Bed tick bites on humans - favorite places

Quite often, bed mites appear in a person's home. Their peculiarity is that they feed on human blood. The bites of bed ticks themselves are dangerous for humans, since when the insect pierces human skin, it releases a special substance that can lead to various consequences.

This is especially true when the human body is prone to allergies.

First of all, you need to find out how and why bed mites appeared in the house. After this, you should consider tactics to combat this pest. It is important to know how to treat bite sites in order to alleviate the condition of the victim.

Why do bed mites appear in the house?

These parasites do not like sunlight and prefer to live in dark areas of the house where there is no flow of fresh air. As a rule, they live close to places where people constantly rest. These are places such as the head of the bed, mattresses, furniture, soft toys, and household appliances.

The parasite is activated at night when a person is asleep and fast asleep. It is not at all difficult to understand that bed mites have appeared in the house, since the prolific leech causes great harm to humans. They prefer to drink the blood of women and small children.

These parasites enter your home in different ways. For example:

From neighboring apartments, when the owners of these apartments begin to fight this parasite. When there are too many of them, they themselves look for a new source of their existence.
Using various things, including used ones. This is especially true when owners buy old sofas, armchairs or old furniture, as well as bedding and clothes. Sometimes the parasites are carried by the owners themselves after returning from a business trip, when they spent the night in hotels where they were not properly looked after.
With household appliances, both new and used. Often in warehouses no one follows sanitary rules. Under certain conditions, people begin to get comfortable with household appliances, not to mention used appliances.
From the street on clothes, as well as on the fur of pets walking along the street. Animals love to visit places where ticks are found. This is tall grass, basements, trash cans, etc.

As you can see, there are many ways of infestation, so it's best to follow a few tips to help keep your home free from pests like bed mites.

If you start the battle in a timely manner, when they have not yet had time to multiply by countless numbers, this will simplify the task, since it is much more difficult to cope with a large colony.

What do bites look like and how to recognize them?

During the bite, the bed tick releases an anesthetic substance, so the person itself does not feel the bite. In addition, this substance acts for about 20 minutes, which is enough for the tick to become completely saturated with blood after several bites.

Red spots appear at the bite sites, and a dry spot of blood can be seen in the center of the spot. The main thing here is to treat them in a timely manner and not to comb them, so as not to infect the wound.

If there are a lot of bed ticks in the apartment, bites will appear almost every night, although the tick, after saturation, will remain in the shelter for a long time, without going out to hunt. These parasites target women and children, as well as those who sleep naked, although they always infect exposed areas of the human body.

As a rule, they take a few sips in search of a better place. Since the human body always reacts to parasite bites, the bite sites are distinguished by the presence of reddened spots.

Of course, many people think that these are, for example, mosquitoes, and do not attach much importance to this, although tick bites differ in their specificity from the bites of other insects. Characteristic differences include:

There are usually many bite marks left behind, and the bite marks are especially painful and itchy. Swelling with a pronounced red tint may appear at the sites of bites.
Bedbug bites are much smaller and brighter in color, and in addition, it is clear that the tick drinks blood. But the insect manages to escape before it is destroyed.
The bite sites itch somewhere, like after a wasp or bee sting, but a little weaker.

A bed tick bite has another distinctive feature: a tubercle of coagulated blood is visible in the center of the red spot. Also, bites are made at a time when a person is sound asleep, from 3 to 5 am.

On a note! Bed ticks feed only at night and rest in their hiding places during the day. When bites appear during the day, and even more so when walking down the street, this indicates other parasites.

Where do dust mites start and live?

Most often, dust mites are concentrated in dusty environments that are difficult to clean, as well as in bedding. They can be found:

In a pillow filled with natural bird feathers;
In the mattress, especially if it is old and has not been cleaned for a long time. It is claimed that such mattresses consist of 10% mites;
In a blanket that is stuffed with cotton wool;
In a carpet made from natural materials, the pile of which can also be eaten by parasites;
In bed linen;
In furniture upholstery;
In curtains and drapes;
On bookshelves that are rarely dusted;
In a bag located in the vacuum cleaner;
In soft toys made from natural materials;
In stale old clothes;
In woolen blankets.

According to the Federal Budgetary Institution “Center for Hygienic Education of the Population” of Rospotrebnadzor, one gram of dust contains from 10 to 10,000 dust mites. In addition to them, about 350 thousand colonies of bacteria and about 100 thousand clusters of fungi live on bed linen.

The waste products of sofa mites, which cause allergic reactions, enter the air, slowly settle on the surface and gradually accumulate. Allergens get not only onto furniture and things, but also onto human skin and even into the respiratory tract.

Why are bites dangerous?

Ticks are capable of transmitting many viral and other diseases, but human infection does not occur during a bite. In any case, scientists have not been able to prove otherwise. Most likely, nature made sure that bed ticks had a constant source of food. If a person becomes infected and dies, the ticks will be left without this source.

Bed tick bites are not entirely harmless. For example:

The human body reacts in a very unique way to the bites of these parasites: severe itching, rashes on the body and other allergic reactions occur. Some people may develop angioedema, which can be fatal. About 80% of people on the planet exhibit various allergic reactions to bed tick bites.
Some people, especially children, scratch wounds, causing them to rot.
Iron deficiency anemia may occur, especially in children, if bites occur frequently enough.
These parasites do not give a person normal rest at night, disturbing the person’s mental balance. No one likes having parasites suck your blood every night.

Signs of bed bug infestation, where to look and how to eliminate them

Do microscopic parasites bite?

Some people, having learned about the existence of these saprophytes, begin to fear their bites. Feather arachnids don't actually bite. If someone says that they have suffered from a tick bite and even show marks from its jaws, these words should be taken as nothing other than the figment of such a person’s imagination. The saprophyte is so small that it is not able to bite through human skin, and since it does not bite, it is not a carrier of dangerous infections, as many people think.

As for skin rashes, these are not bites of linen mites, but the body’s reaction to an allergen, which is the cuticle shed by these arachnids after molting, the substances they secrete and feces. The rashes, itching and burning sensations that appear on the skin from a dust mite bite can only be called conditionally to indicate what exactly we are talking about. The parasite does not cause bites as such.

Effective methods for treating bites

Many people's bodies respond adequately to bed tick bites, and they heal on their own within a few days. There are people who need emergency help because their body reacts in a very specific way. For atypical reactions it is necessary:

Wash the bite areas thoroughly with soap or soda solution, then rinse them with clean running water. To prepare the solution, take a glass of water and add a spoonful of soda or liquid soap.
Bite areas must be disinfected with any alcohol-containing product, such as vodka or moonshine, cologne or perfume.
Severe itching indicates an allergic reaction. To reduce these symptoms, you can use both pharmaceuticals and folk remedies.

Folk remedies

There are a number of effective and proven recipes. For example:

Bite areas should be wiped with pure vinegar. There is no need to rinse the product.
You can apply a piece of ice or some product from the freezer to the bite site.
Applying a used black or green tea bag to the bite site will relieve the victim of discomfort.
Lotions are also made from medicinal herbs. St. John's wort is considered the most effective remedy. To prepare the solution, you need to take a spoonful of St. John's wort and pour a glass of boiling water. After the infusion has cooled, soak a cotton swab in the infusion and apply it to the wound for half an hour. Herbs such as chamomile or calendula are suitable. The product is prepared in the same way as St. John's wort base.
Treatment with a composition based on aloe and plantain. After mixing the ingredients, the wound is treated several times a day. The juices from these plants help reduce swelling of the bite site, reduce itching and have an antibacterial effect.
Onion and garlic juices in combination act in a similar way on the bite site. The smell of onions and garlic, in addition to relieving discomfort, also helps repel these leeches.
You should drink at least 5 tablets of activated charcoal to flush out toxins from your body as quickly as possible.

As a rule, folk remedies help a person cope with negative consequences in the initial stages. If these remedies do not cope with the task, then pharmacies should be used. Alternatively, you can use essential oils, which have the same effect as herbal infusions.

Essential oils of such plants are recommended to be used as:

Lemon.
Orange.
Lavender.
Geranium.
Tea tree.
Needles.
Juniper.
Cypress.
Sage.
Mint.

Medications

There are both special remedies developed for the bites of various insects, and non-special ones that cope with this task. The fact is that each body reacts differently to bed tick bites.

Typically the following pharmaceuticals are used:

Special ointments “Fenistil” and “Rescuer”. These remedies have a wide spectrum of action and help protect the victim from negative consequences.
Vietnamese star, which is characterized by an antibacterial effect.
Afloderm helps cope with severe itching.
Propolis tincture is effective against any bites.
Afloderm ointment is used with Tavegil, which helps relieve the symptoms of allergic reactions.
The chatterbox “Tsindol” will easily cope with the task.
Akriderm perfectly relieves signs of inflammatory processes.

Prevention measures

If you follow a number of recommendations, you can prevent the appearance of bed mites in a person’s home. For example:

When buying new and especially used furniture or appliances, you need to carefully check them for the presence of parasites.
It is advisable to check the home for all types of cracks and then close them.
In places where these pests may appear, it is better to place small bunches of tansy, wormwood, lavender or other plants whose smell these pests cannot stand.
When traveling, do not stay in cheap hotels that have poor insect control.

Bed tick bites are not a problem if the bite sites are treated promptly. To avoid this problem, you need to take a number of measures and follow certain rules so that you don’t have to think about how to treat bite sites.

Habitats

At home, ticks most often settle in beds. The main reason is the availability of food. Bed pests feed on particles of exfoliated skin and sweat. Optimal living conditions are warmth, humidity, and the absence of bright sunlight. In a person’s bed, all these conditions are met.

On a note!
Bed mites, when multiplying rapidly, can settle in other places in an apartment or house, hence the other names of parasites - sofa, mattress, furniture, dust.

Mattress mites settle in furniture, soft toys, interior items, and remain on any surface where a large layer of dust accumulates. It's safe to say that furniture mites are everywhere, always and everywhere. The ideal place is an unmade bed, an old mattress, feather pillows, unwashed bedding with particles of dandruff, skin, and sweat.