"I still have nightmares about bedbugs" (a friend's testimonial)

A lot of people are very concerned about bedbugs when they travel and a lot of this is something that you actually should be very concerned about. While I have been fortunate enough to not fall victim to this outside of encountering them in various hostels, guesthouses, and even fancy hotels around the world, I was fortunate enough to have never transported them back to my house.

But one story of a friend of mine kind of traumatized me into being very cautious about them when returning home from traveling and I think it would be a very good idea for you to do the same if you so much as suspect you might be carrying them after your trips.

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Bedbugs are incredibly common. Even if you think you have never slept somewhere that had them, this is probably not true. They are one of the most resilient creatures on planet Earth and I suppose we should thank our lucky stars that they do not carry any sort of disease with their bits. If they did, I think a great amount of the world's population would have been wiped out long ago.

So the story with my friend is that he traveled around Central and South America for a few months and he was already aware of the fact that he had encountered bedbugs along the way. He is one of the about 30% of people that react in an allergic way to the bites of these creatures and from what I have researched, these bites take many hours or even several days before they show up on one's body and therefore it makes it really difficult to determine when the actual "attack" happened.

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They resemble mosquito bites but they happen so close to one another that you have to find yourself stuck in a swarm of mozzies for this to ever be the cause. The reason for this is because bedbugs do not have the capability to reach very far into your skin and the blood coagulates and stops the flow, therefore, the bugs move on to another point and keep moving until they are full. Try not to think about it too much but this is how it works.

My friend had these bites all over him and just assumed it was mosquitoes until someone pointed it out to him. He of course assumed that it was from the hostel that he was in at the time and while that ALSO might have been true the reality is that he picked them up before he arrived there and the bites were just now starting to show.

The major problem with bedbugs is that they take up a home inside of almost anything and that "anything" very well could end up being your backpack or suitcase. hell, it would be your wallet or a single piece of clothing that you left on the floor and the bug came by and said "yeah, this is nice! This is my house now."

The real danger of bedbugs is that after they have had something to eat (which isn't often) they are perfectly content to remain almost completely still for long periods of time afterwards. They aren't like ants always on the move or flying insects that always seem to be on the way to something new. Bedbugs will sit and chill for most of their lives and this is what makes them so dangerous as far as transporting to another place.

They also very quickly and easily replicate to become an near swarm in almost no time at all

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My friend, like most people would do after returning from a long vacation, parked his luggage on the floor somewhere in his house and slowly but surely moved his things to where they would normally be in his house. It is impossible to know what happened from that point forward but some bedbug eggs or some actual bedbugs ended up moving into his house, somewhere.

I remember him showing me the pictures of his bites with a sense of "good lord" and he laughed about it and then about a month went by and his previously high spirits dropped, because those marks had reappeared on his body in a different place. He had not stayed anywhere other than his own house since his return from his travels. he knew it before we pondered it together. His house was now infested.

Traditional methods of dealing with insects in your home have little to no effect on bedbugs because along with being very capable and willing to stay in one place for long periods of time, they are also extremely resilient against most of the commonly used bug sprays like Raid or other such products. They also cannot be baited like ants or set up for traps with food like roaches can. They will sit and wait until their food source (you) is still at night and then strike.

While it was only happening to my friend every now and then at first, the bugs that were munching on him then started to replicate and he was basically being feasted on all the time in "shifts."

There is no disease to be afraid of, but I also wouldn't like the idea of knowing that my house is home to a bunch of tiny insects that see me as their dinner. Also, it isn't exactly easy to get people to want to hang out with you or especially come over for a visit once you've let them know that you have a potentially home-destroying infestation in your house.

Simply finding out where they are is extremely tough. The immediate reaction is to treat your mattress or throw it out. he actually did discover some of them there but after treating mattress with intense amounts of chemicals (probably more damaging than the bugs were) he experienced relief for about a week and then the bites were back yet again.

As it turns out, they don't necessarily live in or on the bed, that is just where they feed. If you were sleeping on the floor regularly, that is where they would feed also.

It turns out that bedbugs can and will live in almost anything and they can travel great distances to their feeding times. They also seem to be very aware of the dangers around them and unlike something like crickets or roaches, they don't wander about looking for more food. They seem to be able to sense where it (you) are.

This consumed my friend's life for months before he finally found a solution and he was stressed out constantly as the elimination of the critters seemed to completely consume his waking life. He lost sleep, he started acting like a crazy person when I saw him in public as he felt like bugs were crawling on him all the time, and basically he was psychologically hurting because of this.

Trust me when I say that especially if you have an allergic reaction to them the way that my friend does, you do NOT want to allow these things into your house.

In the following week or so I am going to give you information about how you can prevent the infestation in the first place, and then I will present you with how you can eliminate the infestation if you are unfortunate enough to introduce them into your home.

While you might think this will not affect you, if you travel, there is a good chance that you WILL encounter them at some point in time, especially if you go to cheaper countries that have really relaxed regulations on accommodation and therefore, cheaper prices.