Sharing a bed with millions of bugs, no wonder you itch so badly

Just imagine that we sleep on the same bed with no less than 15 million insects every day. Wouldn’t you feel creepy? However, this is not an exaggeration.

Recently, Mr. Wang, who lives in Xia Lupu in the urban area, found that several "red bumps" of varying sizes appeared on his arms for no apparent reason. The itchiness was unbearable when he slept at night, and he couldn't help scratching, but the itching was difficult to stop. Then he hurried to the hospital for a check-up. After a preliminary diagnosis, the doctor told him that it was caused by mite bites.

Ms. He had a similar experience. The mattress in her home has been used for 10 years. On the surface, the mattress is still clean. However, recently she only felt itchy on her body when she went to bed at night, and her nose itched when she got up, and she kept sneezing. Eventually, her doctor told her that mites were most likely the culprit for her symptoms.

Xiaolin, 11 years old, who lives in Wutian, sneezes and has a runny nose all year round, and now has mild asthma. His mother took him to the hospital for a check-up and found that his asthma was caused by mites. Experts said that children like Xiaolin are often encountered in clinical practice. Once the condition develops into asthma, severe cases may lead to shock and other conditions.

What are mites?

Mites are a type of tiny animals belonging to the subclass Acari of the class Arthropoda, not bacteria. The body size is generally around 0.5 mm, some are as small as 0.1 mm, and most species are smaller than 1 mm. Normally, mites are widely distributed in dark corners of the room, carpets, mattresses, pillows, sofas, curtains, bedding, etc. Even on carpets that are regularly and carefully vacuumed, there are about 1,000 to 10,000 mites per square meter.

Summer is the active period for mites. In a dark and humid environment suitable for survival, mites will multiply rapidly. If the climate is humid and mild, they can also find human dandruff as food. A person sheds 1-1.5 grams of skin flakes every day, enough to feed 1 million dust mites.

However, the mites that cause the greatest harm to the human body are those attached to bedding, mattresses and pillow cores. Mites can damage the skin, cause inflammation, transmit diseases, cause allergic reactions, and easily lead to dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, respiratory tract infections, and even asthma and other difficult-to-treat diseases, which are extremely harmful to the human body.

Can the traditional mattress cleaning method achieve a thorough purification effect?

Sun exposure: An experiment conducted by the Tokyo Institute of Environmental Allergy found that after six hours of sun exposure, the residual rate of harmful substances such as mites and PM2.5 on bedding was still as high as 96.2%.

Brushing/patting: After brushing or patting, harmful substances in the mattress will immediately enter the air, which can easily cause respiratory allergies and damage the mattress surface.

Cleaning with chemical products: Although some chemicals can kill some mites, they cannot truly remove other substances that are harmful to health. The corpses of mites and their derivatives will still endanger our health.