If you have a nice dinner out on the patio of a Thai home with your Thai and farang (foreigner) friends, you for sure will be visited by Mosquitoes (in Thai “Yuung”). But the brunt of the attack is going to be on the farangs (foreigners in Thailand). Everyone else laughs with the common joke that “farang blood is sooo sweet”, as battalions of the winged bandits are furiously attacking your feet and legs and making you go a bit nuts. There is no question that by the end of the evening or sooner, you will be very uncomfortable and looking to do almost anything to relieve the intense itch from all of those little red spots on your body.
Maybe the joke about your sweet blood is not so far off the mark. Our American diets are not bitter, and what we eat is what is pumped all over our bodies in a prepared banquet for our tiny flying enemies. There are particular foods, much of it in the Thai diet, that apparently are not tasty for mosquitoes, so it seems reasonable that if we change our diet a little (another small sacrifice for living in paradise), we may become less appealing towards the little blood suckers.
First, a few facts about your enemy and what they do to us: Female mosquitoes are the only ones which will feed on your blood, which it needs for egg production. What attracts these critters to you is the body heat and carbon dioxide emitted from their human targets. When you have been targeted, the mosquito finds an area where the veins are exposed and there is a good flow of blood. Ankles are a prime location for this and most people suffer from bites on the ankles. While the mosquito is sucking out your blood, it is injecting a saliva with enzymes to stop the blood from clotting and be free flowing, plus a pain killer so you don’t feel the actual mosquito bite. Your body’s immune system responds by sending histamine and immunoglobulin (a protein molecule) to fight the foreign invader and so we have an allergenic reaction (hence, the itchy red spot). It is also believed that the entry of oxygen into the wound also contributes to the itchy feeling.
So when one of these little guys approaches the many legs under the dinner table, they have quite a selection of tastes due to the diet and immune system of each person. New visitors to Thailand do not have a built up immunity to the locally grown mosquitoes, so these newbies will generally be the better choice for the attackers. But by changing your diet slightly you can make your blood less attractive to these tiny flying monsters.
Garlic – Eating healthy amounts of garlic in your food seems to be a strong deterrent. This might be due to chemical compounds in the garlic or it may be due to the odor of garlic seeping from the skin pores which masks the natural body odors like carbon dioxide, sweat and lactic acid and prevents the mosquito from homing in on you. Garlic is available as a mosquito repellent in spray form in some areas, but it is better for your health to just eat a lot of it (hey, it may also prevent all kinds of illnesses) .
Bananas – OK, the jury is still out on this one. There have been a few studies on this matter, and in ’09 a study published in Nature Magazine from the University of California noted that the mosquito avoids the smells of a certain chemical (3-octanol) found in bananas, grapes and strawberries. And there are a lot of personal reports (not scientific at all) from people in Thailand claiming that bananas do work as a deterrent. In any case, the small sweet bananas of Northern Thailand taste sooo good, that it is definitely worth trying this prevention. I am even lucky enough to have a producing banana tree in my yard.
Citrus Fruits – Acid-like fruits such as lemons, oranges and limes are supposed to be a good mosquito deterrent. In Thailand they taste extra good, and are plentiful and cheap, so this is another easy thing to do in the prevention of mosquito attacks. Orange juice sold in the streets of Chiang Mai is really good tasting, and it is good for one’s health in many ways (and cheap, too).
Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) - Taken in high dosages every day, and up to 2 weeks before traveling is sworn by many people to stop mosquitoes from biting.
Onions – According to personal reports, upping the amount of onions in a diet deters the flying monsters. Add more onions to soups and sautéed anything.
Thai Chilies – Every Thai person will tell you that mosquitoes don’t bite them because they eat a lot of Thai chilies. OK, we can never eat as much as the typical Thai person (at least most of us can’t), but if you are in Thailand, you should up your spice level a little bit anyway (it makes a lot of things better), and if it helps on the mosquito front, all the better.
Basil, lemongrass and rosemary are used in Thai cooking, and they happen to be natural repellents for mosquitoes.
Tonic Water – Another good reason to have a Gin & Tonic because tonic water contains ‘quinine’ a natural mosquito repellent. Drink up.
Brewer’s Yeast – is another natural deterrent. Easy to add to home cooked recipes.
Foods that Attract Mosquitos
Salty Foods and substantial amounts of carbohydrates, like pasta and potatoes and bread attract the mosquitoes. But you already know plenty of other reasons (for your health) to avoid these food in any case. Salty or potassium rich foods contribute to the release of lactic acid that attracts mosquitoes.
NOW A DISCLAIMER….
Understand that there are a lot of people — people that act like they know everything, such as a university professor living in a place where there are not a lot of mosquitoes — that say that changing your diet has no effect at all on propensity of attack by mosquitoes. They say it has no effect because they have not seen or conducted a controlled scientific study on it, and that means to them that it must therefore be totally untrue. In my opinion, this is where science shows it’s stupidity (and many university professors as well — you know who you are). If a method of doing something only appeared in the Farmer’s Almanac, then it must be totally untrue according to these “knowledgeable” people. But evidence determined from actual personal experience and being passed on from generation to generation is often more valid than controlled studies.
A couple of Other Tricks to Stop Mosquitoes from feasting on You:
Don’t do a lot of exercise during the early evening: When we have been exercising or working vigorously, our bodies give off more carbon dioxide. If we are planning on enjoying mornings or evenings outdoors, we need to ensure that we have ceased physical activity and that we have cooled down to lessen our attraction to mosquitoes. Also burning candles or other sources of carbon dioxide to deter mosquitoes to those sources rather than to ourselves. When exercising, we also release lactic acid, to which mosquitoes are also attracted.
Dark Clothing: Mosquitoes are highly attracted to dark clothing. It is advised to wear light clothing when spending the evening outdoors.
Your comments and experiences are always appreciated.
My friend Mike that I often have a morning coffee with at Valley Java swears by these AgraCo Mosquito Patches. Not the cheapest method, but each patch lasts a long time. There are 20 in a box, and are especially good if you do camping out where these bad critters fly around. Super safe, it just adds a lot of Vitamin B1 to your body….The beauty of the Don’t Bite Me! Patch is it’s simplicity. The only two ingredients in the Don’t Bite Me! Patch are Vitamin B1 and Aloe. And they last for 36 hours…
Interesting about bananas as I found the opposite. Eating bananas made me muchh more attractive to mosquitoes. But was very effective for me was discovered by accident. At the time I was working in an outdoor garden centre that was located close to our river, the Fraser. The work I was doing was hard I sweated a lot increasing my allure for mosquitoes. It was a particularly bad summer for them. Even inside the store was full of them. Because the work was taxing, I kept a 2 litre bottle of orange juice with 2 BIG heaping spoonsful of nutritional yeast flakes (like brewer’s yeast but better tasting) nearby & drank from it through my shift. In the evening, I had to sweep up after customers had left. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been scratching like others & had no bites. Then I paid attention to the mosquitoes in the evening when they were thickest. While I worked, there’d be a cloud of mosquitoes around me but none ever landed! I hadn’t read or heard of anything that repelled mosquitoes before & a LOT. I decided then that the combination of orange & yeast (very high in all B vitamins except B12) was the perfect drink to use during mosquito season. The times I go without drinking it for a while, as I’m not crazy over the taste, I’m bitten.
Just thought you’d be interested to hear of my experiences, especially regarding bananas. And I love the tiny Asian bananas so it makes no difference which kind I eat. I also love bitter foods (like the fat Chinese bitter melon) so I’ll increase those foods too. But much garlic, onions & chilies are out for me as they’re very yang foods & contribute to headaches for me. Cheers!
Great Tip! I will have to give this a try. Thanks.
Hey. Honestly I believe it is not a food matter at all. My thai wife and have been eating the same food for a couple years, and still I am always the only bitten one. She gets bitten 1/100 times than me. It must be a body smell factor or just the fact that her body does not react to the bite with a red spot as it happens on me.
You may be right. I have the same situation with my wife. We do eat together pretty much the same food, but I am the one the blood suckers go after. I will try anything that has a chance of helping me.
Been researching mosquito habits tonight, I’m not sure where I learned it, I believe Mosquitos are attracted to people after just eating a banana, potassium = lactic acid ect… It’s pretty well documented, I’ve seen as the two gentlemen preceding me, men are bitten significantly more often than women! I have found garlic pills effective and any DEET repellant keep them away. An unexpected beach trip taight me skin so soft and listerine for biting flies seems to work eater well, though SSS had been tested and found not too effective for mosquitos.
One other point that us Americans have a problem with is using perfumes (in everything), many perfumes deem to attract insects including mosquitoes.
The fact is that most everybody gets bitten the exact same amount. The issue is that some people have a stronger allergic response to the histamine. Those people APPEAR to be bitten more, but, in actuality, they just show the effects of the bite more strongly (while some don’t show if at all). It is not unlikely that there is a genetic disposition in certain ethnic populations to not have as strong an allergic reaction to the histamine (there is often an ethnic correlation in specific allergies).
There is some evidence that some foods (especially garlic) can have a small effect on attractiveness to mosquitoes, but mostly you’re making giant leaps in logic here based on anecdote.
The histamine-reaction idea (which also has actual scientific backing) still fits all of the observations you discuss, but it makes a lot more sense. Think of two people who sleep in the same bed, spend their days together, and eat the same foods, but one “gets bitten” a lot more than the other (see Greg’s post above). Well, that throws the food idea out the window, but the histamine-reaction theory still stands.
Locals may have come up with explanations for their observations, but it doesn’t mean they’re the right explanations.
Eric, I don’t think we need to say people get bit because of this OR that. It reminds me of the old argument that went on decades ago whether people’s & animals’ behaviour was due to nature (genetic) or nuture. It’s now known to result from both. I’m quite sure what you’re saying is totally correct but I also know personally that food CAN have an effect.
I normally get bitten by mosquitoes though not as badly as some & my reactions are average – itchy but if I can resist scratching, it fades to nothing in a day or so. But one summer I had to work outside, past dark when the mosquitoes were worse (& it was one of the Fraser River’s flood years when the bigger nastier flood mosquitoes hatch from the high waters reaching the encysted eggs higher in the dirt river banks). Because it was hot & labour intensive, I drank throughout my work day about 1 1/2 litres of orange juice with a couple of heaping spoonsful of nutritional yeast added (for extra protein but very high in B vitamins). I expected to be badly bitten but I wasn’t. I’ve got a scientific frame of mind so I sat during my break & watched some of my exposed skin. Sure enough, mosquitoes came buzzing up (I was pretty sweaty too) but as they came close to land on my skin, they’d veer off! I even showed it to some co-workers & they were surprised. The only thing I did differently that summer from others was drinking large amounts of orange juice & nutri-yeast.
I’m convinced, at least in my case, that both genetics & foods eaten play a role in how we react to mosquito bites but *also* to whether mosquitoes will bite an individual as often as another more appealing meal. Don’t you think this is more likely than saying it’s either one or the other?