Super Fitness Health BlogAre Bed Bugs Biting You?
Among the most feared and least understood pests recognized by civilisation stands out as the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). What number of us fell asleep to sleep at night as children with the words of our mothers and fathers inside our ears “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”?
Bed Bugs probably started to dine on people at about the period when we moved into caves, the bat bugs Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella largely feed on bats and it is a fair chance that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on human blood when our forebears started living in bat infested caves.
Until the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were commonplace unwelcome guests in most low quality homes.
The later part of the 20th century saw pest control companies having very few bed bug problems indeed, their presence being mostly restricted to low quality holiday hotels and student lodgings etc.
A lot of people mistake dust mites, which aren’t visible to the naked, with bed bugs which very definitely are.
Adult bedbugs are reddish brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and engorged after dining on human blood.
Bed bugs regularly prey on human blood every seven to ten days, coming out in the early hours of the morning and finding their target by smelling the exhaled CO2 from human breath and once close in on their target, body heat.
In the absence of an acceptable human host to feed on they can lie dormant for periods as much as 18 months.
Signs of a bedbug problem are spots of blood on sheets and on the edges of mattresses and many people can react badly to their bites.
The first the 21st century has seen bed bug numbers growing across our world, the easy availability of overseas and economic migration have both been put forward for the resurgence.
What is sure is that they are now making a real fightback not only in lower quality housing but top class hotels, schools and in many cases hospitals.
One London borough cited a doubling of bed bug problems on a yearly basis from 1995 to 2001.
One evening away in an infested premises is all it needs, they catch a ride in your suitcases or bags.
Pest management businesses are also now confirming cases of transport related bed bug infestations on transport of all kinds so a straightforward trip home on an infested tube or train could be enough to spread the infestation to your house.
They are an tricky pest to eradicate as despite popular belief they do not just live in beds. They live in any nook and cranny conveniently close to a sleeping human, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed side telephones etc and dealing with them is both laborious and time consuming. They have even been revealed found living under the toe-nails of infirm people and in the folds of flesh on flabby people.
They are not a pest that can be eradicated by a beginner and a pest control professional will in all probability be necessary.
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