I don’t mean to spoil your day but I just discovered this website whose advocacy is to increase awareness, provide a support group or be the information portal regarding bed bugs. The site has all kinds of stories and updates, including even successful bed bug stories (yes, there is such a thing!). They also have a gallery of photos of people who have been bitten by those pesky buggers, such as this:

Visit Bed Bugger to participate, read up or gather information. bed_bug, bed_bugs, bugger, buggers, MATTRESS FUN, MATTRESS News, MATTRESS Safety bed_bug, bed_bugs, bugger, buggers, MATTRESS FUN, MATTRESS News, MATTRESS Safety

Ah, the bed bug problem. It’s a perpetual dilemma. Hence mattress manufacturers continuously come up with all kinds of products to fight these off. But are these new products really able to rid of bed bugs? The visco-memory foam mattresses, for instance, with its more advanced composition than a regular mattress, promises to at least be bed bug free. But is it really?

NBC News has some revealing information, in an interview with Dini M. Miller, PhD of virginia Tech’s Urban Pest Management:

Can bedbugs also live in visco-memory foam beds? I have read some claims online that say that the bedbugs cannot get into the foam beds?

Remember that bed bugs get on mattresses and harbor and under the sheets in the seams and tufts. While they may not be able to get into the actual foam, it hardly matters. They can harbor on the foam, in the seams of the mattress cover or in the bed frame. Remember the mattress itself is not the bed bug attractant, the host that uses it is. So bed bugs do not have to live inside the mattress in order to feed on you at night. They might crawl down from the picture frame hanging above your bed or from some other location.

A similar question has to do with mattress covers, can they prevent bed bugs?

The answer is no. Bed bugs can still get on top of the mattress cover or harbor in the bed frame. The advantage of the mattress cover is that if you already have bed bugs, you can trap them inside the cover and they cannot bite through. If you don’t have bed bugs the cover saves you from having to throw out the mattress if you ever get bed bugs.

If you would like to learn more from that interview, check MSNBC.