Can Eating Food in Bed Increase Your Chances of Bed Bugs?
Anyone who has experienced living with bed bugs would be able to tell you how much of an inconvenience they are. Bed bugs are attracted to blood, particularly human blood. As you spend hours in your bed each night and you’re asleep during this time, bed bugs are attracted to living in beds so that they can consume your blood whilst you sleep. Whilst bed bugs aren’t deadly they can cause many health issues including rashes on your skin, psychological issues as the thought of having bugs crawling on you tends to scare people and people can also be allergic to them. As bed bugs can be dangerous it’s important to look out for the so that you can try and get rid of them as soon as you notice anything is wrong as this is the easiest time to do so. One of the most widely stated things about bed bugs is that if you eat food whilst you’re in bed this will cause you to get bed bugs but recently many people are wondering if this is actually true.
Does it increase the likeliness?
Many people avoid eating in their beds at all costs as they were told stories when they were younger about how in doing so, they will attract bed bugs. On the surface level, this would appear to make sense as bugs are generally attracted to dirty places, and having a bed filled with crumbs would make your sleeping environment a lot dirtier. However, as bed bugs are attracted to blood, not human food, eating in bed doesn’t increase the likeliness of getting bed bugs. Many parents tell their children that eating in bed causes bed bugs as they didn’t want their children’s beds to be full of crumbs. As children do not tend to listen many parents used this story as a deterrent to prevent their children from eating in bed and making a mess. It is often surprising for people to find out that the main cause of bed bugs is actually traveling. Bed bugs are most commonly found in hotel beds, if you visit a hotel and sleep in a bed with a bed bug infestation then it’s likely many of these bed bugs will attach themselves to you and the infestation will spread to your own bed. This is also true for if anyone in university halls gets bed bugs and they even spread via clothes in retail stores.
How to get rid of bed bugs
After finding out that you have bed bugs you might be ready to burn your bed and buy a new one, but luckily there are solutions much less drastic than this. If you suspect that you have bed bugs the first step is to identify all of the areas of your home that are infested, once you’ve done this then you need to try and contain the damage to these areas only. You should hoover up any areas that you’ve identified bed bugs living in and throw away the vacuum bag straight away. This is great preparation for applying a bed bug treatment, you should also make sure to clean your whole house to make sure they aren’t hiding in some other spots. The best treatment that we’ve found plant oil-based products, like EcoRaider, which contains fewer damaging chemicals than your standard pesticide but is equally as effective. This should deal with most of the damage but make sure you monitor the area in case any survived and start laying more eggs.