You Shouldn't Salt a Leech That's Sucking Your Blood (2019)

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

pabs3

89 points

70 comments

cbc.caResearchstory

skepticalmixed

Debate

60/100

LeechesOutdoor SafetyParasites

Key topics

Leeches

Outdoor Safety

Parasites

The article discusses why salting a leech that's sucking your blood is not recommended, and the discussion revolves around alternative methods for removing leeches and other parasites.

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Aug 23, 2025 at 11:12 PM EDT
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Discussion (70 comments)

Showing 70 comments

willsmith72

4 months ago

7 replies

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

kstrauser

4 months ago

3 replies

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

4 months ago

3 replies

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

4 months ago

1 reply

Makes you wonder what we have been missing out on in terms of spider-based treatments...

debo_

4 months ago

It's a canonical spider-and-egg problem.

kstrauser

4 months ago

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.

IAmBroom

4 months ago

They just suck blood, while comingling their gut bacteria with your bloodstream.

Bit of a difference.

themafia

4 months ago

Real things people said on 911 calls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPSEw8XnjH8

Terr_

4 months ago

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.

david-gpu

4 months ago

2 replies

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

4 months ago

1 reply

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

4 months ago

It's really not that difficult. You scrape them off you with the edge of the card, where they attach to you

rendaw

4 months ago

1 reply

Unless I misread, GP thinks the advice is too hard, not "too easy". Which yes, if I told someone playing games on linux is easy you just need to use `winetricks` to install the correct version of X, Y, Z, then modify library overrides, I would entirely expect a layperson to say "easier said than done".

david-gpu

4 months ago

"too easy" was a quotation taken directly from their comment. I replied to that.

roxolotl

4 months ago

3 replies

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.

throwway120385

4 months ago

1 reply

Tweezers or tongs in a first aid kit are pretty useful for that and for removing ticks.

xattt

4 months ago

Is there anything tongs can’t do?

jorvi

4 months ago

1 reply

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_

4 months ago

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?"

themafia

4 months ago

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.

strken

4 months ago

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.

jonny_eh

4 months ago

So are you suggesting that you would pour salt on it?

tomcam

4 months ago

You make it sound like a bad thing

4 months ago

> 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

4 months ago

1 reply

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.

GiorgioG

4 months ago

2 replies

What’s with the cliffhanger? :)

How did you get them off?

4 months ago

1 reply

I scraped and plucked them off, not the safest way to get rid of them apparently...

coda_

4 months ago

1 reply

Isn't that exactly what the article said you should do?

aitchnyu

4 months ago

Can a layman (to medicine) avoid leaving teeth in the wound?

stavros

4 months ago

He didn't. They're still there.

FredPret

4 months ago

1 reply

I've never felt keener to limit my explorations to the great indoors

conkeisterdoor

4 months ago

Ah, a fellow indoorsman. :)

thinkingtoilet

4 months ago

4 replies

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.

loloquwowndueo

4 months ago

2 replies

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

4 months ago

2 replies

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

4 months ago

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

4 months ago

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

4 months ago

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).

femto

4 months ago

2 replies

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j77nrTVM_j8

spangry

4 months ago

This is good advice. You can buy “wart-off” freezing spray over the counter at a pharmacy to do this.

tomcam

4 months ago

Gotta be honest… the phrase “ticks that can barely be seen” did nothing to improve my outlook on life

jagged-chisel

4 months ago

Slowly, attempting to not pop off the head before it is removed from your body.

amelius

4 months ago

There's also a tiny lasso tool that you can loop around it and tighten, making throwing up impossible.

jaybrendansmith

4 months ago

4 replies

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.

loloquwowndueo

4 months ago

1 reply

*burrowed

IAmBroom

4 months ago

You don't know that.

Maybe they took the adage literally, and tried to walk in his shoes.

quesera

4 months ago

1 reply

Are you sure they were leeches?

A quick (horrified) web search suggests that there are no leech species that burrow into flesh.

jaybrendansmith

4 months ago

1 reply

Wow, if only you had been there to see it. Yes, they BURROWED. Yes, it was horrifying. They were fat and full of blood as they dripped off my feet. I have a quite accurate visual memory of certain past events. I still remember my mother's face, she was terrified, but also quick thinking, and I didn't feel a thing. I have a healthy respect for leeches, but strangely, the incident left me feeling quite invincible. My feet were fine the next day.

quesera

4 months ago

I've dealt with ordinary fresh water leeches, and hope never to again.

I don't know if I'd approach within 30 feet of water after your experience! :)

dragonwriter

4 months ago

1 reply

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.

snvzz

4 months ago

1 reply

Even good old alcohol?

doublerabbit

4 months ago

They get drunk and go after your wife.

wkat4242

4 months ago

The one time I had leeches they just popped off on their own. They were huge so they were probably full. My white T shirt had turned into a red one... Because of the anticoagulant.

Not a fan of them but where I live now they don't exist

mikae1

4 months ago

1 reply

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.

temp0826

4 months ago

1 reply

Why not both? My tactic is to pull them off cleanly as possible then torch em.

mikae1

4 months ago

Excellent advice!

StarlaAtNight

4 months ago

1 reply

This headline sounds like a euphemism for something or one of those folksy sounding bits of wisdom

ceroxylon

4 months ago

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.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1

4 months ago

1 reply

The Tick Key, www.tickkey.com, does the job quite well. You put it over the tick and slide the narrow slot from behind until the mouthparts are in as far as they can fit.

You may be surprised at how hard the tick holds on, but work slowly until it pops off, preferably into a container that you can put in the freezer.

Etick.ca can be used to identify and report the tick.

My cat has brought in three ticks this spring and summer that I found crawling about while he was on my lap. Cats grooming themselves seem to prevent ticks from embedding.

Doctors can prescribe doxycycline as a precaution.

mcdeltat

4 months ago

1 reply

At least in Australia, removing a tick by force is not recommended. This is because it has a chance of the tick vomiting pathogens into your blood. Which is particularly bad in regions where ticks carry bad diseases (like the paralysis tick in Australia). The recommendation is instead to use a freeze spray which immediately immobilises the tick.

bpye

4 months ago

> the paralysis tick

I knew about Lyme and the meat-allergy inducing ticks, but not this one. Yikes.

SanjayMehta

4 months ago

1 reply

Poured snuff into the top of ankle length hiking boots, never had a problem with leeches.

bn-l

4 months ago

Interesting and very old school.

Nicotine is an insecticide so I can see it repelling leeches.