Keeping Away More than just Vampires!
“They vant to suck your blood!”
They don’t wear capes, they don’t have suave Transylvanian accents, and they’re not tiny flying mammals, but they are no less horrific in the way they want to feast on your blood anytime you go outside.
They’re mosquitoes, the tiny flying pests that live on the blood of other animals. With their long proboscis and six specialized needle-like stylets, they cut into your skin, detect a blood vessel, inject anticoagulant saliva into the incision, then draw your protein-rich blood out of your body and into theirs.
If the thought of losing up to 0.01 milliliters of your precious life’s blood to each of these insects isn’t enough motivation to stop these buzzing jerks from biting you, then maybe the introduction of potentially deadly saliva directly into your bloodstream will convince you to take every precaution to stop them. One such precaution is ingesting garlic.
While it may be true that double-blind clinical tests have proven that garlic in the bloodstream does not significantly reduce the number of mosquito bites a human receives while out in nature, it has not yet been disproved that the continuous consumption of garlic for days or weeks before being out in nature does not help cover the scent of lactic acid your skin gives off.
In additional defense of the use of garlic as an insect repellent, it is known that mosquitoes locate their human meals by tracing carbon dioxide to its source… your mouth! Once they’ve located that, they have your whole body to feed on within just a few flicks of their wings.
While eating roasted garlic from the backyard barbecue or camping in the great outdoors, your breath becomes laden with sulfur that disrupts mosquitoes’ ability to track your location. If they can’t find you, they can’t steal your blood or pass diseases into your bloodstream.
So though you’ll certainly want to hold onto your DEET and your insect coils, don’t be afraid to also flavor your burgers, spuds, veggies, and other outdoor foods with plenty of fragrant garlic. You’ll ward off not only any fanged fiends lurking in the shadows, but also the tiny terrors that dangerously treat themselves to your blood!
