Using a Bed Bug Mattress Cover – 3 Tips to Prevent These Insects For Good

Making use of a bed bug mattress cover can come in handy especially when traveling as even nice hotels can become unsuspecting victims of infestation problems. In fact, a recent study suggests that the increase in world travel may have contributed to the rise in reported incidents each year. Here are 3 tips to help prevent these critters from attacking.

1. Use a bed bug mattress cover

As mentioned above, even nice hotels may have bug problems in certain rooms but this is generally an exception. To be safe, you can make use of a cover that encases the entire mattress which works to keep these insects from attacking if they are nesting in the bed. Since these critters attack late at night, using a cover will help prevent them from getting in and out of the mattress.

2. Thoroughly wash your clothes and luggage

Bed bugs can easily transmit between clothes and luggage which is why it is essential that you thoroughly wash everything before heading home on a trip. This will ensure that even if these insects did somehow latch onto your luggage, you can prevent them from entering you home. Even if you do not travel frequently, it is still a good idea to always keep your clothes clean.

3. Keep a spray with you

If you notice bed bugs in your room or on your mattress, a quick way to eliminate them is using insecticides specifically designed to kill them. Be sure to only use a light mist on the affected area as some sprays contain toxic chemicals that are not healthy to breathe in. If you are constantly around children or pets, then it may be good idea to get a spray that does not contain hazardous ingredients.

When it comes to prevention, be sure to use a bed bug mattress when traveling and to always thoroughly wash your clothes. A good idea before traveling would be to read reviews on certain hotels you expect to stay in to make sure infestation problems are kept at a minimum. Be sure to keep the above factors in mind when it comes to preventing bed bugs from attacking.

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.