You might be wondering why, even though you sleep in the same bed with another person every night, you do not have any bed bug bites while they do. The truth is, the bed bugs are probably biting you too, but your body is just not reacting the same way. The bed bugs likely feed on you as much as the other person and take the same amount of blood.
The bed bugs might just be infesting half of your bed or they could be in a family member’s bed but not on your own.
In this article, we will discuss the reasons why you have no bed bug bites while other people in your house do. If you wish to learn more, just keep on reading.
Why do bed bugs not bite me?
There are several reasons as to why bed bugs are not biting you. It can be that they are biting you but you just do not know it. The bed bugs probably cannot reach you due to some physical restrictions, or you just do not seem appealing to them.
1. There are no bed bugs in your room.
If you live with your family and they have brought up concerns about finding bite marks on their bodies, but you do not have this problem, it may mean that their rooms are infested but yours is not.
Most bed bug infestations start with one pregnant female bed bug. They get from room to room, or even house to house, by hitching a ride on an unsuspecting human host. When the person arrives home, the bed bug will hop off and start looking for a hiding spot, or harborage. This is where the pregnant female will lay its eggs. While it waits for its eggs to hatch, it will wait for the human host to fall asleep and feed on him. When the eggs hatch, the baby bed bugs will start to mature until they are old enough to start reproducing themselves.
This process will continue as the bed bug population multiplies, and before you know it, you have a full-blown bed bug infestation.
This infestation will start in one room, where the bed bugs will steadily spread from the bed, onto the furniture near your bed, then to the carpet, and even on clothes that you have on your floor that you have not touched in weeks.
You can spread the infestation by taking one infested item and taking it to another room in your house.
So, if you are wondering why you do not have bed bug bites yet, maybe the bed bugs have not been introduced to your room.
2. The bed bugs are not on your side of the bed.
If you sleep with a partner on the same bed every night, but you wake up with no bite marks while they have multiple, it could be due to the bed bugs only being in there side of the bed.
When an infestation is starting, the small bed bug populace is concentrated in a specific spot in the room. The preferred starting spot is the mattress because it has plenty of crevices the bed bugs can squeeze into to hide.
Whoever is unfortunate enough to be sleeping on the side of the bed where the bed bugs are closest to will be the one that gets fed on the most. This is simply due to their proximity to the harborage. Why would the bed bugs travel longer distances to get to you, when your partner is closer to them and is just as good of a food source?
This is not to say that you will never get bit, because the longer you let the infestation spread, the more it will creep over to your side of the bed. And soon enough, you will get bitten just as much as your partner.
3. Your body does not react to bed bug bites.
People’s bodies are not the same. Some people are allergic to shellfish while some are not, and some people are allergic to bug bites while some are not.
A person’s skin reacts, or swells, when bitten by a bed bug because of the histamine response. This is the same response people’s bodies have to allergies.
If you are sleeping in the same bed as someone who wakes up to several red welts on their body while you have none, your body not reacting to the bite is one of the most likely explanations.
4. The bed bugs do not like your blood type.
Bed bugs do not feed on any specific blood type only. But they do have a preference. If the bed bugs feed on a person that has type O blood for their very first blood meal, they will want to feed on only type O blood people as long as they can. This is not to say that they will never drink other blood types, of course. If that bed bug happens to take a ride on a person and is brought to a different house, the bed bug will still feed on any person if they become hungry.
If the bed bugs have been feeding on a type O person for months then a partner with type A blood starts sleeping in the same bed, the bed bugs are most probably sticking to the one with type O blood.
5. The bites may not be from bed bugs.
It is possible that the bites on your family members are not even bed bug bites. They might be mosquito or mite bits. They could also be hives and your family member is allergic to something in your house that you are yet to identify.
The best way to rule out bed bugs is to look for signs of infestation such as dead bed bugs, blood and fecal matter stains on your sheets, discarded bed bug shells, and bed bug eggs.
Conclusion
Bed bugs are not biting you because they probably have not migrated over to your room yet. The bed bug infestation may also be in its early stages so the bed bugs are still only on one side of the bed, thus only biting your partner and not you.
You could also be the type of person that does not react to bed bug bites. Another reason is if your blood type is not the preferred blood type of the bed bugs.
Lastly, the bites your family member’s have suffered may not even be from bed bugs. They could be from any other insects or even an allergic reaction to something that has nothing to do with insects.
Image: istockphoto.com / Mainely Photos