Bed Bug Mattress Covers – Do They Really Work at Preventing Bed Bugs?

If you travel or are planning to, then bed bugs might be on your mind. If that’s the case, you may be interested in bed bug mattress covers. Properly used, these are a very good way to prevent yourself from either getting bitten or having a new bloodsucking pet to share your bed with.

For a long time, bed bugs were a largely forgotten problem. In large part because people didn’t travel all that much, it was possible to wipe out the bed bug colonies through good hygiene and improved living conditions.

Lately though, people have forgotten about bed bugs and started to travel much more, so these nasty critters have found themselves a lot of nice new places to live. And because we don’t expect them, they are getting into our homes.

The upside of this, if you can call it that, is that people have come up with bed bug mattress covers to control the problem, and they can be highly useful. You do need to remember that this requires both the right kind and the right use.

Regular mattress covers don’t fully encompass the bed, as a rule, which makes them less than effective for bed bug problems. If they aren’t fully sealed in, the bed bugs will simply move around the mattress cover and come at you from on top of it. This type of mattress cover can keep you reasonably safe from bites at a hotel, assuming you only stay one night.

Another problem is what kind of fabric they’re made of. Bed bugs have strong sharp jaws, and they have absolutely no difficulty biting through skin. Because of this, you’re going to need a mattress cover from a very thick fabric. The fabric also needs to be tightly knit. If it isn’t both of these, the bedbugs will just bite through the fabric and bite you anyway.

Proper bed bug mattress covers are specially designed to work around both of these problems. First, they’re designed so that they completely cover the mattress and, usually, the box springs as well. They zipper shut and create a sealed environment. No bed bugs getting, no humans being made into a tasty cocktail.

They are also made of extreme sturdy materials that are strong enough to resist being bitten through. As a result, they will eventually kill all the bed bugs encased in them, resolving your bed bug problem.

The other great use for them is when you travel. You take them with you, then put them on the bed to keep the bed bugs away from you. This will also allow you to prevent them from getting into luggage and coming home without. You need to make sure you keep the mattress cover sealed and have them cleaned thoroughly with hot water between each use.

Bed bugs are a problem, but you don’t have to be a victim. Just make sure you take care and get the right kind of mattress covers. You’ll need to look specifically for bed bug mattress covers to keep the little beasts away.

Do You Need Mattress Covers to Prevent Bed Bugs? How to Protect Yourself From Bedbugs While Sleeping

Bed bugs in your mattress can be the cause of some serious health hazards and can draw an enormous amount of blood from the human body. They nestle in your bed mattresses and come out mostly towards dawn, sucking blood for 10-15 minutes at a stretch, and then again retreating to their safe location in the folds of the mattresses. In order to avoid this, and make sure nothing bad happens to you or your near and dear ones, you must have mattress covers to protect yourself from bed bugs.
 
You should be able to identify bed bugs from their round shape and flat bodies. Their color, however, keeps changing. ‘Bloodsuckers’ that they are, their color depends on their intake of blood. They are usually grey or light brown, but after they have fed, such colors usually change to brick red, even orange at times. It is also possible to identify them by their action. If sleeping on your mattress causes you itches and irritation, it is possibly because there are bed bugs inside your mattress. These bugs inject an oily, sticky substance into the body of their hosts, and these infections can be pretty deadly at times.

Also note – Each female bug lays about 500 eggs each. Each bug starts feeding immediately after being born, and attains the ability to reproduce after a month or so. The point here is, until and unless you take drastic steps of remedy after you first notice the ‘bug attack’, the situation may soon spin out of control.

• Cut off the source of blood supply – Bed bugs are unable to survive without blood. Getting mattress covers to protect yourself from these insects thus seems to be the first thing that needs to be done for your protection.
 
• Mattress covers have very tightly woven fabrics – These do not allow the bugs to penetrate and nest in the mattress itself. Furthermore, the bugs which are already there cannot get out, and perish within one or two days. Remember – if you have bed bugs ALREADY in your mattress; make sure you do not remove the cover.
 
Further, there are some advantages of using mattress covers as well:

There is of course the factor of keeping the mattress new, but what many people do not realize is the extent of the newness. Mattress covers can keep your mattress of two years looking brand new! That is a fact, and as the years pass, you can still NOT SEE the effects of time!

Secondly, if you have seasonal allergies, mattress covers can be a very good solution. One of the biggest causes of seasonal allergies is pet dander. Together with dust, pet dander can accumulate on your mattress and cause serious allergies. Your mattress cover ensures that there is no accumulation.

Bed mites, too, can cause asthma attacks and bronchial infections. At any time, there are around a million bed mites in a two year old mattress, and their dropping, minute but accumulated, can be a carrier of these diseases. Mattress covers can protect you here by cutting off their main source of food – shed skin cells of humans (or what we call ‘dead skin’).

Mattress Covers to Prevent Bed Bugs and Their Nasty Bites

Now that they’ve become a problem again, you might be wondering if you can use mattress covers to prevent bed bugs. These insects are nasty little things, tiny quarter inch brown bugs that live by suckling on the blood of mammals, in other words, you.

Bed bugs are tough little insects. They’re difficult to kill with pesticides, they can go a very long time without feasting on your blood and they tend to stay the nooks and crannies where they are least likely to be seen. Given all that, it’s no wonder people look towards just avoiding them rather than fighting them.

So can mattress covers prevent bed bugs? Yes and no. It depends on what you mean by prevent. Mattress covers, the right mattress covers, are certainly good for preventing some things about these bugs.

If you go to a hotel and you’re looking to sleep and not become a midnight snack, then a mattress cover is definitely going to be a useful tool. If you bring a fresh mattress cover with you and put it on the bed, and it’s the right kind of mattress cover, then you can prevent the bites.

What you’re basically doing is sealing all the bed bugs underneath a cover that they can’t bite through. As a layer of defense against bedbugs, this is pretty effective. But keep in mind that choosing the right kind of mattress cover is absolutely essential to them doing what you want them to do.

Their jaws are designed to bite through and hold onto flesh, so for their size, they are enormously strong. This means that if you get a mattress cover made of silk or another very light fabric, they will simply bite though it to get to you. So to get the protection you want, you’re going to want to pick a heavy, tightly woven fabric. This will stop them from getting anywhere near your skin, so you don’t wake up itching like a fiend.

On the other hand, if you’re looking at mattress covers as a way to prevent bed bugs from setting up house in your home, then you’re going to have a lot less luck. These disgusting insects don’t care what’s on the bed. If you have a mattress cover over the bed all the time, they’re simply going to crawl on top of it to get to you.

Bed bugs, despite the name, don’t just live in the bed. Most of them will stay where the large warm buffet meal is, but some will be else where. Now in a hotel situation, where you are only there for a night, the mattress cover will contain them. Unfortunately, at home, this just won’t work.

If these bugs do get into your home, you’re going to need more than a mattress to contain them. These covers are only a temporary measure, and you should only use them for that. But assuming correct use, then yes, you can use mattress covers to prevent bed bugs.