Stickers and wristbands aren’t a reliable way to prevent mosquito bites. Here’s why
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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.
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Cabbage vs Eggplant – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cabbage to eggplant, we picked the cabbage.
Why?
In terms of macros, cabbage has slightly more protein while eggplant has slightly more fiber and carbs, but the numbers are so close in all cases that it’s fairest to call this first round a tie.
In the category of vitamins, cabbage has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B7, B9, C, and K, while eggplant has more of vitamins B3, B5, and E, yielding an 8:3 win to cabbage.
Looking at minerals, cabbage has more calcium, phosphorus, iron, and zinc, while eggplant has more copper, magnesium, manganese, and potassium, for a 4:4 tie here.
In other considerations, cabbage has more polyphenols (yes, eggplants are purple and that purple color does come from anthocyanins, but that’s literally skin-deep and doesn’t affect the per 100g total much at all) so that’s another point for cabbage.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for cabbage, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them
Enjoy!
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The Facial Massage That Keeps Dementia At Bay
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That’s a bold claim for a title, but it has to do with lymphatic drainage and brain waste clearance, such as beta-amyloid and alpha-synuclein clearance, to avoid Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, respectively.
We’ve written about the lymphatic system before:
The Lymphatic System Against Cancer & More
Everything in its place
Because of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) that keeps the astonishingly sensitive brain as safe as it can from unwanted things, there are many aspects of our physiology that only happen inside the brain, or only happen outside of it, as the compounds in question may be too large to get through the BBB.
The lymphatic system is, in and of itself, an entirely outside-of-the-brain affair. So, how does stuff get cleaned out from the brain? That’s the job of the glymphatic system (a portmanteau of glial cells doing the job of the lymphatic system), which is the brain’s own cleanup crew, and we wrote about it here:
How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)
However! There is no drainage port directly from the brain to the outside world, so once the glymphatic system has got the detritus out of the brain, it’s the job of the lymphatic system, and then the general circulation, to take it the rest of the way for eventual detoxification and/or excretion.
We wrote more about that, here:
Take Care Of Your Lymphatic System To Beat Cognitive Decline
In that article, after our explanations, we concluded that the practical things to do are:
- For the lymphatic system: do lymphatic massage, exercise with a focus on maximizing movement, and eat an anti-inflammatory diet
- For the glymphatic system: do vagal massage (Vagal! Not vaginal, which will not help! Or rather: it won’t help the glymphatic system, anyway), exercise and/but also rest well (good quality sleep, ideally on the right-hand side, but at the very least side-sleeping, not on your back*), and eat omega-3 fatty acids
*See: Goodnight, Glymphatic System: How Your Sleep Position Changes Dementia Risk
So… How about that massage?
First, some backstory:
Last year, a South Korean research team (Dr. Jin-Hui Yoon et al.) identified a distinct lymphatic network at the back of the nose—the nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus (NPLP)—which plays a key role in draining cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the brain to the deep cervical lymph nodes.
This is important, because as we made a nod to up top today, efficient CSF drainage is critical for removing waste from the brain. In contrast, poor clearance typically leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Especially noteworthy was that these lymphatics remained functional in aging mice*, suggesting they could be targeted to treat impaired CSF outflow in neurodegenerative diseases.
*This was a transgenic mouse study, by the way. If you remember when Donald Trump said that scientists were spending millions to make transgender mice, well, that’s not a thing scientists are actually doing, but transgenic mice are a real thing often-used in a lot of important studies like this one (transgenic = “we changed their genes”). In this case, transgenic mice with fluorescent lymphatics allowing for the use of advanced imaging to map these lymphatic pathways. The NPLP showed distinct anatomical features such as unique valves and short lymphangions, as well as three major drainage routes:
- Near the pituitary and cavernous sinus,
- Along the basolateral dura near the middle meningeal artery,
- Near the cribriform plate into the olfactory mucosa—all converging at the NPLP.
We’re aware that’s a lot of big words, but fear not, the paper itself has pictures/diagrams: Nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus is a hub for cerebrospinal fluid drainage
More recently (published today, at time of writing; let it never be said we don’t give you hot-off-the-press science news), a larger team of researchers, many of whom from the first group, investigated how well this knowledge could be used to improve drainage, first in mice as per the first study, and then in monkeys.
They found, by the way, that the mapped lymphatics also continued to work in aging monkeys, despite other drainage routes often failing, the ones near the skin of the face were still functional—which means they almost certainly will be still functional in aging humans, too.
A handheld massage device applying controlled light pressure to the facial skin of aged mice significantly restored CSF drainage to youthful levels without disrupting natural lymphatic rhythms.
Of course, this technique offers a safer alternative to drugs or surgery. As such, the researchers are now exploring clinical applications, such as wearable devices, and studying the method’s effectiveness in diseases like Alzheimer’s.
You can read the paper in its entirety (again, with images and diagrams, which may be more useful than the previous ones, as this time there are monkeys, not just mice), here:
Increased CSF drainage by non-invasive manipulation of cervical lymphatics
Want to learn more?
You might like this book we reviewed a little while ago:
The Book of Lymph – by Lisa Levitt Gainsely ← includes how to manually do lymphatic massage of the sort done by the handheld massage device in the study we talked about today
Take care!
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Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment – by Dr. George Best
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Dr. Best is a doctor of chiropractic, but his work here is compelling. He starts by giving an overview of the relevant anatomy, and then the assorted possible causes of sciatica, before moving on to the treatments.
As is generally the case for chiropractic, nothing here will be “cured”, but it will give methods for ongoing management to keep you pain-free—which in the case of sciatica, is usually the single biggest thing that most people suffering from it most dearly want.
We get to read a lot about self-massage and exercises, of the (very well-evidenced; about the most well-evidenced thing there is for back pain) McKenzie technique exercises, as well as assorted acupressure-based techniques that are less well-evidenced but have good anecdotal support.
He also writes about preventing sciatica—which if you already have it, that doesn’t mean it’s too late; it just means, in that case do these things (along with the aforementioned exercises) to gradually reverse the harm done and get back to where you were pre-sciatica.
Lastly, he does also speak on when signs might point to your problems being beyond the scope of this book, and seeking professional examination if you haven’t already.
The style throughout is straight to the point, informative, and instructional. There is zero fluff or padding, and no sensationalization. There are diagrams and illustrative photos where appropriate.
Bottom line: if you have, or fear the threat of, sciatica, then this is an excellent book to have and use its exercises.
Click here to check out Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment, and live pain-free!
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How Useful Is “Exercise Snacking”, Really?
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“Exercise snacking” refers to doing a very small amount of exercise at a time.
For example, there was an article: Want the health benefits of strength training but not keen on the gym? Try “exercise snacking”
Which may well prompt you to wonder: what’s the minimum that still has benefits?
Let’s HIIT it!
We’ve talked before about High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT):
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body) ← important, because the “high-intensity” part can cause problems for some people, if not undertaken attentively
Which can further be expanded to: HIIT, But Make It HIRT ← high-intensity resistance training, undertaken per HIIT principles
Now, HIIT is usually done in one of two ways:
- One minute intensive exercise, one minute rest, repeat
- Continual moderate exercise, with periodic one-minute intense bursts
There are other protocols, but those are most common. If you’re curious about optimization, by the way, check out: 53 Studies Later: The Best Way to Improve VO2 Max
…which yielded neither of the above, but rather:
- 15×15 Interval Training: 15 seconds sprint (90–95% max heart rate) + 15 seconds active rest (70% max heart rate), repeated 47 times.
- 4×4 Interval Training: 4 minutes sprint (90–95% max heart rate) + 3 minutes active rest (70% max heart rate), repeated 4 times.
(see the above link for more details)
However!
Scientists have now examined what would happen if we just do 1 minute of intense exercise per hour, over the course of 10 hours.
The study
It’s not the only thing that the researchers (Dr. Monique Francois et al.) investigated, either; they also looked at what’d happen if you just did 2.5 minutes of moderate exercise per hour, for 12 hours.
The protocols:
- High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): 1 minute on a treadmill at 85–95% of maximum heartrate on a treadmill, once per hour for 10 hours, on alternate weekdays
- Intermittent Sedentary Interruption Training (ISIT): 2.5 minutes walking, once per hour for 12 hours, each weekday
- HIIT+ISIT (Combo): doing both of the above
Other considerations:
- Participants were asked to keep their daily step count under 5,000 steps per day, other than their mandated exercise
- They wore continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), and were also tested for blood flow, arterial stiffness, and cardiorespiratory fitness
What they found:
- Blood flow improved significantly after the combination of both protocols
- VO2 max improved significantly after the combination of both protocols
- VO2 max improved significantly, but more modestly, after the HIIT-only protocol compared to ISIT only
- There were no significant differences in blood glucose or arterial stiffness
The latter is reasonable, given it was quite a short intervention (two weeks).
Limitations:
This was not only a short study, but this was also very small (n=11). However, we’re not going to write it off based on the small size of the study, because the method was good (if you read the paper below, you’ll see what we mean), and this effectively means the equivalent of 11 case studies that agree with each other—which starts to look like a trend that’s at least worth attention.
Of course, we would love to see the experiment repeated with a larger sample (and indeed, the researchers themselves call for this too).
You can read the paper in its entirety here:
In summary
In short: it helps!
Breaking up prolonged periods of sitting is very important for health, and/but actually exerting one’s heart, even if just for one minute per hour, over the course of 10 hours, 3x per week, makes a significant difference to cardiovascular health.
Want to learn more?
Check out:
Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t) ← this is about reducing the damage done by sitting, including if for whatever reason you have to spend a lot of time sitting, including if you physically cannot stand and/or cannot walk.
Take care!
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Apple vs Cranberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to cranberries, we picked the cranberries.
Why?
In terms of macros, apples have slightly more carbs while cranberries have slightly more fiber; the differences are modest, but significant enough to call this a slender first-round win for cranberries.
In the category of vitamins, apples have more of vitamins B1, B2, and B9, while cranberries have more of vitamins B3, B5, C, E, and K, winning this round too.
Looking at minerals, apples have more potassium, while cranberries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, selenium, and zinc, winning their third round in a row.
In other considerations, cranberries have a mixture of good and bad additional properties; you can read about those in the “learn more” section below. But that does mean that this section could nudge it one point either way, depending on your circumstances.
Adding up the sections does make for a clear overall win for cranberries (so long as the below contraindications don’t apply to you), but by all means enjoy either or both (so long as the below contraindications don’t apply to you), as diversity is best (so long as the below contraindications don’t apply to you)!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Health Benefits Of Cranberries (But: You’d Better Watch Out) ← cranberries’ bonus properties (including: famously very good at decreasing UTI risk) come with some warnings, including that they may increase the risk of kidney stones if you are prone to such, and also that cranberries have anti-clotting effects, which are great for heart health but can be a risk of you’re on blood thinners or have a bleeding disorder.
Enjoy!
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Breathe Easier At Night
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝Is there something about being horizontal that causes nasal congestion? Sometimes it seems it waits until my head hits the pillow to suddenly get blocked up, is there any way around this?❞
Short answer: yes
More useful answer: yes, though being horizontal is more an enabling factor than necessarily the root cause, and there are several ways to address it.
The reason that it makes a difference is because as you probably know, humans have an unusual arrangement of internal passageways there, in which pretty much everything that goes there (air, food, water, mucus, etc) can incorrectly get into each other’s places. In most animals, these passageways are much better (or in non-mammals, completely) separated.
In the case of congestion upon lying down, mucus that was previously away behind the nose and either staying in place or moving slowly downwards*, is now free to move slowly forwards, being an almost-flat decline, depending on the position and orientation of your head**.
*which sounds bad, but it’s supposed to do that—the entire way through our digestive system is, after the mouth, protected by one form of mucus or another.
**This is the key, or rather one of the keys, to improving things. A firm pillow with good support can be used to position the head such that this doesn’t happen, or at least not to the same extent, depending on your sleeping position preferences.
That said, sleeping at least somewhat on your side is still better than sleeping on your back: (see: Sleeping Positions & Your Heart & Brain) so you might want to consider a 45° angle.
An orthopedic pillow can help, like this one.
Causes beyond position
Allergies are a common one that people don’t think about when not suffering most of the time, and especially not during most of one’s waking hours.
“There are tiny unseen creatures eating your flesh” seems like medieval explanation, but in fact, dust mite allergies (they eat dead human skin cells, amongst other detritus) are a common cause, and they often accumulate inside bedding. For this reason, hypoallergenic bedding (which is less about the material itself not being allergenic, and more about not allowing dust mites to get inside it) can be a big help.
See also: What are house dust mites and how do I know if I’m allergic to them?
Of course, you could also simply take allergy medications, but as a general rule of thumb, it’s a lot better to treat the cause than the symptom, and certainly hypoallergenic bedding doesn’t have the risk of side effects that allergy meds have. Still, if you are going to medicate, then you might want to consider: Antihistamines’ Generation Gap ← because not all antihistamines are created equal
Disuse is another common cause. That may sound strange, but in reality a lot of people default to mouth-breathing when asleep, and the nostrils are more likely to get blocked up when not in use—then, being blocked, even if only partially, one is even more likely to default to mouth-breathing, in order to continue breathing.
Some people go to the arguably extreme method of mouth-taping (which is what it sounds like) to oblige their sleeping body to continue breathing through the nose, but if you can simply make a strong habit of breathing through your nose during the day, even at times when you might want to include your mouth for convenience (e.g. during moderate exercise), then because the “neurons that fire together, wire together” aspect of neuroplasticity works for the entire nervous system, your body will more easily keep up the habit of nose-breathing while sleeping—keeping your nasal airways clearer.
Indeed, we answered a related question quite a while ago, thus:
❝When going to sleep, I try to breathe through my nose (since everyone says that’s best). But when I wake I often find that I am breathing through my mouth. Is that normal, or should I have my nose checked out?❞
It is quite normal, but when it comes to health, “normal” does not always mean “optimal”.
- Good news: it is correctable!
- Bad news: it is correctable by what may be considered rather an extreme practice that comes with its own inconveniences and health risks.
Some people correct this by using medical tape to keep their mouth closed at night, ensuring nose-breathing. Advocates of this say that after using it for a while, nose-breathing in sleep will become automatic.
We know of no hard science to confirm this, and cannot even offer a personal anecdote on this one. Here are some pop-sci articles that do link to the (very few) studies that have been conducted:
- Mouth taping may be a trending sleep hack, but the science behind it is slim
- Mouth Taping for Sleep: Does it Work? And What are the Side Effects?
This writer’s personal approach is simply to do breathing exercises when going to sleep and first thing upon awakening, and settle for imperfection in this regard while asleep.
Lastly, there is the more general aspect of air quality. If we’ve taken care of hypoallergenic bedding, that’s great, but it will have limited benefit if the air itself is bringing undue particles into our noses as we sleep, which is prompting an immune response, and that immune response involves mucus. See also: What Is Mucus? And Why?
The fix for this latter matter is simple: Air Purifiers & Sleep
Sweet dreams!
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