Insect Bites Home Remedies for Rashes and Swelling | Topics Related to Insect Bites Home Remedies | Tips to Avoid Insect Bites | How To Identify Insect Bites? | How does insect bite look like? – Common Symptoms
How To Identify Insect Bites?
Insect bites is also known as stings (Scientific), kide ka katna – saap or makadi ka dasana (Hindi/Urdu), Kitak chavane / nangi (Marathi), Pucci katittal marrum kati (Tamil). Insect bites and stings are common, and may cause discomfort, but unless you suffer from an allergic reaction, the best course of treatment is to soothe the pain and reduce swelling. Animal bites should always be cleaned carefully and seen by a doctor. Dogs and other animals can transmit the infectious disease rabies through bites.
How does insect bite look like? – Common Symptoms
Any bite or sting of an insect can trigger a local irritation under the skin. As long as the venom of the insect remains there, it may keep on creating periodic allergic reactions, or may even create sting-bite nephritis, a serious condition involving generalized edema (swelling) and breathlessness, and the person can choke. The stinging insects inject a toxin through a stinger at the tail end of the abdomen. The reaction is usually local, but if the sting occurs in the mouth or throat, swelling can cut off the air supply and cause death by asphyxiation. Death can occur in individuals who are hypersensitive to bee venom. Symptoms include fever and convulsions. So stings and bites, though usually quite innocuous, may occasionally be very serious; one has to be watchful.
Insect Bites Home Remedies
- Try using Citronnela Oil. Do not use without first diluting. Add several drops to vegetable oil and rub directly on your skin.
- Effective Herb Medication: Fresh sage (Salvia officinalis) leaves are antiseptic and can be rubbed on insect bites and stings.
- Cure Bee Stings: Cover sting with slices of fresh onion, lemon or horseradish. If fresh garlic or onion is used to treat the sting, the pain and the swelling will lessen. After removing the stinger, carefully place the chopped onion on the affected area. Cover the onion with gauze and secure with tape. Keep it in place from 20 minutes to an hour or more until the pain and swelling subside. Rinse thoroughly after you remove it. Freshly cut onions contain enzymes that help break down inflammation causing compounds in a sting. Onion is antiseptic.
- Sting Rashes Natural Treatment: As soon as possible after receiving a sting or bite, take some cilantro juice. Place a handful of cilantro in a blender with about 1/3 cup water, blend thoroughly, and strain it. Drink the juice (use 2 teaspoons 3 times a day), and apply the pulp locally to the skin at the affected area. It will instantaneously pacify the itching, burning, and hives or rash created by the sting or bite.
- Bee Stinger Removal: A bee usually leaves behind a sac of venom and a stinger. Removing it immediately stops more venom from entering. As quickly as possible, remove the stinger by gently scraping it off with your fingernail, a credit card, or another stiff object. Grasp an ice cube and rub it briskly over the stung area for a full minute. Wash with warm water and soap. If you have got bite from sting on the arm, remove rings and bracelets before swelling occurs.
- Eucalyptus for Insect Bites: Apply an infusion of the leaves or diluted oil (maximum 5 percent concentration) to insect bites and fungal skin conditions.
- Reduce Itching: Moisten a cube of sugar, apply to the sting. Sugar sucks up moisture and will therefore absorb the venom; this will also reduce the itching.
- Soothe Inflammation: Apply aloe vera to the bite or sting to soothe. It also has anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties.
- Reduce Swelling: Apply the juice of a spring onion or a cucumber to stings to soothe and reduce inflammation.
- Edema due to Insect Bites: For swelling due to insect bites, use neem and tea tree oil topically. The venom of the insect irritates the skin, and neem and tea tree oil mixed together in equal proportion will neutralize the venom toxicity and minimize the edema. Neem oil is also effective by itself.
- Spider Bites: The juice of daikon radish is useful for spider bites.
- Cover bites and stings with a wet, macerated plantain leaf. When it dries, replace with a wet leaf.
- Healing With Herbs: One can drink 1/3 cup of coconut water (the “juice” inside the coconut) with about 1/8 teaspoon “kama dudha” added. Drinking this mixture 2 or 3 times will help heal the reaction to the sting bite.
- Wasp Stings Cure: Also known as yellow jacket sting. Make a compress from a pad of cotton wadding soaked in lemon juice or cider vinegar and apply to a wasp sting.
- Take a piece of dried coconut, and set fire to it. It will catch fire like wax. Let it burn for about 1/2 inch and then blow it out. There will be a little smoke, and when the smoke disappears, a tarry black residue will remain. Apply that residue directly to the bite for instant relief.
- Quick Easy Remedy: At the site of the bite, you can also apply neem oil or a neem paste. Neem is an antidote to most poisonous insect venoms. To make a paste, take a little neem powder and mix it with a little water. Apply it to the skin and leave it on for 10 to 20 minutes, then rinse it. Do not use pure neem extract; instead use an herbalized oil made by boiling neem leaves in a sesame oil base. This is generally available in natural food stores or Indian groceries.
- Fire Ant Stings: Put 1 teaspoon baking soda in your palm. Add 3 drops lavender essential oil and enough water to form a paste. Plaster the paste over the sting site, covering the swelling. After 30 minutes, rinse off the paste. Reapply as needed. Bee and fire ant stings are acidic, though the venom contains other chemicals at well. The baking soda paste may help neutralize the acidic venom.
- Put warm soaked linseed in gauze or muslin and hold or bind in place on burns, bites and stings.
- Home Remedy that Works: Apply garlic and onion to ant bites, and cucumber juice to ease the discomfort.
- Alternate Simple Cure: For bites from fire ants, try a dab of Vicks VapoRub on the sting area to relieve pain and itching.
- Prevent Wounds: Use granulated sugar to prevent a bite wound from scarring. Apply a poultice of sugar to the wound. Finally, clean and bandage it with gauze.
- A paste made from 1/2 teaspoon of sandalwood powder plus 1/2 teaspoon turmeric soothing and healing. Mix the two herbs together with sufficient water to make a paste, and apply topically to the site of the bite.
- Rapid Healing: Apply juice from the basil leaves to infected spots and insect bites and stings to speed healing.
- Scorpion and Jellyfish Stings: Macerate and apply the leaves of wormwood, sage, or rue to spider, scorpion, or jellyfish stings.
5 Tips to Avoid Insect Bites
- Neem oil is a much-used insect repellent in India and around the world. It contains a natural chemical compound that repels insects. Rub a little onto exposed skin before going outdoors.
- Prevent insect bites by diluting essential oils of eucalyptus or citronella in half a mug of water, and then gently applying to exposed areas, avoiding the eyes and mouth. Use cider vinegar in the same way.
- To avoid tick bites, wear long sleeves and pants. Treat clothing and skin with insect repellent. Stay in the middle of trails to avoid long grass and underbrush.
- To avoid bee stings, don’t wear brightly colored or pastel clothing and avoid wearing perfumes. Avoid look or smell like a flower. When cooking outdoors, watch out for yellow jackets. They may get attract by the smells.
- Animal Bites: All manner of animals can bite. In terms of mammalian bites, the most likely offenders are cats, dogs, other humans, and rabid creatures, such as foxes, raccoons, bobcats, skunks, flea and bats. If animal bites you, do rabies for animal. Call the police or state health department for assistance. The last thing you need is to be further injured and emotionally traumatized. If the bite is deep or extensive, call 911. Otherwise, your first step is to wash the wound with soap and copious amounts of running water. If you keep povidone iodine (an antiseptic chemical complex that contains iodine and is stocked in most drugstores) on hand, apply that, too (check the label to see whether it first should be diluted). Stanch bleeding by applying pressure and then a sterile bandage. Seek medical attention for all bites that break the skin, especially human bites, which are most likely to become severely infected, and bites to the hands and face. In addition to having the wound properly treated, you may need a tetanus booster. If the animal has rabies (or couldn’t be caught and is presumed to have rabies), you may also need a rabies immune globulin injection and a four-part rabies vaccine. The rabies immune globulin is injected into the wound and surrounding tissue. In case you’ve heard tell of the vaccine being injected into the belly, rest assured that the vaccine is injected into the muscle in the upper arm or in the case of small children, the thigh.