According to Dr. Pritt, for the most part, eating a bug isn't cause for worry. In general, your body will digest arthropods, which include arachnids like spiders, mites, and ticks, and insects such as gnats, flies, mosquitoes, fleas, and bedbugs, “just like any other food,” she says.
Although they can bite your face, there is no need to worry about bed bugs making their way inside your nose, mouth, or ears, which is a common (and understandable) concern. These bugs feed on the surface of your body and prefer to retreat after their meals rather than hang out on you.
The simple answer is no, bedbugs cannot crawl into your mouth. These pests are not equipped with the mouthparts necessary for biting or chewing, so they cannot penetrate the skin. Bedbugs are also not known to transmit any diseases, so there's no need to worry about them crawling into your mouth and making you sick.
Technically, yes — bed bugs can enter your ears and other parts of your body. However, it is very uncommon and unlikely. Bed bugs feed on warm blood, which they extract directly from skin. They do not need to travel inside the body when their food source is accessible from the outside.
Thankfully, bed bugs are not able to burrow under human skin to lay their eggs. Instead, they lay eggs in dark, dry areas like the seams along your mattress and inside pieces of furniture. Remember, bed bugs bite you on your skin. They don't burrow into it like scabies mites do.
Bedbugs aren't known to spread disease, but they can cause an allergic reaction or a severe skin reaction in some people.
Bed bugs can bite you on the legs, hands and arms, but are more likely to feed on your neck and head. One reason these bugs are so sneaky is that their bite doesn't hurt, so an affected person doesn't often notice until and unless they have a reaction.
Among the popular and most effective DIY home treatments for bed bugs is rubbing alcohol. You can dilute it and place it a spray bottle and simply spray the infested areas. The alcohol will kill bed bugs almost immediately. It also evaporates quickly, leaves no traces or bad smells.
Showering using soap and water is sufficient to remove bed bugs from your person. Wash your work clothes and dry them completely in a clothes dryer. Once dry, run the clothes on high heat for an additional 30 minutes to make certain that any bed bugs transferred from the washing machine are dead.
Once the blood-feeding is complete, bed bugs may usually retreat to their hiding spots to digest the blood. Bed bugs lack the body shape and legs that are required to clamber, and they naturally prefer to live around their host, not on their skin or other parts.
Although bed bugs are nocturnal and prefer to bite their host when they are asleep, they are not limited to biting their host at night. They've been known to bite people while awake during the day as long as the opportunity presents itself.
Often a single bed bug will produce more than one bite during the night so it is not always a one to one relationship where each bite represents a different bed bug.
However, bedbugs on the wrong bed can also cause illness through a respiratory infection, such as influenza, bronchitis that "degenerates" and subsequently settles in the alveoli of the lungs.
Bed bug nymphs also change in their appearance after a blood meal. A hungry bed bug nymph is almost completely pale white or yellowish. However, once it is fed it plumps up, becomes brilliant red, and looks like a plump raspberry seed. Nymphs are the easiest to see when they have recently eaten.
Technically, bed bugs can live through a cycle in the washing machine. The truth is that while washing your clothes or linens will kill most of the bed bugs, the heat of drying your items is what will ultimately exterminate any and all remaining bugs. As we mentioned above, bed bugs do not tolerate heat.
Mattresses and pillows make potential habitats for bed bugs. Pillows may also be host to bed bug eggs, making them a potential point of bed bug infestations. A possible sign that bed bugs have infested pillows may be the appearance of bites.
You'll Find Them in Clean Places
One of the first thoughts, when you hear of a hotel or apartment building with a bed bug infestation, is to question the cleanliness of the establishment. The place must be filthy to harbor bed bugs! Unfortunately, that's not the case. Bed bugs, like humans, prefer clean places to live.
Ingestion, by comparison, was easily induced in bed bugs and highly effective at killing the bugs. A single blood meal with 0.5 percent boric acid killed 80 percent of all bugs in seven days.
Bed bugs are easy to kill using heat. Their thermal death point is reported to be 114-115° F. Putting infested clothing in a hot dryer is an excellent way of killing bed bugs and their eggs. Heat can also be used to kill bed bugs and their eggs in furniture and carpeting.
Diatomaceous earth is a great chemical-free option for getting rid of a number of pests, including bed bugs. This natural powder contains properties that can dehydrate bed bugs, absorbing their fat and oil, and killing them dead as a doornail. Spray or sprinkle in infected areas and allow it to sit for at least a week.
Technically, bed bugs are unlikely to live on the clothes you're wearing, but they can quickly take up residence on items in a suitcase, and even what's in your drawers or on your floor.
However, it's a common misconception that bugs infest dusty spots, but this belief is very clearly false, much like the myth of lice getting just into dirty hair. It doesn't matter if your OKC house has bed bugs. Clean or dirty home does not matter in this case.
If you've already gone inside your home, use a steamer to clean the carpets, drapes, linens, and mattress. Wrap your mattress in a bed bug proof cover. Place bedbug interceptors on the feet of your bed for a few nights just to be sure you killed everything.
Leaving bed bugs untreated will exacerbate the problem, as infestations do not die out on their own. With a single bed bug laying as many as 200 eggs in a lifetime, an untreated infestation can grow rapidly. The larger the infestation, the more susceptible you are to bed bug bites.