A Major Lyme Disease Outbreak Is Coming; Here’s How You Can Protect Yourself

Lyme disease makes every trip to the outdoors a little less fun. The threat of this tick-borne pathogen forces us to take extra precautions every time we venture out into nature. Fortunately, Lyme disease mainly proliferates in a few specific regions of the country, such as the Northeast and the Great Lakes region. The majority of Americans only have to worry about the ticks themselves, and not the diseases they carry. There are still plenty of wilderness areas that lie just outside of Lyme disease hotspots.

However, many of the places that everyone assumes are safe from this disease, may not be in the near future. In fact, we may be facing a massive Lyme disease outbreak this summer, and this event is probably going to spread the disease to areas surrounding the typical hotspots. And unfortunately, most of the people living in those areas have no idea.

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That’s the determination of Dr. Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist who currently lives in New York. Ostfeld has found a unique way to tell if there’s about to be a major Lyme disease outbreak.  It has to do with how many acorns REPEL Plant-Based Lemo... Buy New $3.91 (as of 10:55 UTC - Details) the forests are producing. The more acorns there are in a given season, the more ticks and Lyme disease there will be. Due to warmer weather conditions, there are a lot more acorns than usual.

So how could a floor of acorns two years ago tell Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, that 2017 would see an outbreak of Lyme disease? It’s all down to what happens next.

A bumper crop of the seeds – “like you were walking on ball bearings” – comes along every two to five years in Millbrook. Crucially, these nutrient-packed meals swell the mouse population: “2016 was a real mouse plague of a year,” he says. And mouse plagues bring tick plagues.

Soon after hatching, young ticks start “questing” – grasping onto grasses or leaves with their hind legs and waving their forelegs, ready to hitch a ride on whatever passes by, usually a mouse.

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