Few bug encounters give people the ick as quickly as seeing a tick embedded in someone’s skin. Yeah, bee stings hurt. Mosquito bites itch. Spider bites do both. But a tick bite—a creature burrowing its nasty little mouth into you for hours, slowly inflating itself with your blood—is worse. It just is.

It’s especially worse considering how common Lyme disease has become, making it oh-so-important to know how to properly remove a tick. Many of us learned from our parents or grandparents how to get a tick to back out on its own. Holding a hot sewing needle up to its butt, smothering it with Vaseline, suffocating it with alcohol or nail polish remover, and other methods may technically “work,” but they also increase the risk of the tick transferring any disease it might be carrying.

The first rule of tick removal: Don’t stress it out

Fair warning: Brace yourself for the explanation of why those old methods shouldn’t be used. (Or, if you’re........

© Upworthy