The newly designed mattresses we find in the market allow us to have a good night, to sleep tight (also thanks to the modern designs of bed) and… we are still fighting to avoid bed bugs from biting us. Although, they are almost invisible, bed bugs and dust mites are part of our beds at all times, and can harm our lungs.
These little critters feed off our sweat and dead skin cells, they also prefer damp and dark places, making our mattress, sheets and pillow cases the perfect home for them. The reason for this fact is because when we sleep we sweat almost a liter every night, producing a nice and wet field for bed bugs to reproduce and populate our mattress. At night, our skin also breaks down in flakes, converting our sheets into recipients of our dead skin cells, which are fuel for the dust mites.
In other words, we have bed bugs and dust mites living and sleeping in our beds along with us. Although, they feed off of our blood, hence the ‘biting’ part of the saying, they are generally not harmful, since they do not carry diseases. You might as well accept that their existence, though it is not preferred, does not represent a health problem.
Some recommendations to stop the bed bugs from biting
The problem, however, comes when we discuss our bed hygiene and the residues that these critters leave behind in our beds. Since bed bugs and dust mites reproduce and feed on our beds they as well leave their poo behind, and this waste cause allergies and even asthma, when we inhale it during our sleep.
- The best advice to fight these organisms off our beds is to maintain a high level of cleanliness.
- We should vacuum our sheets and mattresses at least once a month to clear the millions of bugs you may find in your beds along with the harmful residues they leave behind. We recommend also changing your bed clothes every two weeks in order to have a fresh and dry bed.
- However, there have been recent studies that conclude that we should not make our beds right immediately after we go out of bed at mornings. Bed bugs and dust mites are enemies of two things: fresh air and sunlight. Having your bed near these two sources will dehydrate them and exterminate them. That is why experts do not recommend making our beds right after rising. As we mentioned above, we sweat a great deal when we sleep and by making our beds we cover all the sheets that got wet during the night. Thus, the humidity is preserved more time and the bugs will longer and proposer to keep biting us in our sleep.
- It is best to leave our bed unmade for a certain period of time and even better if we can get direct sunlight on it. That way we prevent these bugs to keep infest our sleep.
- Another advice is to sprinkle our mattresses, before dressing them, with baking soda to help reduce the dampness produce by our sweat.
