Posted on 07/28/2013 2:33:10 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Why mosquitoes prefer some people over others
ANI | 22nd Jul 2013
For years, scientists and researchers have had trouble explaining the reason behind mosquitoes' preference to choose one person while ignoring the others.
According to Jerry Butler, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Florida, mosquitoes get attracted to cholesterol and steroids on the surface of skin, the Washington Times reported.
He said that people with a more efficient metabolism could have a higher cholesterol concentration on the surface of their skin - not their blood - than others, thereby attracting more bites.
Joe Conlon, PhD, technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association, said that any type of carbon dioxide is attractive, even over a long distance.
(Excerpt) Read more at deccanchronicle.com ...
I was a smoker and married to a non smoker. They would eat her alive while ignoring me. Same with fleas. Now I am a non smoker and am with a smoker and they eat me alive while basically ignoring her.
You sure? I always thought it was B1.....
“Another study in the Journal of Medical Entomology found that mosquitoes are likelier to attack people, who have type O blood.”
Of course, the mosquitoes are smart; type O blood, like mine - the human “universal donor” blood type - is safer; less chance they’ll accidentally kill the other human hosts they want to feed on and are exchanging blood with.
This seems to have about as much good science as the Gorebal Warming bs.
I and one of my sons have high inherited cholesterol levels. In spite of so called good diets and exercise, our levels are high.
Another son and a daughter of the high cholesterol son have incredible supposedly good cholesterol levels. Both of them are told by their doctors to eat more to gain weight. Both are in great physical shape.
When the family is near mosquitos, the two with the dream levels of cholesterol get eaten up by mosquitos. We of the high cholesterol levels seldom get bitten.
The next mosquito target is my wife with a good target ratio of so called bad and good cholesterol levels. I joke with her that the mosquitos like white blood/meat since she has no native American or distant African blood in her system.
Our true blond and fair skin friends and relatives seem to fall into the desirable white blood/meat mosquito targets.
If we are with them in mosquito areas, they are the first targets and most hit on by mosquitos.
Of course, there is always an outlier in any grouping. We have a female friend with Hispanic/Porta ancestors. She is still a good athlete with supposedly desirable cholesterol levels. We are tempted to use her to attract the mosquitos as she is their first and main target.
” when are they going to do a study on those danged biting yellow flies? I can handle the state birds but those flies make me swell up like a balloon.”
Sounds like you are having an allergic reaction to their bites, and that could be serious.
Try taking an Allegra tablet an hour before exposing yourself to the yellow flies. The Allegra will not repel them, but it should lower your allergic response to their bites.
Allegra is also now available in a topical crème. Get some of that to put on the bites asap after getting bit.
I had malaria when I was 5. Typhoid too. Deliria is fun when you’re a kid.
I’ve stored garlic in olive oil for weeks at a time. It imbues it with the garlic flavor. Garlic is pretty deadly to microbes, by the way. It’s probably not good for small things like insects either, which might be why they don’t like it.
So, there are several potential attractants
My wife attracts mosquito bites. I tell her it because she is sweet.
As a bee keeper I knew from long experience that a few bees with the hive defense duty will buzz you at eye level. I read that the reason is CO2 from your breath. If you thread a tube to your mouth and down through your clothing and out the cuff of your pants....... there will be no annoying eye level buzzing. It works.
I think they can detect it in the pores, and avoid biting/stinging skin with those properties.
Long live garlic!
Yes, you don’t just metablize the stuff, it’s in the pores and everywhere else in the body after eating it. The active substance, allicin, is an organic sulfur compound so small that it penetrates cell walls. It also has antibacterial and anti-fungal properties, and possibly other ones we don’t know about yet.
CO2 is such a trace gas that insects can follow the CO2 trails we exhale.
30-40, wow that’s a lot. I have my super-ego telling me to stop at about 10. There’s only one way that eating garlic won’t be noticed by someone else, and that’s if they have been too. So in a happy marriage, for instance, it had better be both or neither.
LMAO; if you’re married, you’d both better eat it. Or go on a hunting/fishing trips for a few days until the pores clear. I’m divorced for 10yrs, so it doesn’t matter. When my cats were alive, they didn’t complain. Roasted garlic, to me, is ‘addicting’.
Kidney infections are worse than malaria. Take care of yourself. Get plenty of rest and drink lots of water. I get kidney infections, too.
Mosquitoes love me. I’m like Kate Upton to a college frat boy.
What considered a “big” dose?
Is the cure worse than the disease in the long run? (too much B6)
Might be your irma.
Thank you Jemian. Hope you are feeling better for whatever you had/have.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.