Can a Glass of Wine a Day Keep the Bed Bugs Away?

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By Brooke Borel, Life's Little Mysteries contributor

Credit: cdc.gov

A bed bug nymph in the process of ingesting a blood meal from the arm of a voluntary human host.

The common bed bug mainly survives on human blood, but what happens when that human has upped his or her blood alcohol content with a few glasses of a nice red wine? New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests bed bugs are not as fond of alcohol as their boozy hosts, which may lead to fewer bug bites.

According to the study, bed bugs prefer alcohol-free blood to blood with alcohol in it; the higher the blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the less the bugs eat. And, because there is a direct link between blood intake and reproduction rates, those bugs also lay fewer eggs.

"[Bed bugs] need a blood meal to grow and to molt and to reproduce," explained Ralph Narain, a Ph.D. candidate who conducted the work as part of his dissertation. "And one of their main hosts are humans, and we consume a lot of stuff. Alcohol was one of the easier ones to start with."

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Can a Glass of Wine a Day Keep the Bed Bugs Away?

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