Protecting yourself and family from mosquito bites can be challenging, especially in this hot and humid weather. Protests from young children and fears about topical insect repellents drive some to try alternatives such as wristbands, patches and stickers.

These products are sold online as well as in supermarkets, pharmacies and camping stores. They’re often marketed as providing “natural” protection from mosquitoes.

But unfortunately, they aren’t a reliable way to prevent mosquito bites. Here’s why – and what you can try instead.

Why is preventing mosquito bites important?

Mosquitoes can spread pathogens that make us sick. Japanese encephalitis and Murray Valley encephalitis viruses can have potentially fatal outcomes. While Ross River virus won’t kill you, it can cause potentially debilitating illnesses.

Health authorities recommend preventing mosquito bites by: avoiding areas and times of the day when mosquitoes are most active; covering up with long sleeved shirts, long pants, and covered shoes; and applying a topical insect repellent (a cream, lotion, or spray).

I don’t want to put sticky and smelly repellents on my skin!

While for many people, the “sting” of a biting mosquitoes is enough to prompt a dose of repellent, others are reluctant. Some are deterred by the unpleasant feel or smell of insect repellents. Others believe topical repellents contain chemicals that are dangerous to our health.

However, many studies have shown that, when used as recommended, these products are safe to use. All products marketed as mosquito repellents in Australia must be registered by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority; a process that provides recommendations for safe use.

How do topical repellents work?

While there remains some uncertainty about how the chemicals in topical insect repellents actually work, they appear to either block the sensory organs of mosquitoes that drive them to bite, or overpower the smells of our skin that helps mosquitoes find us.

Diethytolumide (DEET) is a widely recommended ingredient in topical repellents. Picaridin and oil of lemon eucalyptus are also used and have been shown to be effective and safe.

How do other products work?

“Physical” insect-repelling products, such as wristbands, coils and candles, often contain a botanically derived chemical and are often marketed as being an alternative to DEET.

However, studies have shown that devices such as candles containing citronella oil provide lower mosquito-bite prevention than topical repellents.

A laboratory study in 2011 found wristbands infused with peppermint oil failed to provide full protection from mosquito bites.

Even as topical repellent formulations applied to the skin, these botanically derived products have lower mosquito bite protection than recommended products such as those containing DEET, picaridin and oil of lemon eucalyptus.

Wristbands infused with DEET have shown mixed results but may provide some bite protection or bite reduction. DEET-based wristbands or patches are not currently available in Australia.

There is also a range of mosquito repellent coils, sticks, and other devices that release insecticides (for example, pyrethroids). These chemicals are primarily designed to kill or “knock down” mosquitoes rather than to simply keep them from biting us.

What about stickers and patches?

Although insect repellent patches and stickers have been available for many years, there has been a sudden surge in their marketing through social media. But there are very few scientific studies testing their efficacy.

Our current understanding of the way insect repellents work would suggest these small stickers and patches offer little protection from mosquito bites.

At best, they may reduce some bites in the way mosquito coils containing botanical products work. However, the passive release of chemicals from the patches and stickers is likely to be substantially lower than those from mosquito coils and other devices actively releasing chemicals.

One study in 2013 found a sticker infused with oil of lemon eucalyptus “did not provide significant protection to volunteers”.

Clothing impregnated with insecticides, such as permethrin, will assist in reducing mosquito bites but topical insect repellents are still recommended for exposed areas of skin.

Take care when using these products

The idea you can apply a sticker or patch to your clothing to protect you from mosquito bites may sound appealing, but these devices provide a false sense of security. There is no evidence they are an equally effective alternative to the topical repellents recommended by health authorities around the world. It only takes one bite from a mosquito to transmit the pathogens that result in serious disease.

It is also worth noting that there are some health warnings and recommendations for their use required by Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Some of these products warn against application to the skin (recommending application to clothing only) and to keep products “out of reach of children”. This is a challenge if attached to young children’s clothing.

Similar warnings are associated with most other topical and non-topical mosquito repellents. Always check the labels of these products for safe use recommendations.

Are there any other practical alternatives?

Topical insect repellents are safe and effective. Most can be used on children from 12 months of age and pose no health risks. Make sure you apply the repellent as a thin even coat on all exposed areas of skin.

But you don’t need “tropical strength” repellents for short periods of time outdoors; a range of formulations with lower concentrations of repellent will work well for shorter trips outdoors. There are some repellents that don’t smell as strong (for example, children’s formulations, odourless formulations) or formulations that may be more pleasant to use (for example, pump pack sprays).

Finally, you can always cover up. Loose-fitting long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and covered shoes will provide a physical barrier between you and mosquitoes on the hunt for your or your family’s blood this summer.

Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do you hate salad? It’s OK if you do, there are plenty of foods in the world, and lots of different ways to prepare them.

But given almost all of us don’t eat enough vegetables, even though most of us (81%) know eating more vegetables is a simple way to improve our health, you might want to try.

If this idea makes you miserable, fear not, with time and a little effort you can make friends with salad.

Why don’t I like salads?

It’s an unfortunate quirk of evolution that vegetables are so good for us but they aren’t all immediately tasty to all of us. We have evolved to enjoy the sweet or umami (savoury) taste of higher energy foods, because starvation is a more immediate risk than long-term health.

Vegetables aren’t particularly high energy but they are jam-packed with dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals, and health-promoting compounds called bioactives.

Those bioactives are part of the reason vegetables taste bitter. Plant bioactives, also called phytonutrients, are made by plants to protect themselves against environmental stress and predators. The very things that make plant foods bitter, are the things that make them good for us.

Unfortunately, bitter taste evolved to protect us from poisons, and possibly from over-eating one single plant food. So in a way, plant foods can taste like poison.

For some of us, this bitter sensing is particularly acute, and for others it isn’t so bad. This is partly due to our genes. Humans have at least 25 different receptors that detect bitterness, and we each have our own genetic combinations. So some people really, really taste some bitter compounds while others can barely detect them.

This means we don’t all have the same starting point when it comes to interacting with salads and veggies. So be patient with yourself. But the steps toward learning to like salads and veggies are the same regardless of your starting point.

It takes time

We can train our tastes because our genes and our receptors aren’t the end of the story. Repeat exposures to bitter foods can help us adapt over time. Repeat exposures help our brain learn that bitter vegetables aren’t posions.

And as we change what we eat, the enzymes and other proteins in our saliva change too. This changes how different compounds in food are broken down and detected by our taste buds. How exactly this works isn’t clear, but it’s similar to other behavioural cognitive training.

Add masking ingredients

The good news is we can use lots of great strategies to mask the bitterness of vegetables, and this positively reinforces our taste training.

Salt and fat can reduce the perception of bitterness, so adding seasoning and dressing can help make salads taste better instantly. You are probably thinking, “but don’t we need to reduce our salt and fat intake?” – yes, but you will get more nutritional bang-for-buck by reducing those in discretionary foods like cakes, biscuits, chips and desserts, not by trying to avoid them with your vegetables.

Adding heat with chillies or pepper can also help by acting as a decoy to the bitterness. Adding fruits to salads adds sweetness and juiciness, this can help improve the overall flavour and texture balance, increasing enjoyment.

Pairing foods you are learning to like with foods you already like can also help.

The options for salads are almost endless, if you don’t like the standard garden salad you were raised on, that’s OK, keep experimenting.

Experimenting with texture (for example chopping vegetables smaller or chunkier) can also help in finding your salad loves.

Challenge your biases

Challenging your biases can also help the salad situation. A phenomenon called the “unhealthy-tasty intuition” makes us assume tasty foods aren’t good for us, and that healthy foods will taste bad. Shaking that assumption off can help you enjoy your vegetables more.

When researchers labelled vegetables with taste-focused labels, priming subjects for an enjoyable taste, they were more likely to enjoy them compared to when they were told how healthy they were.

The bottom line

Vegetables are good for us, but we need to be patient and kind with ourselves when we start trying to eat more.

Try working with biology and brain, and not against them.

And hold back from judging yourself or other people if they don’t like the salads you do. We are all on a different point of our taste-training journey.

Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.