Speaking on Fox News Channel, Dr. Marc Siegel, Senior Medical Analyst at Fox News, urged people to protect themselves from ticks and the terrible diseases they carry, including Lyme disease.
The CDC states that there is an estimated 476,000 cases of Lyme disease every year, which could possibly reach past half a million this year. Seigal, himself, believes that those are just the reported cases, and the actual number of cases is probably closer to three times that.
Siegal instructs people on what they can do about it as more and more ticks and more and more tick-borne illnesses develop.
“First of all, you can wear long clothing. Secondly, you can use insect repellant against ticks specifically. You could spray your property, you can use deer fencing, and you got to be on the lookout for this. Black legged ticks, eight legs, and they're so tiny. They're like the size of the head of a pen. Dog ticks, about three times that size, also carrying these tick-borne diseases."
He explained that people can have their doctor remove ticks attached to them to test and see whether the person needs treatment for Lyme disease, further encouraging people to be exceedingly careful in removing ticks.
"If you try to use a match, forget about it, cause then it could die in your skin, and you can get Lyme disease that way. You got to use a forceps to pull it out,” Siegal advises.
Dr. Siegel concluded by warning people of a red meat allergy caused by tick bites.
"We also worry about lone star ticks, alpha-gal syndrome, where you literally can get allergic to red meat for five years or more. It's just insane that you can get an allergy to red meat from certain ticks."
