There are many methods people use to remove ticks, from burning the tick with a hot match to smothering it in petroleum jelly or painting it with nail polish. But those methods aren’t very effective.
To safely remove a tick, all you need is a pair of pointy, fine-tip tweezers and a good eye.
How Do You Remove Ticks the Right Way?
Before you dive in, you’ll want to get:
- Pointy, fine-tip tweezers
- Rubbing alcohol (If you don’t have it, soap and water works, too.)
Pointy tweezers aren’t the typical household tweezers that you use to pluck your eyebrows. You want pointy tips, not squared-off ones. Ticks can be as small as poppy seeds. If you use regular tweezers, you might tear them.
Once you have your tools, here’s what to do:
- Clean the area around the tick bite with rubbing alcohol.
- Get your tweezers right down on your skin so you can grab as close as possible to the tick’s head.
- Pull up slow and firm. Don’t jerk or twist; a nice, steady pressure will do.
- Clean the bite area and your hands again with rubbing alcohol or soap and water.
And that’s it. If the part of the head breaks off when you pull the tick out, that’s OK. You can try to remove it with tweezers, but if you can’t, it’s no problem. Your skin will heal and push out the leftover tick body parts over time.
How to Remove a Tick Without Tweezers
If you don’t have tweezers to remove the tick, you can carefully use your fingers. Try not to squeeze the tick’s body when you do this.
If you need a better grip, you can use a loop of thread around the tick’s jaws to help you pull it out. You can even use dental floss if you don’t have any thread on hand. Once you secure the thread around the tick, pull directly up and out without twisting.
What Do I Do With the Extracted Tick?
You have two options: Get it tested or get rid of it.
Sending a tick for testing
You may want to send the tick for testing to see if it’s carrying diseases. But some major health organizations don’t recommend this. If you send a tick to a lab to check if it’s carrying diseases, know that the labs that test ticks don’t use the same standards as a clinical diagnostic lab.
Plus, you shouldn’t make decisions about your health based on the lab results. If the tick tests positive for diseases, it doesn’t always mean you’ll get those diseases. If the test results are negative, it doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Chances are, if you get infected from a tick, you’ll get symptoms before the tick lab results come back.
It’s best to watch yourself for symptoms and get treatment from your doctor instead of waiting for lab results.
Getting rid of a tick
If you just want it safely out of your life, you can:
- Drown it in a container with rubbing alcohol
- Flush it down the toilet
- Wrap it tightly in tape or put it in a sealed container, then throw it out
Don’t crush it with your fingers. This is another way you can get disease from it.
When Should I Call My Doctor?
Call your doctor if you have any symptoms of Lyme or other diseases carried by ticks, such as:
Make sure to tell your doctor that you had a tick bite, how long ago it happened, and where you might have gotten it.
Takeaways
If you get bitten by a tick, carefully remove the tick with tweezers, grabbing it as close to the skin as possible. Don’t grab it by the body. Once you remove it, get rid of it by flushing it in a toilet or putting it in a sealed container to throw it away. Even though you can get ticks tested, some major health organizations don’t recommend it, especially because the lab results can’t tell you whether you’re infected.
Call your doctor if you notice any symptoms of Lyme or other diseases carried by ticks.
Tick Removal FAQs
Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about tick removal.
What kills a tick immediately?
If you have a tick on you, you don’t need to worry about killing it at once. The most important thing is to remove it with tweezers. But if you live in an area with lots of ticks, you can take steps to avoid tick bites. For example, you can use bug spray made for ticks and check yourself for ticks after being outside.
Can Vaseline remove a tick?
No, using petroleum jelly isn’t a safe way to remove a tick. Some people think coating a tick in petroleum jelly will suffocate it. But covering it in this substance can actually make the tick stay embedded in your skin for longer. It can also make it harder to remove, as petroleum jelly is slippery.
Does salt remove a tick?
There isn’t a lot of evidence that salt or salt water can remove a tick. Drowning the tick in salt water may help kill it in the end, but it doesn’t work every time.
