Help Please - Insect Bites

[MaxPepsi]

I am posting here for traffic.

I went away camping at the weekend. I had a great, nice chilled out time with the husband and 2 dogs.

However - I have come home with 72+ bites. I counted them last night before getting in the bath.

I am using hydrocortisone cream, I am using savlon. I am taking loratadine.

NOTHING is working.

Please give me some of your wonder cures.

I am going later this summer and have been advised to start taking vitamin B1 and to use Deet whilst I am there. But is there anything else I can do - apart from staying at home and never visiting the countryside again!

Thanks, from a very spotty and very itchy Max!

Are you sure it's not chicken pox?

Nothing works in my experience, apart from time. I just returned from Scotland covered in midgie bites. It took a good four days for them to stop itching. I found ice cubes help but they melt very quickly so you need a good stash!

Old hippy here....

The one thing that I find ALWAYS works on bites and stinging nettles etc is PLANTAINS (not the banana sort, the weed sort). You rub it on, like a dock leaf, but the juice that is produced is actually anti inflammatory, antiseptic and all round miraculous.
Google it to find the picture, but you will recognise it, and you will have it in your garden / nearest grass verge.

You have my sympathy. I have been gardening already for a couple of hours, and those beasties are a-nibbling!

If the bites were just round my ankles and feet - which is where I am normally affected I'd just leave them and stick my feet in cold water.

It's just this time they have decided to have a meal all over and came back for seconds and thirds all over my face and neck. I've got a bag off ice in the freezer so will get them out tonight - thanks chrome

I've had chicken pox before ghosty these are definitely bites.little bastards

Norks can you buy it in supplement/juice form from anywhere??

have you tried a cream called anthisan? we find that works better than others on the market for bites.

Not sure how much this will help for so many bites, but I have a massive itchy bite on my arm and the only thing that has worked to stop it itching is my spit.

Firstly do take an antihistamine tablet everyday like the ones for hay fever.

Try calamine lotion but one that isn't chalky as you'd use for chickenpox spots.

Anthisan. Miracle cure

I found Tea Tree and Witch Hazel gel the most effective thing to ease the itching and calm down the redness when I got eaten alive camping in France one year.

Sympathies with you having them on your face though. Mine were just all over my legs which was bad enough.

Once you have been bitten - use hairdryer trick (see link below) to stop the itching.

www.cleanse-me-healthy.com/MosquitoBiteRemedy.html

Bizarre but it really works. I live in deepest Aberdeenshire and regularly get bitten by midges throughout Summer. Discovered this trick via a frenzied internet search at 03:00 am one day whilst scratching my arms to bits. By 03:10 am my arms no longer itched and by the next day after a further couple of "hairdryer blasts" the itching had completely stopped.

I'm always get badly bitten by Mosquitos but have also had bites which turned out to be chicken pox (despite having had it as a child) so do keep an eye on them.
Maybe try a different antihistamine. I find the drowsy ones (portion in particular) most effective against bites.

With an immediate bite (to late for you OP sadly) I saw on the Internet about getting a table spoon, warming it with boiled water (cooler than just out kettle mind) and putting on skin , ,this, apparently, draws out the sting, bite etc.

Along the lines of the hairdryer remedy - here we deal with bites by heating up the back of a desert spoon over a tea light then pressing the back of the spoon onto the bite. It works really well.

I second the drowsy ah's. Those electrical zapper things are also really good - they basically confuse the nerve endings and stop the itching.

Next time, drink buckets of Gin and Tonic before you go out - I used to think my DM was making this up to indulge her gin habit, but apparently mossies hate quinine and it seems to work

Old Wives Tale No 863 in a never ending series............ but this one works!

Some Surgical Spirit dabbed on cotton wool and applied to the bite will take the itch right out of it. Instantly. You may need to apply again next day. It will also shorten the 'lifespan' of the bite.

I know. When my Dad told me this I rolled my eyes but then I got bitten to shreds and had nothing to lose. It really works!

Thanks all.

I think the loratadine might have kicked in sufficiently now nothing to do with me taking a double dose oh no as I'm not itching as much.

This has allowed me to smother myself in savlon, which is the only thing I've got at work with me, without wanting to rip my skin off.

Will look up the hairdryer trick later at home and will try the table spoon trick also.

Cool bath with a generous cup or two of vinegar in (I always used distilled vinegar, but any sort is supposed to work). Sit in the bath for as long as you can. It's always worked for me and family/friends. I feel for you OP, bites are horrible, I'm like a magnet for them.

My mum has to take quinine tablets - and she never gets bitten! I think I've heard it before about that.
The times I rarely drink gin I mix it with bitter lemon so won't work for me!

Surgical spirit added to the shopping list.

Mossies also hate Curacao Azul, presumably it works in the same way that G&Ts do, I never get bitten when drinking either of those .

Don't know if anyone has said it yet but alcohol. A strong spirit or we have 70% alcohol we use.

Quinine is an anti malarial drug, it doesn't stop you from being bitten, and even if it did the amount of quinine is todays tonic water would render it useless.

The use of it stems from the time of the British Raj.

Neat lavender oil works quite well (also on burns and sunburn), you can buy it in Boots. You'll smell luvverly, though. (Caution, lavender is the only essential oil you can use neat on the skin).

Some people (me!), have more H2 receptors on the skin than other people (usually H1 receptors are predominant on the skin and H2 in the gut).

If normal antihistamines are not working, try Ranitidine 150mg (aka Zantac). It is an H2 blocker, usually used as an antiacid. It's cheap and available over the counter.

If it works (you'll know within 2hours or so IME), keep taking them for 2 or 3 days.

That's really interesting about the Zantac, I react very badly to mosquito bites (and they looooooooove me) and have never got total relief from an antihistamine. Also intrigued by the hairdryer...

Piriton (chlorphenamine) works better for me than Loratidine for bites, though it does knock me out so I can only use it at night.

Btw this is a know and accepted medical treatment, I was told it some 20 years ago by Dr in the Australian bush (I had massive insect bites/histamine response).

My Dr DH regularly suggests it to people for whom the usual antihistamines don't work.

My other top tip is that Avon Skin So Soft body spray is an amazing insect repellent. It smells kind of bleurgh but is not as foul/toxic-smelling as the usual sprays.

Possibly the first and only successful life tip I've acquired from a zombie novel...