About This Site
I'm the guy who put this whole thing together. I live in northeast Ohio, where our property backs up to woods, and ticks have just been part of life out here for as long as we've lived here. Not a once-a-summer-camping-trip kind of thing, more like a daily-life-from-April-to-October kind of thing.
I got into this seriously a few years back when my wife was diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome after a tick bite. For anyone who hasn't run into it, it's a real allergy to red meat and a lot of mammal products, caused by a lone star tick bite. It took a long time and a lot of confused doctor visits before anyone connected what she was going through back to a tick. That whole experience is honestly the reason this site exists. I figured if it took us that long to put the pieces together, with as much as I'd already read about ticks, other families were probably going through the same thing without any idea what was happening to them.
What's Actually On This Site
Everything here comes from a mix of three things: what I've personally tried and learned dealing with ticks on our own property, what I've read digging through actual CDC data, peer-reviewed research, and government reports, and conversations with our own doctors working through my wife's diagnosis. I try to be upfront on every page about which one of those a particular piece of advice is coming from. Where the research is genuinely mixed or unsettled, like with tick bites during pregnancy, I say so rather than pretending there's a clean answer.
I'm not a doctor, an entomologist, or a public health researcher. I'm a homeowner who got tired of ticks being a recurring problem and decided to actually dig into the science instead of just guessing. Nothing on this site replaces an actual conversation with your doctor, your vet, or your local extension office, and I say that throughout the site, not just here.
Why I Keep Adding to It
Tick research and the federal response to tick-borne disease have both been moving fast the last couple years, a new Lyme vaccine in trials, a federal initiative announced in 2026, alpha-gal getting real attention at the CDC level for the first time. I try to keep this site updated as that stuff develops rather than letting it go stale. If you've read something here a while back, it's worth checking back, since pages do get revised as new information comes out.
A Quick Note on the Ads
This site runs ads through Google AdSense, which is how it stays free to read and how I can justify the time that goes into keeping it updated. The ads don't influence what I write, I'm not paid by any product or company mentioned anywhere on this site, and I link to government and university sources directly wherever I can so you can check the actual research yourself rather than just taking my word for it.
If you've got a question that isn't covered somewhere on the site, or you've found something that's gone out of date, you can reach me through the contact page.