Do You Need Mattress Covers to Prevent Bed Bugs?

Bed bugs in your mattress can be the cause of some serious health hazards and can draw an enormous amount of blood from the human body. They nestle in your bed mattresses and come out mostly towards dawn, sucking blood for 10-15 minutes at a stretch, and then again retreating to their safe location in the folds of the mattresses. In order to avoid this, and make sure nothing bad happens to you or your near and dear ones, you must have mattress covers to protect yourself from bed bugs.

You should be able to identify bed bugs from their round shape and flat bodies. Their color, however, keeps changing. 'Bloodsuckers' that they are, their color depends on their intake of blood. They are usually grey or light brown, but after they have fed, such colors usually change to brick red, even orange at times. It is also possible to identify them by their action. If sleeping on your mattress causes you itches and irritation, it is possibly because there are bed bugs inside your mattress. These bugs inject an oily, sticky substance into the body of their hosts, and these infections can be pretty deadly at times.

Also note - Each female bug lays about 500 eggs each. Each bug starts feeding immediately after being born, and attains the ability to reproduce after a month or so. The point here is, until and unless you take drastic steps of remedy after you first notice the 'bug attack', the situation may soon spin out of control.

• Cut off the source of blood supply - Bed bugs are unable to survive without blood. Getting mattress covers to protect yourself from these insects thus seems to be the first thing that needs to be done for your protection.

• Mattress covers have very tightly woven fabrics - These do not allow the bugs to penetrate and nest in the mattress itself. Furthermore, the bugs which are already there cannot get out, and perish within one or two days. Remember - if you have bed bugs ALREADY in your mattress; make sure you do not remove the cover.

Further, there are some advantages of using mattress covers as well:

There is of course the factor of keeping the mattress new, but what many people do not realize is the extent of the newness. Mattress covers can keep your mattress of two years looking brand new! That is a fact, and as the years pass, you can still NOT SEE the effects of time!

Secondly, if you have seasonal allergies, mattress covers can be a very good solution. One of the biggest causes of seasonal allergies is pet dander. Together with dust, pet dander can accumulate on your mattress and cause serious allergies. Your mattress cover ensures that there is no accumulation.

Bed mites, too, can cause asthma attacks and bronchial infections. At any time, there are around a million bed mites in a two year old mattress, and their dropping, minute but accumulated, can be a carrier of these diseases. Mattress covers can protect you here by cutting off their main source of food - shed skin cells of humans (or what we call 'dead skin').