less melatonin and not Lyme disease or Powassan or Babesia or anaplasmosis or alpha gal or any number of these illnesses.

1:15:00

It's in the not worth it category to not.

Check exactly.

It's like, OK, we don't want that light in that moment, but I I far more do not want to get an engorged tick correct?

So it is way better to.

Make sure you do it before bed, you know, so we don't have anything where it's like we don't set an alarm or have any like post it note to ourself or anything like that.

1:15:25

We just kind of are in the habit.

But maybe for somebody who's not that something like that might make sense to just have some routine where they have some kind of trigger to remind them to check.

But you know, everything we're talking about, too, if you're listening to this and you're like in New York City or something, maybe this doesn't seem important until you decide you're going to come do a weekend in Maine, or you're going to go for a weekend in Connecticut or you're going to go for a weekend somewhere.

1:15:46

Because the first time I ever saw somebody get Lyme disease personally was I was traveling with a friend from Connecticut back up to Maine.

And we stopped to pee on the side of the road and she got a tick on her and then she got Lyme disease.

1:16:08

And then that was the first time I saw somebody have to go on a long cycle of doxycycline.

And that's where I saw that the doxy had photo sensitivity properties.

And I remember this person being badly sunburned and just being like, wow, everything about this sucks.

1:16:24

You know, so it's, it can be as short as you stop on the side of the road to pee, right?

So it's like meaning that you can pick up that, but it doesn't mean.

You get lime in that moment.

Just to clarify for our audience, she didn't get lime in that moment.

1:16:39

She went to bed with a.

Tick on her, Yeah.

But my point being that you might be like, oh, we're just going up to Bahaba for a weekend or something.

Like if you're going to go to a place where ticks are endemic, you need to be doing these things on your vacation.

And like, that's why I want to really drive this home to people that if you're going to go anywhere, there's ticks, you need to be planning that this is going to be part of what you're doing is checking yourself because it's just not worth it.

1:17:06

Develop a strategy to see yourself.

Because some people might be listening to this and thinking, well, how am I going to see parts of my body in the mirror if you're, you know, maybe lacking in flexibility or unable to move in certain ways that we're blessed to be able to move quite well at this stage in the game.

1:17:26

But I, I believe there's strategies with mirrors, even laying in bed, you know, I'm getting in certain positions where you can check yourself and.

And yeah, so to develop a way that you can see all parts of yourself and they're not that hard to get off.

Like let's say you got a tick and.

You're alone, and it's in that spot on your back you can't reach.

1:17:43

Like, yeah, the corner of the door frame is enough to, yeah, scrape it off.

Like it's not like impossible to remove, but I do think like you're saying that because let's say some neighbor welcome into work.

Also sugar and also if somebody's.

1:18:00

Overweight, I think, you know, that's another challenge is, you know, when I used to do body work, sometimes you not have a client that was really overweight and they're not examining the certain folds of tissue.

Like I, I want to say this politely, but I, I have worked with clients where it's like the folds of that obese tissue has like stuff develops in there.

1:18:25

It's, you know, people are hygiene is not always really great.

And so that's the kind of place a tick is going to want to get.

I mean, they're going to want to get into just think about your body and where there's folds of skin, hidden areas, hairy, damp areas, like that's where they want to go.

So you got to get in the habit of really check in those places and maybe that's where toys comes in, right?

1:18:44

Of of there are certain people that maybe do want to take precaution and certain clothing that they'll wear in certain moments.

If they are, you know, I want to, I want to say that I'm not.

There are definitely days in the.

1:19:00

Heat of.

Tick season where I'm walking the dogs down to the bog and I have shorts on, but I put my boots on.

Yeah.

And just because I want a little extra protection and I'm feeling well, I've had a lot of ticks on me these last few days.

And so maybe for certain people it's finding your layer of protection that you're comfortable with.

1:19:20

Right.

As long as you're still going out in nature.

Yeah, right.

I do the same thing.

I got the tall rubber boots.

Yeah, I like.

I'll wear my sweatpants because in the morning I'll tuck.

I'll tuck them right into my boots.

OK, a little extra.

Yeah, like that.

I know that they're probably going.

To be I'm going to get.

Some on me, but they'll be on the outside, they won't get to my skin or whatever.

1:19:38

So and then some days I'm walking out with my students in our.

Backyard.

We do a lap around the track with the dogs and I've got a long skirt on and I get inside and we're sitting back working on our lessons and I say, oh, I feel a tick on my leg.

And they're like, really miss somebody.

1:19:54

I'm like, Yep, Yep.

Oh, and there's another one, there's another one.

And that's OK too.

You know, it's like showing them that I'm trying to show them too, that it's all it's OK to activate them too.

You know, it's funny.

I was just thinking I.

Wanted to say this because when I first invited you to do this episode with me, you were like, well, I'm not like an expert on ticks.

1:20:11

And I said to you, well babe, you're, you actually are an expert of living in tic country because many of the people that I've spoken to who are experts on tics don't have the hours of this like what we're talking about.

It's very clear that.

You have.

Lived in the war zone and dealt with this at a really visceral level that most people are who are listening to this are probably what are these people talking about?

1:20:35

Like there's only going to be a handful of people that hear this that have experienced this.

Most people when they go on a trail, they go on the groomed urban trail.

They're never coming in.

Like you think about a trail through, let's say up at Roger's place where he's got that nice trail network.

The way it's groomed, there's nothing growing up that has ticks on there.

1:20:53

Like the ticks aren't there.

So you can walk on the you can be like I walk through the woods all the time.

I never see a tick.

It's like I'm talking about you get off the trail, you most people see a field of tall grass.

They're like, I'm gonna walk through that.

But if you're like bomb harvesting milkweed or I'm trying to get to my tree stand or whatever number of things, you do have to go through that and that's where you're going to deal with this.

1:21:13

And so I think that a lot of people assume they're not, there's not ticks where they are because they're never really going into the places where they are and they don't realize the town's poisoning the ditches and spraying whatever they're spraying or people are spraying a lot of things or etcetera, etcetera.

1:21:32

So you are an expert and I am an expert on living with ticks, even if we're not experts on the zoology of ticks or on the pathology of diseases that the ticks carry.

Because you and I don't spend a lot of time talking about tick borne illness.

1:21:49

We spend a lot of time talking about dealing with the Organism, the tick itself.

Right.

Kind of my way.

Yeah.

But the.

Illnesses are pretty scary and and I will say.

That we've been so blessed.

We've neither of us have experienced that, and not too many people in our sphere have been have that.

1:22:07

We know if you're vigilant.

About it.

It's a way.

It's a way.

It's one of the ways, yeah.

And I think when I think about again, like if we were going to take the the standard recommendations and these recommendations, by the way, seem more realistic.

1:22:25

Let's say that you're an elderly birder, so you're going out with your binoculars looking for birds, right.

And you have your bird guide, and you typically are wearing that, like, fabric that if you rub it together, goes like.

And usually maybe you have those pants that the legs zip off.

Yeah.

You can picture that, like, outfit, you know?

1:22:43

Yeah.

And they're like taping.

They'll literally tape them around their socks.

Like, you see this whole thing.

Yeah.

That might be sustainable for somebody who is going out twice a week or once a week or a couple times a month for our lifestyle.

It's just that the amount of friction between opening the front door and getting outside, it's like too much.

1:23:05

We would never get out there.

So especially after the winter of having to follow the.

Layers, right?

The snow suit and the hat and the gloves and the boots and everything's heavy in the summer.

We want to feel light.

We want to feel the sunlight.

Yeah.

And I feel like a child of the Earth, man.

1:23:20

I mean, I know.

That's pretty hippie sounding, but it's like that's how I feel.

So nourishing, like I've spent so much of in my time barefoot on the Earth, like the idea of that I'm going to now encase myself and.

And what kind of feels like a space suit in order to go outside or like maybe one of those biohazard level 4, you know, Tyvek suits like when somebody's got Ebola or something and it's like, whoa, I can't live like that.

1:23:44

So so yeah.

Oh, I wanted to say this too.

Think about when we have camped on the islands off the coast of Maine.

They're bad.

Where the ticks are the the worst is on the coastal areas, right.

1:23:59

So Lyme, CT, you know, that whole area where this whole thing started, Martha's Vineyards, really bad.

Nantucket Islands, really bad.

So all the coastal islands, of which they're just gazillion of them here in the Northeast, the island that we'd take our boat.

Yeah.

When we would go out to Jewel.

Island, Yeah, so.

1:24:16

There you have a lot of deer, you don't have a lot of hunting, boy, it's pretty severe.

And So what you end up having is a lot of people who live on the coast who are often very wealthy because the coast is very expensive or they're visiting from away.

1:24:34

So they're not mentally prepared for this, right.

So they're coming up for a summer vacation thing.

This is the classic story, people getting Lyme disease because they come up on the coast and then maybe they they get a little rental somewhere and they walk through the dunes to get to the beach and they're picking up ticks and they're not thinking about it.

The dogs are picking them up or whatever it is.

1:24:52

So the coastal areas are pretty, I mean, it's bad here, but it's you're more likely, I think in a lot of cases to get it when you're on in a coastal place.

And so, yeah, I remember going to to the island and just being like shocked there too, and there being a lot.

So that's something else people need to think about is, is, you know, you make a little trip to some coastal spot that you'd think would be fine because it's so urbanized and landscaped and everything is like, right?

1:25:18

Because when you're out here where we are kind of at the foothills of the mountains, about an hour from the sea, there's a lot less landscaping.

Everything's a lot more natural.

But as we drive toward like, think about a day, we're going to the beach, the closer we get, the more landscaped and sort of beautified everything is until you get to the coast where everything looks so beautiful because people are wealthy.

1:25:39

They have gardeners and landscapers and crews that come in to do all that work.

And, and so it looks like, oh, pristine.

You would never think that there's sticks creeping around everywhere, but actually there's even more of them, right?

So like, that's another component I think people need to be aware of.

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of grooming of.

1:25:55

Each other on yeah, those nights at the on that island in the tent, you know, just making sure because that was probably the most ticks I'd ever seen in one moment.

So before you get in the sleeping bag like you're in your tent.

Like, you've really got to make sure.

Yeah, camping is another one.

1:26:11

You can often be so exhausted at the end of the day.

And it's just getting into bed when you're camping can be so much work.

You know what I mean?

And like, you know that like awkwardness of like a tight space of a tent, you're trying to like get changed and all the mosquitoes off the top, you're a.

Tent and then just want to go to sleep and.

1:26:27

You're like, I got to do a.

Tick check too.

But you really?

Do need to do the tick check then?

And yeah, so I think that's really important then and it's worth it.

It's worth it because.

We come home from trips like that or come home from walking in the forest just feeling good, right, and feeling, feeling like ourselves again, you know, feeling like children, like you said, of the earth are feeling joyful.

1:26:53

And also in this time of, you know, everyone talks a lot about anxiety.

And I think a big part of it is that we're just not spending enough time out in nature.

And what an antidote that is to anxiety.

And then people think, oh, but the ticks are going to cause anxiety.

1:27:09

It's like, no, it's so worth it to be out there.

And there's ways as we're describing that you can manage it.

But so true because I think it's easier to overcome the.

Anxiety about ticks than it is to overcome the anxiety for not going into nature.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Once you get used to it, it's pretty easy to deal with.

1:27:27

As long as you've known me, I've kept bottles of doxycycline around.

That's the typical treatment that's prescribed for a tick bite.

And recently I learned that amoxicillin or any of the cillins like penicillin based antibiotics.

1:27:43

I, I got to preface this by saying I have such a stronger version.

I mean, how many times have you seen me take antibiotics?

I, I'm, I don't take antibiotics, but, but I keep them around because people get tick bites when they come to visit and or some friend gets a tick bite, right?

1:27:58

We had our friend Paul recently and me and Paul really dug in on this because the the current prophylactic engorged tick treatment is a single dose of 200 milligrams of doxycycline, which turns out to mean nothing.

1:28:13

It's pointless.

It doesn't this not doing anything.

He ended up doing a 14 day treatment with doxy.

And that I think as horrifying as that sounds for a host of reasons, a suite of reasons.

And by the way, it does turn out if you're tolerant or in other words not allergic to penicillin or amoxicillin, that will work as well, maybe even better.

1:28:32

But this isn't medical advice, just what I understand from my reading that it's smart for people to probably into country to either have antibiotics that would treat that on hand and or have quick access to them through a doctor that they have a good relationship with.

1:28:52

Who what you don't want to do is have a tick bite or a suspected tick bite and then go get a tick panel and it comes back negative, of course, because you're not going to get a tick bite in the next day.

You're going to, you're not going to pop on a on a line test.

So you need have quick access to this.

1:29:09

And then I don't personally believe that the 200 milligram dose is sufficient.

I think that you probably need a more full course and I think it's important that people understand.

I think it, I don't quote this, but I think it's only like 20% of Lyme infections result in having that bull.

1:29:25

Everyone thinks, well, I didn't get a bullseye.

It's like, that's not that's hardly a diagnostic.

So what about time, amount of time?

I know that that's.

Not necessarily 100% either, but if you know, if you know that the tick's only been there a couple of hours, let's say that's helpful, very helpful.

1:29:44

So, OK, so you're saying like.

I check before I go to bed, no ticks.

I wake up, there's a tick on me in a spot I know I would have seen and it's bit now it's not now I know it's been there.

For I've been asleep for 8:00.

Hours.

Okay, most likely it has not had time to transmit Lyme disease.

1:30:04

What science right?

Or scientific, maybe you get.

It in four hours, Maybe you get it in 16 hours.

Yeah, now what?

From what I understand, alpha gal from the Lone Star tick is in the saliva of the tick.

So as soon as it starts to get its mouth parts into you, you could potentially get sensitized to the alpha gal sugar, right.

1:30:21

So that sucks.

Powassan is viral and that's more easily transmitted as well.

So there's certain things that happen quicker and some of these, yeah.

So anyway, yeah.

So some can be transmitted.

Quickly, but Lyme disease and many of the Co infections do take, there needs to just be a lot more time before that tick is basically puking into that your bloodstream, right?

1:30:43

Regurgitating its stomach contents or whatever.

So yeah, so it needs time.

That said, one thing I've noticed, and I know you've noticed, if a tick does get its mouth parts into you and you find it and remove it, even though you it hasn't been there long enough to transmit those diseases, I'll always get a reaction to that tick.

1:31:03

I'll get something that's like a mosquito bite but worse.

And it it's persistent for days.

You get like a bit itchy, real itchy and I'll get.

Something that's almost like a pencil eraser.

Sized knob of on my skin where it's like it's really itchy.

I haven't had this in actually in quite a while, but but I think there is an immune response for me very often, which does not mean that I've developed an infection because that can happen in 20 minutes.

1:31:26

Sometimes the tick has just got there.

It's just got its mouth parts into me.

I know it's not engorged.

I remove it and I'm like that spot it just for days.

I'll have the same thing like in the bog Outback, if I get a Leech on me and I remove a Leech, same thing.

That spot for days sensitive itches, you know, it's like a whole other gross.

1:31:45

World to go into, but.

It's one one life experience I have not had yet.

And I hope, I hope not.

Do you ever see them swimming in there?

Have you ever seen them swimming?

Yes, I have.

I've seen them, yeah.

I've seen them on Mama Ellie too.

On our Mama dog, yes, a couple times, yeah.

No, it's weird how they don't get on the dogs anyway so.

1:32:03

But the point is like, so I want to just say that that if you have a tick that has just got its mouth parts in you, you remove it and you find that spot's real itchy.

That does not mean you've got a disease that's usually sensitization to its mouth parts.

But that said, if you have a tick on you and it hasn't had sufficient time to feed, you're probably safe.

1:32:25

The challenge is you kind of have to decide, you know, or maybe you decide with your health care practitioner, but you have to make a decision ultimately if you're going to prophylactically treat that or not.

And I noticed that again, you you've seen me around over the years, like I you've seen me have like medical things where I'm like, yeah, no, I still don't feel like I want to talk to anybody about it, you know?

1:32:53

Yeah, good.

Or with the dogs where I'm like, wow, they're just going to tell us nothing.

Like, what's the point?

Yeah.

But whenever a friend calls me up and it's like, I got a tick, but I'm like, you should take antibiotics because I just always feel like just in case, because Lyme disease can just destroy someone's life.

Yeah.

And so I don't think it's, I think it's you're better off dealing with the side effects of antibiotics, which include a whole suite of things.

1:33:14

I mean, every dose, from what I understand, every dose of antibiotics increases a person's risk of cancer.

Antibiotics have a tremendously negative effect on your natural intestinal flora.

Like, there's a whole bunch of reasons not to take them, but Lyme disease is worse and harder to recover from.

1:33:31

It's like, OK, yeah, you got, you took antibiotics, all right, You got to get flora back.

You got to, you got to do some things, but those you can fix.

But the Lyme disease, yeah, gets into.

Your nervous system.

Gets into your eyes, gets into your brain, gets into your spinal cord like the gets into your joints.

1:33:47

Yeah, not good, not worth it.

So yeah, treat it.

Treat it probably.

Treat it anyway.

Coming from someone who doesn't want to.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think the number one thing.

For our strategy, because again, we've neither of us have had to do that.

Yeah, which over 11 years is a good amount of time.

1:34:05

Good run.

Yeah, that's a.

It's a testament to the.

Efficacy of what we're talking about but the number one thing is we constantly say to each other may you feel every tick.

We pray that we say it to people.

We write it to each other.

Yeah.

And it's not just like a funny, trite little saying.

1:34:21

It's a sincere speaking to your nervous system.

May you subconsciously become so sensitized that every tick that gets on you, you become aware of it before it has time.

Even in your sleep, Even in your sleep.