Relieving Insect Bites - with Meat Tenderizer... or Self-Restraint

If you have anything close to the reaction to insect bites that my family does, you’ll find a couple simple strategies to be a godsend. Everything from bee stings to mosquito bites can be eased by breaking down the venom that is injected into your body.

     [CAUTION: If you have a known allergy to bee stings, be sure to use your “epi” (epinephrine/adrenaline) kit if your doctor has prescribed one and get medical care if you have one of the severe allergies that can lead to shock — or if you have dizziness or swelling inside your throat. The aids below can still be helpful, but also get medical attention.]

You probably don’t know the wonderful news about insects stings! The irritating (and sometimes dangerous) allergens injected by insects (whether spiders, mosquitoes, yellow jackets, or their cousins) have one thing in common: they are proteins. Why is that so great? Because proteins quickly broken down by enzymes readily available in a common kitchen item: meat tenderizer. Any meat tenderizer (like Adolph’s) which contains papaya enzyme for breaking down the protein in meat can be made into a gritty paste by adding a little water; this papaya paste can then be rubbed onto the skin at the point of the bite. As the paste dries and becomes cakey, re-wet it and lightly rub into the wound again (even if you can’t see the hole where the syringe entered).

Having tried many topical applications, Reiki, etc. on insect bites, I can attest that they all work better if I first deactivate with papaya as much of the injected protein as possible. Even vegetarians need to take meat tenderizer on summer picnics!

For mosquitos only:
Sometimes I get an unexpected mosquito encounter and am caught without any meat tenderizer. Here’s a more difficult strategy that I discovered on one such assault: scratch NOT !   It’s hard to resist rubbing the area of a mosquito bite. Knowing I’ve had one bite makes me very vigilant about swatting away at any further itch — lest it signal an additional mosquito landing. But I’ve found that if I can resist that temptation to scratch... the itch mostly subsides in 5-15 minutes. Furthermore, the body seems to react better and heal the inflamed tissues, whereas if I scratch even a little the bite is going to itch worse, harden and give me many days of annoyance. I am loathe to admit it, but maybe Mom was right in saying, “Don’t scratch it.”