Perhaps the greatest concern about bed bugs is that they can regularly interrupt your sleep. Some people even complain of nightmares when they’re getting bed bug bites. Bed bugs are pests that interrupt one of our most valued and important asset — our sleep. Fortunately, bed bugs can be dealt with rather easily, though it may cost you a little.
Getting to Know the Bed Bug
Why would you want to know bed bugs? Knowing your enemy and how he operates is an important step in being able to predict his actions and crush him. In this case, the enemy, Cimes lectularius, or the common bed bug, is a small, wingless insect that moves slowly. Bed bugs primarily operate during the night when you’re asleep. During the day they hide themselves well in your bed and the furniture all around your bed.
The bed bugs are even difficult to detect while biting you. They’re skilled at providing a painless incision and then extracting blood. It only takes a couple of minutes for the bed bug to get all of the blood needed for a few days. After several minutes, you may start feeling an itching sensation, but the bed bug will be gone. If you’ve got a full-blown bed bug infestation, you could feel like you wake up every morning with a new itchy rash.
Any little holes or tears in your mattress or box spring provide a perfect entrance to a perfect bed bug home. This allows bed bugs to be completely hidden by day so that they can go about their lives undetectable as your personal parasites.
But there are plenty of other appealing places for bed bugs. If you have a sleeping bag or an exposed foam bed, these will also make excellent bed bug colony centers. Cardboard is hollow in the middle, making it one of the least suspected and most common homes for bed bugs. Water beds are kept at a perfect bed bug temperature and often have plenty of spaces for hiding.
The Bed Bug Bite
How can you recognize a bed bug bite? Bed bug bites look like wheels around holes. They typically have only a small red mark in the middle. This red mark will last a couple days at most. Bed bugs tend to work in straight lines, so there may be noteworthy patterns to your bites.
If you have an allergic reaction to the bed bug or something the bed bug is carrying, it is possible that you’ll swell up or get blisters. This isn’t all that common, so if you get something other than the standard bed bug reaction, make sure they really are bed bug bites. The best way to figure out exactly what you have is to call an exterminator.
To this point bed bugs have not been associated with carrying many diseases. So most of the time you can protect yourself by simply washing your bed bug bites thoroughly as soon as you wake up each morning. Later in the day you can apply something soothing to decrease the itchy sensation. It is best not to scratch your bed bug bites.
Bed bugs have not been around for many decades. Then they just recently resurfaced. Bed bugs were removed from the United States by widespread DDT use in the 1940s. But DDT has since been removed from the market because it is harmful to humans. There are still plenty of other insecticides out there that will kill bed bugs, but they too can be harmful to humans. Your best bet is to hire a professional exterminator.
When you kill off your bed bug colonies, it is important to get all of them or they will quickly reappear. Anything that can’t be thoroughly cleaned will have to be thrown away. Clutter should be removed, especially around your bed and sofa. Talk to the exterminator about what else you can do to keep the bed bugs from coming back.
Bed bugs are very sensitive to temperature. They die at temperatures below freezing or 10 to 20 degrees above human body temperature. Exterminators can use this to kill them, but it is very difficult for the average person to achieve throughout all spaces in a house. So if you keep your place clean, hire a professional to do the job, and then continue to keep your place clean; you have a good chance of preventing future bed bug bites.
Tags: bed bug bites, Bed Bugs