Tick-Borne Diseases: Smart Tips for Prevention

This post will help you understand and avoid health risks from ticks. Ticks pose a growing risk for diseases in the U.S., particularly in warmer climates. Lyme disease and Alpha-gal syndrome are among the most common illnesses caused by ticks. Preventative measures include using repellents, wearing protective clothing, and timely tick removal to minimize disease transmission.

As a practicing family physician, I occasionally saw patients concerned about a tick bite. Most of the time, they had already removed the tick but were concerned about the possibility of an infection. I was usually able to reassure them that the tick had not been attached long enough to transmit a disease. If they had symptoms or were not sure how long the tick had been on their body, I would prescribe an antibiotic to cover the most likely infection.

Humans can catch infectious diseases in multiple ways. The pathogens that make us sick can enter our bodies through water, food, the air, and even direct contact with other people or their bodily fluids like blood.

Another source is contact with animals, including ones we may not see. The vast majority of these, the vector-borne diseases, are caused by ticks, mosquitoes, fleas, flies, and lice.

Ticks are small arachnids in the mite family that feed on the blood of mammals and birds. Ticks can transmit bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can cause illness in humans and animals

The most common tick-borne diseases in the U.S. include Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Symptoms typically include flu-like fever, chills, and fatigue, but can also involve unique indicators like a “bullseye” rash (Lyme disease). Most bacterial infections are successfully treated with antibiotics, making early diagnosis crucial. [1, 2, 3, 4]

This 2007 photograph depicts the pathognomonic erythematous rash in the pattern of a bull’s-eye, referred to as erythema migrans. The rash manifested at the site of a tick bite, on this Maryland woman’s posterior upper arm, signifying a case of Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, and transmitted to humans, by the bite of infected blacklegged ticks.CDC/ James Gathany, public domain

Ticks can also cause non-infectious diseases. Tick paralysis is caused by a toxin in the tick’s saliva. Symptoms include weakness or even paralysis that gradually moves up the body.

Another example is the alpha-gal syndrome, AGS, discussed in this article. People with AGS can have an allergic reaction after eating red meat or being exposed to products containing alpha-gal.

Tick bites are surging in the US this year. Here’s what to know.

by Amelia Twyman, Oklahoma Voice
July 6, 2026

WASHINGTON — The prime time for ticks is here in the United States, and after an especially active start to the season, experts are urging the public to stay alert and take preventive measures. 

Monthly emergency department visits for tick bites in April spiked to their highest level since 2017 and continued to remain high throughout May and June, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tick bite tracker.

Though it’s hard to predict what the rest of the season will look like, given that tick activity depends on a number of different factors, there has definitely been a recent geographic expansion of the area ticks inhabit, said Pilar Fernandez, a disease ecologist and assistant professor at Washington State University. 

The tiny blood-suckers, which tend to thrive in warmer climates, are spreading to places that used to be too cold for their existence, she said during a July 1 SciLine media briefing, as temperatures rise in the United States and around the world.

With more ticks comes a greater risk of individuals developing tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, Alpha-gal syndrome and anaplasmosis. That’s why researchers are encouraging people to know their facts and learn how to protect themselves from bites as they venture outdoors. 

What’s going on this year?

According to the CDC, an estimated 31 million people are bitten by ticks each year, with most encounters taking place between April and October. But in 2026, ER visits began rising as early as March. 

Weekly ER trips for tick bites are also up in every U.S. region except for South Central as of June 28, the online tick tracker shows. 

Global warming is certainly one reason behind this recent surge in tick activity, though Fernandez said the whole picture is much more complicated.

Because ticks can live for up to two to three years, it’s difficult to understand the delayed seasonal effects of increased temperatures or precipitation on their population, she said.

Other factors including local environmental conditions and how much time people spend outside can have an impact on annual tick encounters, she added. 

Every spring and summer, she said, people ask her if it’s going to be a “big year” for ticks, which is “a really hard question to answer, because it’s not equal across all locations.” 

Most tick cases are recorded in the Northeast and Midwest, but different species of ticks are found in every region of the country. And as the population expands into areas where people are unaware of how to protect themselves and unaccustomed to checking for bites, the threat of contracting a tick-borne infection grows, Fernandez said. 

Tick-borne diseases

Ticks carry pathogens that they then pass on to humans by biting into their skin and feeding on their blood. An untreated tick bite can lead to the development of one of nearly 20 different human diseases in the U.S., the most common of which is Lyme disease — about 476,000 patients are treated annually, according to the CDC. 

Another tick-borne infection that has been on the rise is Alpha-gal syndrome, which causes people to experience a serious allergic reaction after they eat red meat or other animal products that contain the sugar molecule alpha-gal. It is most commonly associated with the lone star species of tick distributed throughout the Northeastern, Southern and Midwestern United States. 

Haemaphysalis longicornis  ticks, commonly known as the longhorned tick. The smaller of the two ticks on the left, was a nymph. The larger tick was an adult female. Males are rare.
 CDC, James Gathany, public domain

Initial symptoms of tick-borne illnesses are unspecific and often the same as those that come with regular sickness, such as a fever, headache, muscle aches and joint pain, according to Alvaro Toledo, an associate professor in the Department of Entomology at Rutgers who also spoke at the July 1 media briefing. 

“Physicians need to be vigilant and aware if they receive a patient with symptoms that are compatible with a tick-borne disease,” he said.

What if you find a tick?

If one discovers a tick on the skin, Toledo said the proper response is to first quickly remove the tick with tweezers by pinching and pulling it up in a vertical motion, then disinfecting the area and monitoring for signs of sickness. 

People should not, on the other hand, deal with a tick by burning it off or applying petroleum jelly to the bite, said University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Adela Oliva Chavez, a tick researcher, at the briefing. 

“Those are myths,” she warned. 

Ticks typically do not transmit infection until after they have been attached to the skin for 24 hours, which is why the CDC recommends people aim to remove the pests as soon as possible within the first day.   

However, experts say the most effective way to prevent tickborne disease in humans is by limiting exposure to ticks in the first place.  

Toledo said people should use chemical sprays such as permethrin on their clothing and classic bug repellents on their skin to keep ticks away. It’s also a good idea to wear long, light-colored clothing when spending time in forests and other highly vegetated areas where ticks are abundant. 

But, he added as a reminder to the public, there is “no zero-risk zone anywhere when you go out … even in your backyard, risk is not zero.” 

Individuals can further reduce their chance of acquiring a tick bite by checking their pets just as often themselves, according to Oliva Chavez. Dogs and cats can easily bring ticks into the house from outside, and if they aren’t yet attached to the animal’s flesh, they can make their way onto humans, she said. 

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Article reprinted here under Creative Commons license.

Cover Image

from the Public Health Image Library, CDC

“Keeping your furry pets healthy includes keeping them clean, as well. Together, this family was in the process of washing their Labrador retriever outside in the fresh air. With help from two neighbor girls, the mother, young daughter, and son, were all soaping down the dog’s coat, while the father was steadying the pet using a leash and his hand.

By washing down his coat, chances for the animal to bring contaminants indoors, is highly reduced. After returning from the outdoors, pets can bring allergens, disease vectors such as ticks and fleas, and pathogens from other animals indoors, thereby exposing the entire family to these dangers. One should remember to wash his/her hands after finishing this activity.”

CDC/ Dawn Arlotta, public domain

Exploring the HEART of Health

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An Update on Medical Aid-in-Dying Laws

The article discusses the distinctions between euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and medical aid in dying (MAID). It highlights where MAID laws have passed, reflecting growing public support. I also urge advance planning for end-of-life care, whether one would consider MAID or not.

You have probably heard the terms “assisted suicide,” “medical aid in dying,” “death with dignity,” and “euthanasia,” which are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts, according to Dr. Jonathon Treem, of the University of Colorado Palliative Care.

Euthanasia refers to a provider administering a lethal medication to end a patient’s suffering and life, while physician-assisted suicide is when a patient takes a prescribed lethal dose of medication to end their own suffering.

Medical aid in dying is when a terminally ill patient takes a prescribed medication to achieve death in line with their own values, regardless of their degree of suffering. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10184842/)

The article I am sharing here reviews the current legal status of medical aid in dying (MAID) in the United States. You may not be aware of how accessible it is in this country. I’m sharing it to inform you, not advocating for or against it.

These concepts are not synonymous with patients or family choosing a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) status or choosing to forgo any type of life-sustaining treatments. Those situations are not covered by these laws and I’m not addressing them here.

By September, Nearly a Third of Americans Will Live in States With Legal Aid in Dying (2026)

By Paula Span,

Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York State Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid-in-dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription.

She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid-in-dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.”

Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland, who is 59 and works for a nonprofit, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. “I did a full year of aggressive treatment,” she said. “Chemotherapy. A mastectomy. Radiation treatment every weekday for five weeks. Six months of two oral medications.”

She recovered and felt well until the cancer returned a few years later. Although metastatic breast cancer is incurable, drugs are keeping her disease at bay for now. Netherland feels fortunate but also fatigued, and she contends with brain fog, gastrointestinal symptoms, and joint pain.

“My energy is really limited,” she said.

As she emailed and called legislators, Netherland feared she might die before the aid-in-dying bill — first introduced in New York in 2016 — could become law.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

‘A Breakthrough Moment’

On June 9, 2025, after the Assembly approved the bill, Netherland was in the state Senate chamber, watching the aye votes mount, and seeing it pass. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an amended version in February; it is scheduled to take effect Aug. 5.

A similar law is slated to take effect in September in Illinois, which would become the 13th state (plus the District of Columbia) where medical aid in dying is legal. (California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Washington, D.C., and permitted in Montana by court ruling.)

“A breakthrough moment,” said Kevin Díaz, president of Compassion & Choices, which has spearheaded the long campaign for such laws. After almost 30 years — Oregon’s law, the first in the country, was enacted in 1997 — the addition of two populous states means that almost a third of Americans will live in one where medical aid-in-dying is legally available. “It shows that there’s broad support for this model,” Díaz said.

Polls consistently back that claim. A Pew Research Center survey last spring found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn’t consider the practice “morally wrong,” either because they thought it was acceptable or not a moral issue.

Support crossed many political and religious lines: A narrow majority of Republicans and 76% of Democrats both found “physician-assisted death” (also sometimes called “physician-assisted suicide”) permissible; so did most Catholics, Jews, and nonevangelical white Protestants.

In New York, a Siena poll found that 54% of respondents supported aid in dying, including majorities of men and women, of all age groups, and of city, suburban, and upstate residents. A plurality of Latinos supported it; Black respondents narrowly opposed it.

Passing these laws has grown somewhat easier, said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, who tracks such policies. “You can say, ‘We have 10 years in California, 18 years in Washington, and 29 years in Oregon, and nothing bad has happened.’ It becomes more accepted.”

‘You Need A, B, and C’

Yet legalizing medical aid in dying, or MAID, has been and remains a long, contentious process. Catholic leadership and many disability organizations staunchly oppose it. (Pope Leo XIV personally asked Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign the bill.)

The American Medical Association says that “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” and poses “serious societal risks.” However, a number of state medical organizations have opted to remain neutral or, as in New York, to support passage.

The Patients’ Rights Action Fund, through a sister organization, has lawsuits pending or on appeal in California, Delaware, and Colorado, arguing that aid in dying laws discriminate against people with disabilities by steering them toward physician-assisted suicide instead of treatment.

“This is a litigation strategy we’ve developed to ultimately get to the Supreme Court,” said Matt Vallière, the group’s executive director, who declined to say whether it would sue to block the Illinois and New York laws.

Even when aid-in-dying laws succeed, using them can prove challenging. In every state (except Montana, where it became legal through a court decision, so there is no statute governing eligibility), aid-in- dying is available only to people with incurable illnesses who are expected to die within six months.

It typically involves oral and written requests to two doctors, with mandated waiting periods between requests. Patients must have the mental capacity to make the decision, which disqualifies those with dementia, and they must ingest the medication without assistance. (An amendment Hochul insisted on adds a psychologist or psychiatrist to the process.)

All but two states require patients to be residents. Oregon and Vermont scrapped their residency requirements to settle lawsuits brought by Compassion & Choices. (Courts ruled against a similar suit in New Jersey.)

Moreover, any doctor, hospital, or healthcare system can legally decline to provide aid-in-dying, and religiously affiliated institutions often opt out. Those who participate can add their own requirements.

“The state can say ‘You need A, B, and C,’ and Columbia-Presbyterian can say, ‘We also want D, E, and F,’” said Pope, the Minnesota bioethicist.

Hotly Debated, Seldom Used

Perhaps these restrictions, or a lack of public awareness, help explain why, despite the headlines and fervent debates, the number of people who actually use the law is tiny in every state — usually 1% or fewer of the deaths recorded annually. The support for giving patients this kind of autonomy at the end of life remains widespread, but the desire to personally exercise it apparently is not.

Still, after studies showed that many patients seeking MAID were dying before they could complete the process, the trend has been to loosen restrictions. California cut its 15-day waiting period to 48 hours; New Mexico allows physician assistants and advanced-practice nurses to write prescriptions along with doctors.

“Most states have now amended their laws two or three times,” Pope said. “We have liberalized.” Telehealth can also facilitate access to participating doctors.

Compassion & Choices is planning legal challenges to end residency requirements in additional states, Díaz said. It is also considering how to “make inroads in jurisdictions with a much different cultural and political environment,” he added, mentioning Florida and other Southern states.

Medical aid in dying represents a shift in power, Díaz said. “The person who has to bear the burden of the suffering should have the ability to decide when it’s enough,” he added.

Anne Gurnett Bander, 72, a retired research scientist in Carmel, New York, cared for her husband for four years as ALS — the relentlessly disabling neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — rendered him bedridden and dependent on feeding and breathing tubes. “By the time he died, the only thing he could do was nod his head,” she recalled.

So being diagnosed with ALS herself last year was “my worst possible nightmare,” Gurnett Bander said. She was planning to fly to Switzerland, where the nonprofit organization Dignitas provides medical aid in dying, when she learned about the New York bill and began speaking publicly in support of it, her voice faltering as her illness advanced.

Gurnett Bander and Netherland say they’re not certain they’ll use lethal drugs to end their lives as their symptoms intensify. Not infrequently, patients complete the necessary steps, secure the prescribed medication, decide they don’t need it after all, and die of their diseases. But both women insist that the choice should be theirs.

“It can offer so much peace of mind,” Netherland said. “I thought, ‘People should have this option.’ Now, they will.”

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Medical assistance in dying in Canada

Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is a process that allows someone who is found eligible to be able to receive assistance from a medical practitioner in ending their life. The federal Criminal Code of Canada permits this to take place only under very specific circumstances and rules.

Anyone requesting this service must meet specific eligibility criteria to receive medical assistance in dying. Any medical practitioner who administers an assisted death to someone must satisfy certain safeguards first. Learn more at the link.

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in the United Kingdom

According to the NHS, both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under English law. The UK Parliament is considering a Terminally Ill Adults Bill that would “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life; and for connected purposes.”(as of May 14, 2026)

Christian Medical and Dental Association

Position Statement Abstract on Medically Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

“Medically-assisted suicide and euthanasia (MAS & E) are morally controversial practices because they intentionally cause death and thereby contradict the Judeo-Christian and Hippocratic traditions of medical ethics which call for curing and caring, not killing. Though medically-assisted suicide has been legalized in several jurisdictions in the United States, and euthanasia has been legalized in a limited number of other countries, public and professional debates persist about the ethics of MAS & E and the harmful consequences of their legalization.

Some people may want to have access to MAS & E because of the possibility of physical or mental decline, losing control of their lives, becoming a burden to others, or experiencing severe pain or other symptoms, or the fear thereof.

In response to such concerns about suffering, healthcare professionals should provide excellent palliative care which respects life and supports the whole person. They should not endorse self-destructive notions of autonomy and mistaken notions of dignity which devalue the lives of those who suffer.

Based on a biblical account of life, death, killing, suffering, freedom, and love, Christians hold that the goodness of every human life is not diminished by suffering or disability, and that dying patients need compassionate care, not interventions that disrespect life by ending it.”

Read the Full Policy Statement

Your Review and Response

Your state may not have a medical aid-in-dying law now, but the idea should prompt us all to think about what matters at the end of life. Whether you would ever consider MAID or not, reflect on a few questions that could make your end-of-life experience more aligned with your values and less stressful for you and your family.

How do my moral, spiritual, and cultural beliefs shape the way I think about suffering, dignity, and choice at the end of life?

If I faced a terminal illness, what kinds of treatments or interventions would feel supportive — and which would feel burdensome?

What matters most to me at the end of life — comfort, independence, connection, or something else — and how do I want my care to reflect that?

Have I documented my wishes with an advanced directive or similar document? Are my next of kin aware of my wishes and willing to abide by them?

Here is a reference on the various types of

Advance Directives

Exploring the HEART of Health

I’d love for you to follow this blog and follow me on social media.

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Add your name to the subscribe box to be notified of new posts by email. Click the link to read the post and browse other content. It’s that simple. No spam.

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Dr. Aletha