I’m tired of mosquitos biting me. If i can’t stop them biting me, the next best thing is to stop them biting me a second time. So what’s the best (safe for me) way to make myself poisonous to mosquitos, and optionally other bugs that might bite me?
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Pretty sure I just stumbled onto the orgins story for a radioactive super villain.
“Now now, Batman, you should know that when a little pest like you dances with the Bug Zapper… He’d better be ready for a shock!”
I do three things and mosquitos avoid me: I eat a ton of garlic, I take a ton of drugs, and I smoke a ton of weed. My blood is semisolid.
After I got long covid mosquitos stopped trying to eat me lol.
So maybe sickness helps idk.
Vitamin B-12. Take 1500 mg of B-12 daily. It will mask your blood’s scent, when you sweat it out. It will make you smell faintly bitter, and prevents ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes.
You need to buy Sawyer picaridin lotion. It’s the most effective mosquito repellent I have found. I use it in high alpine environments where you can be swarmed by literally hundreds of mosquitos.
So there are these things… called “bug repellents” which do the trick nicely.
So one thing to prevent the first is to mask/change your odor. Booze increases bites, sitting and smelling of smoke (including things like wood camp fire smoke,) will mask you; sugary things increase. Soaps and shampoos depend on the product.
Those coils or citronella can drive them off. The noise thingies too.
Permethrin clothing. Works fucking amazing. I have a jumpsuit treaded with it, kills ticks, mosquitoes, black flies. Not just repel but kill on contact!
Permethrin is toxic to cats; however, it has little effect on dogs. Many cats die after being given flea treatments intended for dogs, or by contact with dogs having recently been treated with permethrin. In cats it may induce hyperexcitability, tremors, seizures, and death.
fyi
Thanks for the info. I have 3 cats and I was about to look into this.
That said, prethreated clothing should be fine to have around cats as long as they aren’t actively licking/eating them.
My cats are a bit special so I wouldn’t put it past them.
I think sugar makes you more attractive to mosquitoes. I know from first-hand experience that if you’re always hung over, and you smoke cigarettes, then the city mosquitos will leave you alone. The high country mosquitos don’t give a fuck though, they’ll take whatever they can get. Otherwise you want 97% DEET. Don’t bother with any other stuff, it doesn’t work. 97% DEET! Someone’s going to come along and say “nooo, skin so soft mixed with water repels mosquitoes!”. They’re liars. 97% DEET.
DEET works, but is also not exactly healthy and does irritate both skin and mucus membranes. Also, applying DEET over sunscreen reduces the effect of the sunscreen by about 30%. Unless you are in a tropical environment with dangers of Malaria carrying insects, (P)Icaridin is a good alternative:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25936273/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/icaridin
I never had any success with it. It might work in the cities, and populated areas where the mosquitoes have other easy options, but literally the only thing that has ever worked reliably for me in the mountains is 97% DEET. Even the lesser concentration of it, I think it’s 36%, didn’t work. I’ve tried just about everything trying to get away from DEET, and none of it works reliably. If mosquitoes are bothering me in town it’s usually enough to just wear one of those electric repellers that make dragonfly noises, but I only bother with that if I’m out golfing or something, and they’re not particularly bad there. Wherever they’re out in force, I whip out the DEET. Forewarning though, don’t spray it on polyester because it can melt it, and like you said, keep it away from eyes, nose, and lips. We spray it onto our hand and then wipe it onto our face and ears.
what noise does a dragonfly make?
Purely annecdotally, picaridin has worked as well or better than DEET for me. I barely get bitten when I use it, and I usually get bitten up pretty badly when I use DEET (though less than when I don’t use it)
I also find picaridin bug spray to not feel greasy and has less odor than deet, which is nice.
DEET is also fairly toxic to dogs (and cats, but I don’t have one of those) and while it’s not licensed for use on dogs, it doesn’t appear to be toxic to them, which I appreciate as a dog owner (I’m unsure about cats, that info seemed less readily available but I also didn’t put much effort into finding it)
If i can’t stop them biting me, the next best thing is to stop them biting me a second time.
But you can stop (most of) them!
My strategy is to deploy their natural enemies into my house. That includes a ground level strike team of two cats that will attack and kill anything that crawls and for support from above you want to corners between walls and ceiling covered with as many spiders as possible.
I’ve only been bitten once this year!
Stop fighting them. Use anti histamine cream on the bitea
Diet, people with diabetes are more delicious.
- Keto - changes your blood sugar and hormones probably having the biggest impact
- SPICY food, hot peppers, hot chilies, also have a impact
- Garlic - also repels some bugs
Ever walk into a room, get overwhelmed with the smell of garlic? And there’s no garlic in the room, just people who eat garlic? It’s like that but stronger because mosquitoes have a better sense of smell
Non-diet interventions
- Sit in front of a fan, or strong wind, mosquitoes can’t fly very hard, so they cannot fight a breeze
- When outside keep moving, don’t stay still
I was on keto for a while and always the main target for mosquitoes among all my friends.
Keep moving. They target CO2 exhalations.
When you’re out, use DEET and cover yourself. Try to only apply it to your clothes. It’s toxic to humans. Are you out a lot? If so, I’d be worried about ticks and toxic plants as well.
If you have control of the land around you, make sure there’s no stagnant water nearby. If you want to keep a pond, manage your mosquito population using local species if possible. In some places, you can also report stagnant bodies of water.
If they’re inside, check your window screens. If you can’t afford that, use a mosquito net and check my first answers.
