You shouldn't salt a leech that's sucking your blood (2019)
48 comments
·August 24, 2025jaybrendansmith
dragonwriter
IIRC, all chemical removal methods (including DEET/mosquito repellant) have the same potential downsides as salting; they increase the risk of the leech vomiting back into the wound and causing an infection.
quesera
Are you sure they were leeches?
A quick (horrified) web search suggests that there are no leech species that burrow into flesh.
loloquwowndueo
*burrowed
StarlaAtNight
This headline sounds like a euphemism for something or one of those folksy sounding bits of wisdom
ceroxylon
Same here, I thought it was going to be an analogy for a political story.
Now that I know it is literal leeches and that the options are scraping them off or waiting for them to finish, avoiding areas with leeches feels like the move.
thinkingtoilet
It's the same with Ticks! People will say to burn them off but if you do that they will throw up and increase the likelihood of disease transmission. You want to pull them off in one clean pull.
femto
In Australia the current medical advice for ticks is [1]:
"For ticks that can be seen (adult ticks), freeze the tick to kill it where it is"
"For ticks that can hardly be seen – use permethrin cream to kill the tick where it is"
You can buy tick freezing spray, which is used in a similar way to wart freezing spray.
[1] https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-11/manage...
Edit: Here is the research on which the medical advice is based. Dated 2019 by Australian researchers, so the updated practise might not be widely deployed outside Australia.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6494660/
Edit: A comprehensive resource on tick treatment, including justification for the freezing advice.
https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/preven...
Edit: and finally, the ABC Catalyst video segment demonstrating the technique.
spangry
This is good advice. You can buy “wart-off” freezing spray over the counter at a pharmacy to do this.
loloquwowndueo
Really hard to get the suckers (literally) off using regular tweezers without squeezing them into regurgitation and death. They sell special tick removal tools that look like a tiny two-prong fork which grabs them from the … face I guess… and allows removing them cleanly.
thinkingtoilet
If you live in an area with ticks, getting tick tweezers is a must. The ones we have have the fork you mention on one end, but what is much better is it has tweezers on the other end that have a hockey stick like curve at the bottom and come to a very small point. Very easy to grab a small tick and pull it off.
cogman10
Pantyhose is another thing to consider. It's pretty much the perfect anti-tick measure. It's not too hot and the ticks can't make their way through it. I know a few farmers who use it when going out into the bushes, they never get ticks.
alexjplant
You're also supposed to save the tick to make diagnosis of tick-borne illness easier. Years ago I had what felt like a four-day hangover after getting bit so I went to the doctor; he gave me Doxy and sent my blood off to the lab which later confirmed that I had Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Supposedly it's easier/more conclusive to test the tick itself for pathogens than your blood.
easygenes
I’ve used those and they are a bit fiddly. The best tool I’ve found are the needle pointed angled precision tweezers (like they mostly sell for electronics work).
amelius
There's also a tiny lasso tool that you can loop around it and tighten, making throwing up impossible.
jagged-chisel
Slowly, attempting to not pop off the head before it is removed from your body.
FredPret
I've never felt keener to limit my explorations to the great indoors
conkeisterdoor
Ah, a fellow indoorsman. :)
willsmith72
I don't buy the alternatives at all.
> Instead, he recommends using a fingernail or a credit card to break the seal between the leech's mouth and your skin quickly
Far easier said than done. If it were that easy why even go for the salt?
> Another option is to wait until the leech is done feeding so it will fall off on its own
I'm just gonna wait 30+ minutes with a leech on me? no thanks
david-gpu
If you would rather follow your gut because the expert's recommendation sounds "too easy, then picture a similar scenario in your own area of expertise where you give friendly advise to a random person and they react like that to your advice.
raincole
If the article has a video or something showing how to "using a fingernail or a credit card to break the seal" I'd be so much more convinced.
I can't even imagine how to do that correctly when I'm sitting in an air-conditioned room so the chance I'll able to "break the seal" in the wild as the expert suggests is around zero. Especially the article says one has to do it "quickly" so it doesn't have time to vomit blood back into me.
girvo
It's really not that difficult. You scrape them off you with the edge of the card, where they attach to you
roxolotl
As someone who’s had leeches on me, North Eastern America, and never even heard of salting them I’ve always just treated them like a bandaid and ripped them off quickly. The hardest part really is grabbing them since they are slippery. I assume there’s nastier leeches out there though where that might be a bad idea.
themafia
I would always put the area with the leech back into the water and then use a sharp edged rock to scrape them off. They seemed a little bit more willing to leave my skin doing it that way.
jorvi
Leeches will pop off easily. There's a nastier cousin of leeches (lampreys) that I think you'll rip a small chunk of flesh out if you'd yank them off forcefully.
Terr_
I'd like to emphasize that they are metaphorical cousins only, being segmented-worms and jawless-fish respectively. :p
P.S.: "Would you rather fight one lamprey-sized leech, or 400 leech-sized lampreys?"
throwway120385
Tweezers or tongs in a first aid kit are pretty useful for that and for removing ticks.
xattt
Is there anything tongs can’t do?
strken
In my experience, the reason people don't scrape them off is the rumour that they leave their mouthparts behind.
Removing the terrestrial leeches that live near me in Australia is easy. Put the edge of a credit card a few cm away, resting against your skin at a slight angle, and then quickly scrape the leech away like you're scraping paint.
3s
> Far easier said than done. If it were that easy why even go for the salt?
I think it's more gross to pluck it out. Hence why people just pour salt on it or let it finish feeding maybe? Leeches can be really viscerally repulsive to look at and touch
jonny_eh
So are you suggesting that you would pour salt on it?
kstrauser
Yeah, no. “Also consider just letting the spider lay eggs in your ear and then it will move along on its own.” Uh, that’s not gonna happen.
lukan
The difference with spiders laying eggs in your ear, is that leeches sucking on your body is a regognized medical treatment for various things.
They don't lay eggs, they don't infest you. They just suck blood and are gone.
But just nitpicking on your example. I had leeches involuntarily on me for real where I just ripped them off and I don't think I would ever considering letting them suck till they are full.
benoau
Makes you wonder what we have been missing out on in terms of spider-based treatments...
kstrauser
A colonoscopy is a legitimate, useful medical procedure, but I don’t want one of those to sneak up on me either.
I think I could tolerate a medical leech if required. I wouldn’t love it, but you gotta do what you’ve gotta do. I would be less tolerant of one randomly taking a meal from my leg.
Terr_
I dunno, I think I'd rather dribble in some hydrogen peroxide to sterilize and remove the eggs, as opposed to getting a spider bite on the inside of my ear canal.
Now that I think about it, I have no idea what hydrogen peroxide does to spiderweb material. It seems like the kind of thing one might learn during a childhood phase of mostly-unthinking cruelty to animals.
themafia
Real things people said on 911 calls:
mikae1
I used to burn off ticks with a lighter (revenge!) until I learned the same thing was true for them.
The risk of getting a disease is apparently higher if you handle them that way, essentially making it their revenge.
3s
I was once hiking in the dark in the south of Japan. I crossed a few streams but didn't think much of it. A while later, I felt like my socks were sticking to my shoes and unusually warm. I looked down to see my ankles and shoes covered in blood. Totally drenched in dark red blood with 10 leeches attached. This was truly the most confused and terrified I ever felt in my life - seeing that much blood without feeling any pain was utterly disorienting.
kerblang
Nice positive article about leeches, includes bonus pitch for maggots
https://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/11/how-leeches-made-their-...
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sarahjames451
[dead]
I had 20 leeches in the bottoms of both feet when I was a kid. They were borrowed in there...there was no removing them manually. Fortunately my quick-thinking parent had spray mosquito repellant - sprayed the bottom of my feet and the leeches all let go and crawled out in about 15 seconds. So use spray mosquito repellant is my personal recommendation.