Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
close window
Housecall Archives
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
close window
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Prevention
By Mayo Clinic staffIf bedbugs are already present in your home, you can help ward off bites by wearing nightclothes that cover as much skin as possible.
To help prevent bedbugs from becoming residents in your home:
- Inspect antiques and secondhand furniture thoroughly before bringing them into your home.
- Employ the regular services of a professional exterminator.
- Use bed nets impregnated with permethrin to ward off infestation in tropical areas.
- Inspect any room you're about to inhabit while traveling.
- After you return from a trip, check your luggage for insects that might have hitched a ride.
- Change bed linens at least once a week, and wash in hot water of at least 97 F (36 C).
- Vacuum around the home at least once a week, paying special attention to areas surrounding bed and furniture posts.
- Caulk holes in floors and walls.
- Dismantle and either treat with insecticides or discard any old furniture, including bed frames and mattresses. Use insecticide sprays containing dichlorvos, permethrin or malathion around cracks and crevices in your home. Lawn and garden insect control sprays may contain these insecticides. However, professional inspection and extermination may be best.
- Eliminate any neighboring bird and bat habitats that may serve as a refuge for bedbugs, especially following an extermination attempt.
