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We all are bitten by insects from time to time – we are simply too abundant a source of food for insects to ignore. However, some individuals react fairly badly to an insect bite, while others do not seem be all that much troubled by them. The most common insect bites are from mosquitoes, ants, fleas and gnats or midges and now bed bugs are coming back too..

If you are not excessively allergic to these bites there is no need to do anything about the bite itself although you might like to eradicate an infection of ants, fleas and bed bugs. Mosquito and other insect bites usually produce an itchy, red swelling, which should go down within one to three days, although some people do have them for a lot longer.

We say that insects bite, but it is not always true. It is slapdash speech. Some insects bite (like ants), some insects sting (like bees) and other insects suck blood (like mosquitoes, fleas and bed bugs). Most individuals are more likely to develop a reaction to blood sucking although the stings are the most painful.

Blood-sucking insects squirt some saliva into you through a pore before sucking blood. This saliva contains an anticoagulant to cause the blood run more freely and it may contain an antiseptic and an analgesic as well to ease the pain of a possible infection or reaction to the bite. It is this saliva that causes the swelling and itching in most instances.

This is like an allergic reaction, but doctors do not consider it to be an allergy. Some people really are allergic to the bites of blood-sucking or stinging insects and they may need to be hospitalized. They suffer much more than an itchy swelling for a day or two. You will soon know if you are allergic. You may even pass out or go into a coma.

Anyway, the priority for most of us after being ‘bitten’ is to relieve the itching and reduce the swelling. It appears that some treatments work better on some people than on others, so it is a case of trying different items until you find one that suits you and the type of bite that is afflicting you.

Tiger Balm works on many insect bites for most individuals, but some people merely have to rub a slice of lemon or an ice cube on the bite to make the bite more tolerable. If you are going to treat mosquito and other insect bites, you ought to do it as soon as you can after having been bitten. Attempt to get that saliva out so that it does not have time to activate your bodies natural defences.

Some creams seem to neutralize the saliva whilst others seem to pucker the skin enough to squirt it back out. If the saliva is back outside it cannot cause an infection although most infections like this are the result of scratching with dirty finger nails

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on lots of subjects, but is at present involved with getting rid of mosquito bites problems. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our web site at Mosquito Bite Swelling.

Mosquitoes live in most parts of the world. They are born into water, and it does not have to be much, where they spend around two weeks developing through the stages of egg, larva and pupa. As an adult, they live for up to another eight weeks.

The mouth parts of mosquitoes have evolved to be specialized in piercing ‘skin’ and sucking out juices. Males use this talent for removing juices from plants, but females need a blood meal to be able to produce eggs and of the 3,500 species of mosquito worldwide, some species feed on humans.

This trait means that the female mosquito of certain species can be the carrier of several infectious diseases. These diseases have an effect on and kill millions of people each year. Two of these diseases are malaria and dengue fever

Malaria is brought about by a mosquito infected with eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium biting humans (and one sortnd of monkey). The disease is widespread throughout Africa, the Americas and Asia but it was eradicated from Australia in 1981. Europe used to be infected as well but is now largely clean of malaria, although not of mosquitoes.

The disease is brought about by the multiplication of the malarial parasites in the red blood cells which creates symptoms comparable to headaches and fever – something like a bad case of the flu. In severe cases, this can lead to coma and death.

Prevention is much better than cure, so the first thing to do is attempt to prevent mosquitoes breeding by eradicating unnecessary amounts of water no matter how small and how brackish. Secondly, try to prevent them biting you by using mosquito repellent and mosquito nets treated with pesticide.

There is no long-lasting vaccine that will prevent you getting malaria, although there are drugs available to prevent travellers getting malaria in the short time. Most kinds of malaria can be cured successfully, although there is evidence of resistance to several of the anti-malarial drugs.

Dengue Fever is also carried by certain mosquitoes. The indications of dengue vary but they almost always include a headache and a skin rash and sometimes joint pain. The disease is not often fatal, but it can be so if it develops into dengue haemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome (where blood pressure drops very low causing organs to malfunction).

There are four sorts of dengue fever. Having had the one, the patient has permanent immunity to that strain, yet only temporary immunity from the other three. As with malaria there is no vaccine against dengue. The only attack is to reduce the number of mosquitoes and the number of bites.

Whereas the incidence of infection with malaria is falling, the rate of infection with dengue is rising. Dengue is now endemic in more than 110 countries. It usually takes 4-7 days for the disease to show itself after infection, so any flu-like indications showing within a week of returning from an region known to have dengue must be treated seriously, especially as lots of GP’s in the west may overlook the real cause of the problem.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with work on mosquito bite treatment. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Bite Swellings.