Unpleasant and even painful, mosquito bites are also dangerous for your health. Why Doctor gives you natural remedies to avoid them.
- The tiger mosquito has been present in France since 2004.
- There are endemic areas, where the climate is favorable to the development of mosquitoes.
- In France, people infected during a trip, with dengue for example, can promote the transmission of a disease if they are bitten on their return.
Summer, sun, heat, holidays and… mosquitoes! They come back with the good weather. Their bites are unpleasant, but they can also be dangerous. To protect against them, there are natural solutions to keep these insects away.
What are the dangers of mosquitoes?
In mosquitoes, only the females bite. They do this before the eggs are laid, which can hatch in just four days. “Mosquitoes grow faster when temperatures rise.”specifies theHealth Insurance. In hot countries, their development is thus easier, yet these insects are a threat: they are disease vectors. When a female mosquito is infected with a virus, it can transmit it to humans during the bite. Chikungunya, dengue fever, Zika virus disease, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile fever, Rift Valley fever are some of the mosquito-borne viral diseases. But it can also transmit parasitic diseases such as malaria. Depending on its species, the diseases it carries vary. The tiger mosquito, for example, can carry three viruses in particular: dengue, Zika and chikungunya.
How to protect yourself from it?
To avoid bites, there are repellent products to apply to the body. It is also recommended to wear long and loose clothes, or even to install mosquito nets. In some municipalities, mosquito control operations are launched when cases of contamination by vector mosquitoes are detected. For individuals, it is possible to install traps, plug-in devices or even use special rackets to kill them.
natural techniques
Some plants help keep mosquitoes away in a natural way. Near the openings, the installation of basil, lemon thyme, lemon balm, eucalyptus or lemon verbena acts as a natural repellent against these insects. Diffusers are another solution to repel them: simply place a mixture of lemongrass and geranium essential oil, or eucalyptus essential oil, in them.
Otherwise, there are various home remedies: a bowl of tea with a pressed clove of garlic or fresh oranges studded with cloves give off a smell that mosquitoes don’t like. In hot weather, the fan can do double duty: these insects don’t like moving air. Placing a fan near an open window or several fans around you should repel these unwanted insects.