Men's Health: How Not to Get Bitten by Ticks This Summer

The best tick repellent you can use.

The last thing you want to bring home from a long hike or a quick dog walk is a case of Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, or even a single one of the ticks that carry these (and more) diseases.

But to protect yourself properly, you’ve got to get the right product. “Many people have the perception that anything that sucks blood can be repelled similarly,” says Thomas N. Mather, Ph.D., founder and director of the Tick Encounter Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island. But mosquitos, ticks, and fleas have different ways of finding you—“mosquitos fly to you, and ticks don’t fly, and they don’t have eyes,” he says. “So there’s no reason to think that the same product that would work for a mosquito would work against a tick.”

Read the full article by Marty Munison on Men's Health's website here.