Mosquitoes bite! 5 tips for making yourself less attractive to them
(CNN) — For summertime beachgoers, the threat of sharks may loom large, but nature's deadliest predator is actually much smaller.
The tiny mosquito is not only a warm-weather nuisance but also wears the crown for 'No. 1 killer of humanity across our existence,' according to historian Dr. Timothy C. Winegard. The predatory insect takes more than 1 million lives each year by transmitting lethal diseases. Sharks, meanwhile, are estimated to have a kill streak orders of magnitude smaller, at fewer than 10 people per year.
Where humans go, mosquitoes have followed. Their itchy bites and the disease-causing pathogens they carry are infamous, and the insects are also responsible for driving many of humanity's most essential turning points throughout history, said Winegard, author of 'The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator.'
'Malaria and yellow fever (have shaped) our historical journey from our hominid ancestral evolution … right to present day,' Winegard told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life.
Winegard, an associate professor of history at Colorado Mesa University, got the initial idea for his best-selling book from his dad's interest in malaria.
The wee pest didn't intrigue Winegard too much at first. 'I kind of disparaged him and said, 'Sure, dad, I'll write a book on mosquitoes,'' he recalled. But once Winegard began going down the rabbit hole of mosquito-borne pathogens' impact on humanity — including, but not limited to malaria, Zika virus, dengue fever, yellow fever, chikungunya and West Nile virus — he couldn't stop.
The mosquito's impact on history is still deeply felt in the present. More than half a million people die of malaria alone each year, and disease-heavy regions have suffered financially as a result. 'Northern Hemisphere countries don't have endemic malaria, (so) they're able to develop more affluent economies because they're not continuously suffering from malaria,' Winegard said.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Humans have been battling mosquitoes for millennia, and amid the season's summer peak in the Northern Hemisphere, Winegard offered some insight into how you can keep them away this summer.
'Eighty-five percent of what makes you alluring or less alluring to mosquitoes is prewired in your genetic circuit board,' according to Winegard. However, there are a few ways you can manage mosquitoes. He has these five tips.
Booze makes it easier for mosquitoes to see you, Winegard said.
Mosquitoes hunt by sight, but they don't see the world like people do. The predatory insects employ thermal, or infrared, vision. 'They see heat signatures,' Winegard noted.
'Consuming alcohol raises your body temperature,' he explained over email, 'which make(s) you an identifiable heat signature for your soon-to-be tormentor.'
So, maybe reach for a refreshing glass of water or lemonade instead of that beer.
In addition to using heat-based vision, mosquitoes hunt down humans primarily through smell.
Winegard said mosquitoes 'can smell carbon dioxide from over 200 feet (60 meters) away.'
'So if you're exercising or breathing heavily, they'll smell that and be attracted to it,' Winegard told Gupta.
And just like alcohol, high CO2 emissions make detecting heat signatures easier for mosquitoes, so Winegard recommends keeping yourself as cool as possible.
This applies to your wardrobe, too. 'Dark clothes retain relatively more heat,' he said, so it's best to opt for lighter-colored, long-sleeved attire to keep mosquitoes at bay.
Applying insect repellent is the gold standard for mosquito management, but if you're not careful when applying it, you can leave yourself vulnerable to bites.
'I know people who lather themselves in it, but they miss this little spot on the back of their calf and she'll find the chink in our armor,' Winegard told Gupta, referring to the female mosquito, who is the bloodsucking hunter.
Mosquito repellent isn't like perfume, in which a few spritzes can cover your whole body. If you're spraying, make sure to be thorough.
'DEET (a chemical repellent) is still the gold standard, while oil of lemon eucalyptus is a plant-derived option,' Winegard said.
For an added boost of security, he noted some clothes come pretreated with a mosquito-targeted insecticide called permethrin.
Pool days and cool drinks outdoors offer a respite from the heat for humans, but they are equally as attractive to mosquitoes. Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in still water — and they don't need much.
'From a pond or stream to a minuscule collection in the bottom of an old container, used tire, or backyard toy — even a bottle cap full — any will suffice,' Winegard said via email. Even waterlogged soil is enough for mom-to-be mosquitoes to lay their eggs in, he added.
Winegard recommended eliminating standing water around your home and yard to keep potential mosquito breeding grounds to a minimum.
Another way to fight the swarms this summer is to consider skipping a shower or two.
'It's better to be stinky!' Winegard said. 'Being pungently rancid is a good thing, for it increases bacterial levels on the skin, which makes you less alluring to mosquitoes.'
While this may offend others, Winegard says to skip the scented products: Deodorants, soaps and other applied fragrances are all enticing to mosquitoes.
The one exception is your feet. 'Clean your feet,' he told Gupta. 'The bacteria on our feet, which is the same one that ripens a lot of cheeses, is an aphrodisiac to mosquitoes.'
Winegard noted that this is the reason many of us get bitten around our ankles and feet. 'So, wash your feet!' he urged.
Mosquitoes don't care about most personal characteristics you can objectively see.
'There is absolutely no truth to the persistent myths that mosquitoes fancy females over males, that they prefer blondes and redheads over those with darker hair, or that the darker or more leathery your skin, the safer you are from her bite,' Winegard said.
But he noted that 'she does play favorites and feasts on some more than others.'
What might entice a mosquito? 'Blood type O seems to be the vintage of choice over types A and B or their blend,' he said. 'People with blood type O get bitten twice as often as those with type A, with type B falling somewhere in between.'
The creators of the 1998 movie 'A Bug's Life,' he noted, must have 'done their homework when portraying a tipsy mosquito ordering a 'Bloody Mary, O-positive.''
Maybe it's a mosquito's world, Winegard suggests, and people are just living in it.
We hope these five tips help you keep mosquitoes at bay. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast.
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OZ: Costs are going up, but there's been a 50 percent increase in the cost of Medicaid over the last five years. So I'm trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks giving them a hand up. And as you probably gather, if Medicaid isn't able to take care of the people for whom it was designed, the young children, the dawn of their life, those are the twilight of their life, the seniors and those who are disabled living in the shadows, as Hubert Humphrey said, then we're not satisfying the fundamental obligation of a moral government. And this President has said over and over that he believes that it is the wise thing and the noble thing to help those who are vulnerable and every great society does that, we're going to as well. So we're going to invest in Medicaid as is required, but we want an appropriate return on that investment. One thing that Medicaid patients should not face are drug prices they can't afford. 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OZ: As long as we're okay that people should work and would want to work, and it's not just work, it's community engagement. They can go get educated, right? They can take care of family members. They can contribute in other ways, but work is a great way of doing and get you out of poverty if you can find jobs and elevate yourself. There have been efforts to do this in the past, but they haven't been able to achieve what we can achieve, because we have technologies now. And we've invested already, as soon as the bill was signed, began pilots to try to demonstrate that we can actually do this correctly. We have pilots now in Louisiana and in Arizona, in both cases, within seven minutes, you can click on where you're working. You mentioned Uber, you're an Uber driver. You click that button on your phone. It just takes you to your payroll provider. Let's say it's ADP. We then ask your permission, can we connect with this payroll provider to demonstrate what you've actually been able to work and earn over the past month? This also, by the way, confirms your eligibility. But there's a bigger benefit here. Once you do that, you're in, you're done. However, what if we take one step further, Margaret? What if we go beyond just proving that you tried the work to actually say, You know what, you didn't work enough, but we can actually help you by connecting you through an employment office? MARGARET BRENNAN: So you're still figuring out the technology, but isn't there an end-of-December deadline for a lot of these things to be figured out? And how do you make sure that people don't get kicked off? Because in the state of Georgia, which already had work requirements, they have really struggled to make this work. DR. OZ: Well, a couple of things. It's not the end of December, it's end of December a year from now, and Georgia is apples and oranges. Georgia had a program only for people under the poverty level, and for those people, if they wanted, they could elect to come into a system to help them get jobs. There have been 50,000 reduction in head count of uninsured people in the overall program in the last five years. Overall, Georgia, 2 million less uninsured people. So Georgia is using a lot of tactics, and they're going in the right direction. I would argue that if you have confidence in the American people and their desire to take to offer to try to get a job, if we challenge you to that. And remember, if you're an able-bodied person on Medicaid, you're spending 6.1 hours watching television or leisure time, so you don't want that— MARGARET BRENNAN: —Well, KFF Health Policy found 92 percent of adult Medicaid recipients already are working. Or they have the carve out because they have to have caregivers, or they have to do other things. DR. OZ: They're fine. All they have to do is there'll be a simple app. If you've already carved out, that's super simple. If you're supposed to be if you're able-bodied and supposed to be working, we want to help connect you to the job market and get you into work. We have twice as many jobs available in America as people who seem to want them. The foundation of work is not just about fulfilling eligibility. The goal of health care insurance is to catalyze action in the right direction, to get you healthier, to give you agency over your future, so you recognize you matter, and you should have a job, therefore to go out and change the world. MARGARET BRENNAN: So there's a drug addiction problem in this country. How are those changes going to impact people who are on Medicaid in states like Kentucky, in states like West Virginia? DR. OZ: In many instances, there are carve outs for folks who have substance use disorder problems. There are programs-- MARGARET BRENNAN: —How do they prove that? ADMINISTRATOR OZ: Well, they can— MARGARET BRENNAN: Is this in the app? DR. OZ: Yes, it will be in the app. The app, again, this is being developed by the United States Digital Service, led by Amy Gleason, who is a wonderful technologist. She and I were with the President and Secretary Kennedy and the head of the czar for AI in this country on Wednesday, talking about overall how we're going to change the use of health technology in America. We've got to get into 2025 with health technology, as is true in every other sector. If you're watching the show right now, you could also be streaming media. You could take an Uber somewhere, the rideshare. You could do an Airbnb. Technology should make the system more efficient. We should have confidence that it will also allow us to do what we all agree is possible. If the whole challenge to a work requirement is that you don't have confidence in our ability to accomplish it, that's a separate question, because I do have confidence in the American people, and we have confidence we can pull this off. Look at the passport system, Margaret. Right now, you can go and get a passport in two weeks without having to go to the post office, send pictures, and all that's gone. It's fixable. Let's use technology. MARGARET BRENNAN: I'm still confused on how someone who is in the throes of substance abuse is going to use an app to say, I'm in the throes of substance abuse every week, to file on online— DR. OZ: —When they go in to get their help for their substance abuse treatment, assuming they're going for help on that, they can also get enrolled in, in those requirements, can be fulfilled. We want to talk to them in as many ways as possible. It's not going to happen just because we put an app out there, you, you have social workers and other folk elements who care a lot about this population, who are coming together, but they have to have some mechanism to report back. That just has not been done well. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and this is incredibly detailed, and that's why we wanted to have you on. I have so many more questions for you on rural hospitals and some of the other criticisms. I have to leave it there for now. But thank you, Dr. Oz-- DR. OZ: Can I give you 30 seconds on rural hospitals, because this is important. You have 7 percent of Medicaid money going to rural hospitals. We're putting 50 billion dollars the president wants us to, Congress wants to— MARGARET BRENNAN: There are a lot questions on how you're going to duel that out, and whether you have already made promises. Do you have any specifics for us? DR. OZ: Yes. Wait, wait, it's going to be, they'll get the applications in early September. The money is designed to help you with workforce development, right sizing the system and using technology to provide things like telehealth that can change the world. Imagine if we can change the way we think about the delivery of health and make it more about getting people healthy so they can thrive and flourish and be fully present in their own lives and as Americans. MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr Oz, we'll leave it there. We'll be back in a moment. Black swimmers teach others amid history of aquatic segregation How safe is our Social Security safety net? In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage Solve the daily Crossword
