Bed Bug Feces Can Make People Sick Within Their Own Homes
Bed bugs have long been considered a nuisance insect pest, one that can literally drive some people mad. As horrible as they are to deal with, though, they’ve never been considered a serious danger to our health, as they don’t seem to carry any diseases, which could then be passed on to us humans. Scientists have studied them exhaustively to try and find any pathogens that bed bugs could host and then pass on to us, but they have to date not been able to link any diseases to them. Unfortunately, a new study challenges this point of view and reveals that we may have been looking in the wrong place the whole time. Bed bugs may not be able to pass along any diseases to humans, but they could be a danger to our health because of the histamine they poop into our homes.
Recent research has proven that bed bugs shoot histamine into the air via their poop. Our bodies naturally produce histamine as well, and it serves to push our immune system into action when there is any kind of threat to our health. Researchers studied numerous homes with and without bed bugs, testing the indoor dust before and after the places with bed bugs were treated by professionals. They found that the homes with bed bug infestations had levels of histamine that were up to 20 times higher than the homes that weren’t infested with bed bugs. What was even more alarming was that even after these homes had been treated and three months had passed since the initial test, the levels of histamine had remained just as high as they were at the start of the study. This means that even after a home has been treated, it is still filled with much more histamine than an uninfested house.
So why is this bad news for us humans when our own bodies already produce histamine? Histamine is essential to keeping our bodies safe from foreign invaders, but it is also one of the main triggers for people experiencing allergic symptoms, including asthma. People experience allergic reactions to cockroaches and dust mites in a similar manner to bed bugs. However, not only do bed bugs easily rival the allergies caused by these other insects, unlike cockroaches and dust mites, bed bugs like to stick very close to us humans, which means our reactions to them could be much more potent. Our bodies have a very delicate relationship with histamine, which could mean we wouldn’t just have allergic reactions to the bed bugs, but the histamine they release could make us more sensitive to other allergens.
Have you ever had a bed bug infestation and felt like your allergies were getting worse due to their presence? Get A Bed Bug Inspection today!