Bed bugs in your bed coupled with bed bugs bites on your body are bad enough, but when you factor in potential embarrassing long-term bed bugs bite scars, it's just too much to deal with! Trust us, we fully understand.
Fortunately, there are a number of proven treatments to remove or minimize bed bug bite scars. Before we jump to our scar treatment recommendations, there are a few things we need to cover. Let's get started!
Begin Bed Bug Treatment First
Before you begin trying to treat your bed bug bites and prevent longer-term scarring, you must first get rid of bed bugs from your home, and also implement prevention strategies to keep them from coming back. Failure to do this will just continue to result in more bed bug bites, and unfortunately a never-ending pattern.
Treatment can be done in two ways, but engaging a professional bed bug exterminator, or doing treatment yourself. Using an experienced bed bug exterminator is the fastest and most effective way to get rid of bed bugs in your home, but is also the most expensive.
Treating bed bugs yourself, can often take longer, and require a large amount of work from you, but can significantly reduce your costs.
You'll want to begin on our Bed Bug Treatment page, which overviews the different treatment options, and the specific steps we recommend for ridding your home of bed bugs.
Put Preventative Measures in Place
If you have unfortunately had bed bugs in your home before, there is a good chance you could get them again.
Fortunately, there are a number of preventative measures you can put in place to minimize your risk of getting bed bugs again, and even if you do, catch them early so treatment isn't as painful.
No, you don't need a suit of armor (although it might feel like it!). Our Bed Bug Prevention page goes into all the detail you need on how to prevent bed bugs from getting in your home.
Do Bed Bug Bites Leave Scars?
Most bug bites, when left alone, do not scar. Bed bug bites are no different. The bites themselves are very very small, and what you actually see, and unfortunately feel, is the allergic reaction your body has to the bite.
What does cause scarring is scratching the bites. Scratching bites can cause the skin to break, and be exposed. This can lead to infection, bleeding, and leaking.
Additionally, scratching can spread the enzyme in the bed bug bite that is causing the allergic reaction around on your skin, resulting in a rash.
Scars result from the skin having to re-heal after being broken. This generally occurs when bites begin to bleed or leak, form a scab, and then the bite victim scratches it again, removing the scab. The more frequently the scab is removed, and the wound has to re-heal, the worse the risk of scarring is.
To reduce itching, until the bites heal up on their own, use any of the popular anti-itch creams or ointments.
How to Treat Bed Bug Scars
There are numerous home and commercial treatments for reducing and getting rid of scars on human skin, in fact, far more than we could ever hope to address.
There are however a number of treatments that have been very medically proven and work very well for removing and preventing bed bug scars.
Remember, the best treatment is to not get scars, so don't scratch. But if you can't help it, or it's too late, you'll find these bed bug scar treatments helpful:
- Infections increase scarring. If you have scratched a bit, and broken the skin, quickly treat the bite with an antibacterial cream. We recommend Neosporin anti-scaring.
- Use commercial scar treatment creams like Mederma Advanced Scar Gel.
- Apply Vitamin-E. Vitamin-E, when applied early to a wound or bed bug bite, has been proven to significantly reduce scarring. We recommend using Vitamin-E Cream.
- Witch Hazel is a natural product that can both sooth bed bug bites, and assist with healing and scar reduction. Witch Hazel actually has a natural Salicylic Acid in it (see below). We really like these Witch Hazel pads from Thayers, that also contain Aloe Vera, to further sooth and cool the bites.
- Salicylic acid (the main ingredient in Asprin) is generally used to dry up pimples and blackheads, but has also shown promise at healing scars as well, although its effectiveness has been debated. For scars, we recommend MG217 Psoriasis Cream, which has both Salicylic acid AND Vitamin-E in it, in the proper amounts for healing bed bug scars.
- Vitamin K is well known for it's ability to heal scars. We recommend using a Vitamin K Cream, intended for scar treatment.
- Silicone Gel - A fairly new scar treatment on the market is the use of Silicon Gel, which has proven VERY effective at reducing scaring. You'll find ScarAway is one of the top Silicon Gel products available, and highly rated.
Bed Bug Scars on your Face
One of the worst places to have bed bug scars is on your face. Not only can people see them more easily, but the skin on your face is far more sensitive than other areas of your body, making bed bug scar treatment more difficult.
ScarAway Silicon Gel and Mederma Advanced Scar Gel are your two best options for over the counter products.
If you have fairly severe facial scaring, you'll want to talk to a doctor about surgical options. For your face, surgery is often the best option.
Wrapping Up
Remember! NEVER SCRATCH! If you follow this basic rule (yes we know it's hard, but it's worth it), you'll never have to worry about bed bug bite scars. If you unfortunately do have scaring, we sincerely hope you'll find the above tips and suggestions helping, and that they'll work well for you to reduce your scaring.
Oh, and don't forget, to keep bed bug bites (and possible scars) from coming back, you must get rid of your bed bug infestation!
