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Insect bites and LCHF.

LittleGreyCat

Well-Known Member
Retired Moderator
Messages
4,421
Location
Suffolk, UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Diet drinks - the artificial sweeteners taste vile.
Having to forswear foods I have loved all my life.
Trying to find low carb meals when eating out.
All my life I have been a martyr to insect bites.
They always seem to swell up enormously.
A mosquito bite on the ankle can be crippling as I can hardly bend the ankle and have to wear sandals because I can't lace up shoes.

Strangely, since I switched to proper LCHF I don't seem to have had this problem.
Insect bites just seem to itch and be gone in 3 days.

So I am wondering if there is something to do with the metabolic changes to do with running on fats which has reduced/eliminated my reaction.
Something a simple as blood glucose feeding the reaction. I know there is a view at the moment that some cancers are sugar hungry, and LCHF can reduce or stop their growth.

Further (unplanned) test under way.
I had the doors and windows open yesterday evening to help keep cool and I've been bitten a few tim,es.
Let us see if all goes well.
 
Ooooooh @LittleGreyCat that's really interesting! That could so be the case! I suppose what we eat could well determine how we taste!

I haven't noticed a difference in how delicious I do or don't taste to nasty wee fanged beasties since lowering my carb intake, but a couple of weeks ago I had a bite on my calf that was *just* a bite, and then it morphed overnight into something so very alarming that I was googling both cellulitis and Lyme disease. It is neither, I am glad to report, but it was the itchiest thing I have ever had, and the redness has only just gone! And it sort of spread and grew and got redder and thicker, and ended up about the size of the lid on a small yoghurt pot, but with ragged edges.

Goodness knows what species the beastie was, but it was certainly a card-carrying member of the evillest branch of its family tree..............

 
Very interesting.... there very well may be some truth in that. Mr Chook and me have, in the past, really suffered from gnat bites (we live on a reclaimed part of what used to be a peatland bog - trouble is no-one told the gnats its not a bog any more).

Anyway... this year we have both been bitten but it hasn't developed to the hard red swollen stage - just a bit red for a day or so then gone - and since I've gone zero carb the little blighters haven't come near me.
 

Horrifically, that might well have been a spider bite. Even in the UK, spiders bite and they raise really weird and unpleasant lumps sometimes. I only know this because my cat (the dastardly, cunning hunter is she) fell asleep next to a spider which bit her, except I didn't know that's what the huge lump on her shoulder that she was crying about and itching was - the vet broke it to me.

[Was going to post a helpful, informative link here but 1. It was to a Daily Mirror page and 2. It featured enormous, technicolour photos of spiders. Which just isn't good for anyone at all. Thus I declined]
 
SockFiddler said:
[Was going to post a helpful, informative link here but 1. It was to a Daily Mirror page and 2. It featured enormous, technicolour photos of spiders. Which just isn't good for anyone at all. Thus I declined]
Click to expand...

Let me be the first to offer you profound thanks.


Uninvited spiders on my screen are never appreciated.
 
Brunneria said:
Let me be the first to offer you profound thanks.


Uninvited spiders on my screen are never appreciated.
Click to expand...

Same here.... anything that scuttles really....
 
Spider bites are just nasty @SockFiddler I have had a couple that ended up like big painful water filled blisters

and you could well be right @LittleGreyCat what a delightful bonus!

I always used to get horrible itchy reactions to midgie bites lasting at least a week (I live in the Scottish Highlands and the flipping things love(d) me). Recently when on my hols in Italy I forgot the bug spray one evening and got three bites on my lower leg, which has been a difficult area to heal, but although they were maddening for a couple of days they didn't bother me for longer and healed up cleanly. they are the only ones I can remember getting so far this year.

My mum, who was also type 2 but never knew about LCHF and followed the NHS guidelines and took Metformin, had a big problem with being a midgie magnet and getting bites which lasted ages, often getting infected etc.
 
That's interesting. I too have been bitten a few times this summer but the bites have cleared up very quickly. I hadn't even thought of why that could be, I was just very surprised that they were gone in a few days.
 
I find eating garlic puts the little biters off.
It also gives me plenty of personal space. Useful in a crowd.
 
I rarely get bitten, but apparently losing weight helps enormously, due to exhaling less C02, and less sweat when exercising plus other factors.
 
Pipp said:
I find eating garlic puts the little biters off.
It also gives me plenty of personal space. Useful in a crowd.
Click to expand...

Agreed @Pipp , garlic is great for keeping them at bay
 
When i was first diagnosed the docs said id already been diabetic for at least 15-20 years. That time scale would have covered a time when I used to work in a night shelter - out of all the staff members I was by far the most popular among the fleas that often accompanied the kids and / or their pets and was bitten to b****** by the little *******. I always reacted v bably to these and other insect bites - always developed huge lumps which itched for days
Since becoming a diagnosed and controlled diabetic I rarely get bitten by any insects and neverreact with more than a little bump - I decided years ago that my blood was less attractive to our insect friends as it was either just not as sweet or maybe not so alcoholic - ondered if all the sugar made my blood alcoholic!
 
Pipp said:
I find eating garlic puts the little biters off.
It also gives me plenty of personal space. Useful in a crowd.
Click to expand...

Well perhaps there's some basic truth too in the tale that it keeps the vampires at bay!

I've never had really had reactions to insect or bee & wasp stings, but I used to get bitten more than my younger sister who used to claim they couldn't bite her because she had such tough skin. My husband always gets bitten much more than me and definitely has some bad reactions - particularly to wasp stings, and he's a real carboholic!

Robbity
 
I like the vampire epithet!

However, not to throw a spanner in the works.

I have always been subject to the little bar stewards especially gnats and mosquitoes and my legs are peppered with bite marks, before and after diagnosis.

I do work and live around football pitches, and it is not fun having to try and avoid them. Using a line marker, there is always thousands of 'em!

My love of the beautiful game has been itchy and irritable at the best of times.
I wear repellent most of the summer and of course garlic, it helps but to no avail.

If you haven't been bitten on your nose, you haven't lived!

I have antihistamines, for my bad days!

I just guess I can't help being attractive!

Millions of flying ants around today!
 
OH, @Lamont D , you scuperer, you! I was reading this thread all the while getting increasingly excited that we could identify mosquitos and gnats as some new, exiting diagnostic tool - "They don't like low-carbers!" vs "They REALLY like untreated diabetics!" and then you come along and be the odd one out and now I've got no off-the-cuff bonkers theory to propose.

Though, actually, dogs can sniff out all kinds of stuff, from impending epileptic fits to undiagnosed cancers - and hypos, too!

https://can-do-canines.org/our-dogs/ourdogs/diabetes-assist-dogs/

I'm not quite able to make the leap from dogs to bugs, but I'll work on it!
 
An old test for diabetes was to place a urine sample on a dish in the garden if ants where attracted to it it would indicate sugar in the urine.
 
JohnEGreen said:
An old test for diabetes was to place a urine sample on a dish in the garden if ants where attracted to it it would indicate sugar in the urine.
Click to expand...
An even quicker old method was for the lab technician to taste the urine sample.
Usually the new apprentice got that task.
 
There's some stuff you can get from Avon that deters gnats and their other little bitey friends. Its called Skin-So-Soft and its a spray oil in a greenish-blue bottle (you must get the spray oil). We had a friend who had to do a lot of camping out in the Army and he buys loads of it - and told Mr Chook about it during one summer when Mr C was getting badly bitten. It must have some kind of deterrent in it because if he walks in to one of those clouds of swirling gnats they all avoid him. It smells nice, too.

No, I'm not an Avon lady.
 
JohnEGreen said:
An old test for diabetes was to place a urine sample on a dish in the garden if ants where attracted to it it would indicate sugar in the urine.
Click to expand...
Yes and I believe it's a very ancient diagnostic test for our aptly named sugar diabetes...

Robbity

PS And @SockFiddler, I know someone on another forum whose little dog actually alerted her to her previously undiagnosed bowel cancer.
 
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