Bed bugs or stink bugs feed on human blood, leaving bites, redness on the skin and causing a lot of problems. The bed bug bites disturb a person’s sleep, make them aggressive, nervous, reduce the level of concentration. But, in addition to this, bedbugs can cause really serious health problems and even depression. In this article, we are going to consider common facts about bed bugs everyone has to know. To learn more about how to detect a bed bug in your apartment, head to the Pest Control Hacks.
Why Are Bed Bugs Dangerous?
Bed bugs are active at night and find their prey by smell. This makes the insects crawl into clothes, beds, and different house rooms. Additionally, in search of food, these bugs can go on quite long distances compared to the size of their body: migrate through the ventilation system from apartment to apartment, and in the warmer months, they can go outside and enter windows into neighboring residences.
Bed bugs are rapidly migrating insects. During movements, the bug collects mud and dirt. At the same time, there can be all kinds of bacteria in the litter of insects. When a bug makes a wound in the skin during a bite, dirt, bacteria, and viruses can enter the bloodstream from the paws, body, or trunk of the bug. Any contact with human blood is a risk of infection. In addition, during its life cycle, the bug comes in contact with the blood of different people and transfers viruses from patients to healthy ones.
How to detect a bed bug in your house? Many experts state that the only method is to catch the insect. However, there are also a lot of secondary signs you can pay attention to:
- specific traces (black dots) under the bed,
- on the walls,
- series of bites on the body (located in a row).
How To Detect A Bed Bug Bite?
During a bite, you do not feel anything. The reason is that the bugs inject a temporary analgesic under your skin, so you actually don’t feel that you are under attack.
The bugs continue to bite you from 3 up to 10 minutes. This is how much one full feeding of an insect lasts. The bites appear as medium or large red (swollen or flat) spots on any part of the human body, including the most common places like face, neck, hands, and arms. The bites of domestic bugs are often confused with the bites of other insects. There are also cases when dermatologists confuse bug bites on the body with chickenpox or an allergic reaction. Although for experienced entomologists and pest exterminators, recognizing bedbugs bites is quite simple. That’s why, if you detected any of bed bugs presence signs, you have to call the pest survey. The faster you recognize the presence of parasites in the room. The more effective the fight against these insects will be.
Do Bed Bugs Bite Children?
Children are a special risk group. In apartments or in private houses where bed bugs live, it is the children who are the first to be attacked. This happens due to the fact that babies have more tender and thin skin, and their blood vessels are located very close. Externally, bug bites on kids look similar to adult bites.
But, if for grownups, this situation is not a problem and the bug bite can become almost invisible in the morning, for babies, it’s quite different. Children’s skin is very sensitive, and the bite of a bed bug will leave a mark for a long time. Moreover, the areola of redness around the bite will be bright red, large, and itchy. So the kids will scratch it and make the spot even bigger. To prevent that, try to apply the anesthetize treatment on the spot.
Where Do The Bed Bugs Bite The Most?
Basically, the bug bites at night and in those places where the skin is the thinnest, and the blood vessels are located close to the surface. Parasites are primarily attracted to exposed skin, and only then they get under their clothes and continue to suck out your blood. To detect a bed bug bite, check your:
- back and shoulders;
- legs and arms;
- neck and the back of the head.
Rarely enough bite traces appear on the face or stomach of a person.
Allergies and Depression
Everyone knows that bug bites often cause allergic reactions to the skin (redness, itching, exanthema), but few know that these insects can also stimulate depressive moods. Many people are seriously worried if they find bed bugs in their home. And the thing, as it turns out, is not limited to skin reactions, but sometimes goes too far, causing mental illnesses.
With sensitive skin type and a weakened nervous system, this leads to insomnia, nightmares, unpleasant memories of the infection period, excessive alertness (fear of re-infection), and even personality disorders. A study published by the American Journal of Medicine states information from three popular bed bug websites that mentioned 135 cases related to the psychological consequences of bed bugs infestations. The most common of them are:
- Neurosis;
- Obsessive thoughts;
- Relationship problems;
- Drug addiction;
- Depression;
- Inappropriate behavior, suicidal thoughts, or attempts.
Theoretically, a bug can also transmit hepatitis B if it pumps the blood of a sick person, then crawls to a healthy one. The bug can definitely be one of the causes of the bad mood of children: bedbugs are quite painful, and children are sensitive to this. They receive an allergic reaction, constant itching keeps them awake, children become irritable and cry a lot.
In addition, bed bugs can be mechanical carriers of intestinal infections, but this is the case if a person sleeps and eats in one place. They crawl on food, collect dirt at the baseboards, and carry it all on their feet. But this rarely happens, since bed bugs live under mattresses, behind paintings, under a carpet, and not next to food.
