An In-depth Guide About Bed Bug Bite

A DEFINITIVE IN-DEPTH GUIDE 

ABOUT BED BUG BITE

Bed bugs are the kind of insects that survive on your blood. They would come out at night when you are in deep slumber attack your body and have a fulfilling dinner with your blood and once the bed bug has bitten you it would move on without you even coming to notice of it until you wake up the next morning to see a red scar or a swelling on any part of your body. A bed bug bite generally leads to a rash or welts on skin.

Bed bugs are so tiny that you can't even see them during full daylight. But despite being tiny, a bed bug bite is very itchy. Their biological clocks work so well, they somehow know exactly when their prey would have fallen asleep and that's the time when they come out.

Following are some of the things that you can do to get rid of the bed bug bites:

Hiring professionals

Professionals are an expert and they know exactly how to get rid of bed bugs. Ridding yourself from a  bite cannot happen in a spur of a moment, it needs a proper planning which only an expert can do. But here is a piece of warning for you, be ready to discard any piece of furniture if the expert advices you to. It could be because that piece of furniture is infested by bed bugs and could spread in your entire house so the best thing to do is to throw it away.

Professionals can easily be contacted by calling up pest control companies in your locality. After you are done calling them, just wait a while and they would show up at your place within a few hours.

Normally, if you are live in an apartment, it is the responsibility of the land lord/lady of the building to make sure that bed bugs have not infested any apartment. They need to take measures to make sure whichever apartment is coming up with complaints regarding bed bug bites are taken care of.

Professionals normally take not more than a few hours to check the house for bed bugs infestation. They normally check the entire house to find out which areas have holes and creeks. Furniture's are also checked especially the beds. If any furniture is doubted to be infested by bed bugs they are advised to be discarded because ridding the furniture of the bed bugs is a difficult job.

Herbs can be used

For centuries herbs have been used to treat any ailments and with time their use has evolved with modern medicine. There are several types of herbs used for treating different medical problems. Chinese herbs are the most famous of all

.

Certain herbs are the major ingredients of the modern day pesticides and insecticides. If it weren't for these herbs, bed bug bite would have been even more frequent then it already is.

Some of the herbs used in these chemicals can be very dangerous hence it is advised that you should let the experts handle them. You might not use it in the appropriate way which may have damaging effects to your health.

However herbs alone cannot be used to kill bed bugs. It must be mixed with other chemical to make the insecticides to have the desired effect.

Another method of getting yourself safe from a bed bug bite is to cool down your room temperature to atleast below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Bed bugs cannot survive the chill. However this method has a low success rate because the temperature has to be maintained at this level for atleast two weeks to have the desired effect.

SYMPTOMS OF BED BUG BITES

Do you want to get a good night's sleep? It is almost impossible if your bed has been taken over by a bunch of bed bugs. They would not let you sleep in peace. A bed bug bite can be just like a nightmare. They can make your skin so itchy and swollen with their bites. In other words bed bugs are no better than vampires, in fact they are even worse since they choose to suck your blood when you have gone into deep sleep and you wouldn't even notice what's coming.

A bed bug bites is similar to a mosquito bite. The difference however is noticeable if the bites are following some unique linear pattern, for example three to four red bumps in a row would be an indication that the bite has not been infected by a mosquito but a bed bug. These bumps are often referred to as breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Symptoms, however, can be different to each individual of a bed bug bite depending on the sensitivity of the skin. But the most general symptoms include swelling which are red and very itchy. It could be so itchy that it might make you want to scratch your skin off at times.

Certain people have no effect of bed bug bites or have a very minute reaction. Sometimes the time lag between the bed bug bite and the reaction takes a couple of days, for example a week or even more than that. The lag mainly depends upon the number of times you are bitten. If the bites have been frequent, the time lag between the bite and the reaction would be smaller too.

People often confuse a bed bug bite with another allergy. They are not able to realize the pattern and go to a doctor who confuse these marks with scabies or other allergic rashes and hence are given medicines according to what the doctor has assumed of the marks. Therefore, due to this very reason it is important that you not only realize the symptoms but also the timing patterns to get the correct treatment for the bed bug bites.

The very first signs of a bed bug bite will only include a red patch on your skin which might be a little itchy. But within a few days the itchiness would further increase. A bed bug bite is not hazardous to health and neither do bed bugs carry with them dangerous diseases like mosquitoes or other insects do, but nevertheless the itching could be so immense that while scratching the skin might break and become more vulnerable to infections.

How can you check for bed bugs? If there are any dark spots on your bed sheet this means that you house is infested with bed bugs and immediate action is necessary. These spots appear because of the gland secretion of the bed bugs during the process of biting or sucking blood.

Sometimes a bed bug bite might also lead to red bumps which contain pus in it and these symptoms eventually lead to other problems in a person such as anxiety, insomnia etc.Sometimes bed bugs can cause Anaphylactic shocks because of contents of the saliva which contains allergen. Local tissues can also be damaged if the bites continue for very long.

Therefore, care must be taken against bed bug bites. As soon as you see similar symptoms as mentioned, you must immediately take an action to remove bed bugs from your home through professional help of insecticides etc.

MUSCLES AINT GONNA HELP :'(

Preventing Bed Bug Bites

Just like mosquitoes, bed bugs survive on blood. Every night when the bed bugs are sure their victims have fallen asleep; they leave their holes and go out in search of blood to fill up their stomachs. However, bed bugs do not carry with themselves any transmissible disease so they are safer in that sense compared to any other insect but nevertheless a bed bug bite does cause severe itching especially on sensitive skin. Sometimes a bed bug bite can lead to certain serious health issues.Bed bugs are the unwanted housemates who like to live in any small holes, creeks or crevices they might find in the walls or floors of your home. The fact is they are not as scary or gross as the cockroaches or lizards but they are definitely way more annoying.

In such conditions you ask yourself, how can I prevent bed bugs? There is no need to worry because there are various answers to you worries.

The first and the foremost thing you must do to avoid bed bugs is keeping your house clean. The best habit is to dust and mop your floors, walls and furniture on a daily basis. Bed bugs like to live in places which are unclean. If they wouldn't find an unclean spot in your house, they are most likely to not settle down in your house at all.

Bed bugs love to live inside your beds. Hence it is necessary that you keep your beds clean and change their covers after every few days if not everyday. You must also make sure that there are not any unnecessary holes or torn places inside your bed because if there are bed bugs would consider it as a home for themselves and shift there permanently.

Hiring of a professional is another way of controlling bed bug bites and also the cleverest one. You can seek professional help through pest control companies. You can ask them questions on ways of avoiding bed bugs from settling in your homes and since they are the experts they would have the best advice available for you.

You must make sure that you never use second hand furniture in your homes because bringing furniture which had previously been used in someone else's house has a high chance of bringing the bed bugs living in them to your house and making yourself vulnerable to a bed bug bite. Even one bug entering your home would multiply into thousands in no time and would make the problem go out of control.

When you go on vacations or business trips and stay at a hotel, there is a high chance that when you come back you might bring the bed bugs back with you. In such a situation before you checkout, you must empty your suitcase and spray water based insect killers around it. You must also shake all your clothes or wash the dirty ones to rid them of any bugs. Bed bugs are most likely to stick onto wooden materials, paper or even clothes. So you must check them for any infestation before packing them up.

These are some of the measures you can take to prevent bed bugs to enter your homes and bite you and since a bed bug bite can cause some serious problems, you must follow these methods to keep the risk to its lowest.

Treatment of a Bed Bug Bite

Treatment of a bed bug bite using Calamine Lotion

Bed bug bites though not hazardous to health does need to be treated. Who wants rows of red lumps on their skin and not to forget tolerate the itching that it causes. There are several ways of treating a bed bug bite, however you must bear in mind that not all treatment has the same affects on everyone. The reactions of the treatment differ on the basis of your skin types. For instance, for a certain kind of skin type, a bed bug bite might easily be treated through method A while on another skin type; method B would be more effective.

Of the various treatments, usage of Calamine Lotion is a very effective one for a bed bug bite. It is a pink ointment which comes in a pink bottle. As per the directions given on the bottles label, you should apply the ointment on the infected area. It's a dry liquid and must be applied every day without any gaps to have the required effects.

This lotion would make the affected area dry and soon the itching would go away as well. However, with this method of treatment, you must be patient because the affects are not visible within a few hours. In the first 24 hours, you would feel a considerable reduction in the itchiness and within a few days of daily use, it would completely dry off and go.

Treatment of a bed bug bite using Hydrocortisone

The usage of corticosteroid medication such as Hydrocortisone is also a very effective one when it comes to the treatment of bed bug bites. When you apply it, you would find an immense reduction in itching and eventually the bite would disappear. There are other corticosteroid medicines or lotions as well which would lead to similar effects on your bed bug bites.

You must know one thing about a bed bug bite, don't scratch it no matter how much it itches because scratching might lead to the swelling to spread. You must control yourself and get it treated right away.

Other ways of treating the bed bug bites

The most popular homemade remedy to this problem which has been in use since centuries is the usage of baking soda and water. It's a very simple four step process:

1. You must wash the infected area of bed bug bites with warm water and soap or other detergents such as dettol.

2. The next step is to make a thick paste by mixing the soda with water. It should not be too liquid and should be thick enough so that it stays on your skin.

3. Let the paste dry and then keep it on your skin for around an hour. Some people prefer keeping it longer than that.

4. After that just gently wash the paste off your skin.

Other natural methods of treating bed bug bites include using the gel from Aloe plant. This gel contains anti fungal and antibiotic properties and hence is very effective as a method of treatment.

Another method is bathing in peppermint water. You need to mix water with peppermint oil and bathe in it to relieve the itching.

However, a bed bug bite can heal without any treatment as well. But leaving it to heal on its own will take much longer. When you are treating the bites, you must also make sure that bed bugs are no longer living in your house otherwise the same problem will repeat.