UKC

With midge season starting up, I thought I'd run an idea of mine past you folks. I react pretty badly to midge bites, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Some people say that the problem with children being allergic to everything these days is that they are not exposed to the allergens as babies. You can probably see by now where I am going with this.

What if you take a baby on a trip to scotland in August and make sure it gets a few bites, in the hope of reducing their torment in later life? Does anybody else think this might work? Am I an ethically challenged individual who should never be allowed to have children, or would the child thank me in later life?

In reply to jonny taylor:

I doubt that will work, midges dont like me at all (scientificly tested) and i had never come across midges till i was 29.

In reply to jonny taylor: One of my daughters was completely immune to midge bites, they just didn't bite her. We would all be getting bit to hell and Nicky just sat there unaffected.
One day an insect bit her and she was outraged
'They NEVER bite me'
As far as I know it was the only time they dared

In reply to Al Evans: for me, its not the actual biting that annoys me, its the actual presence of them, with their haphazard flying into me that p1sses me off. up your nose in your ears, in your eyes!!! GRRRRRR

In reply to jonny taylor: Without looking into the science about Midge bites and reactions there was/is a guy who injects himself with snake venom. He does it to 'exercise' his immune system. A by product is that he is becoming immune to the venom he uses. There is a Channel 5 documentary about it I saw on YouTube.

Good luck milking those midges!

In reply:

The large scotish ones don't bother me much tbh. The small one's in the lakes are far worse.

In reply to jonny taylor: I've noticed that the first midge bites of the season are the most itchy (also hyper-react to them with massive weals that last for 3 days if I don't sratch).

Once I get over these, the next lot of bites never seem quite as bad, as if my body gets used to them.

In reply to jonny taylor:

I was out at Stanage last summer and me and my mate got swarmed by them. I always come up in little red bites when they 1st bite me but there's never any sign the next day, whereas by housemate's bites just got worse and all swelled up the next day, it was really bizarre, maybe I just have a good immune system...

In reply to jonny taylor:

Take the baby - a nice bit of tender baby flesh might distract some of the buggers from you!

In reply to jonny taylor: It can go either way - you can develop a tolerance or get sensitised. Alternatively, if you're like me, it never changes. I've been getting bitten since I was 6 weeks old. I still get bitten and a still swell up. Evil nasty pointless bitey things.

In reply to katharine: Take the baby to Torridon, leave it tethered to a post on the foreshore overnight, if it's alive the next morning you've got a good one worth keeping. Did it it for my seven kids and they're both strong as oxes now. Never speak to me, mind.......

In reply to Richard Baynes:

What about the other 5?

In reply to Richard Baynes:

Legend says that this is how they tortured and killed/drove to madness, enemies by smearing them in honey and chaining them to the ramparts of Dunvegan Castle!

In reply to jonny taylor:

Immunity is something of an urban myth. We all get bitten, it is just the magnitude of the response that differs. I used to have a minimal response - went to Stannage one fine day and got so badly bitten you could have played join the dots on my face.

This esperience has badly wound up my immune response to midge bites and I now come up in big red blotches which I never did before the Stannage attack.

So, I would say no, you could well do more harm than good, for what it is worth.

I thought most of these bad immune responses were due to previous exposure. So you get bitten once / eat a nut / have a bad oyster and the second time you have one your body goes way over the top on the antibody reaction and it potentially kills you.

In reply to jonny taylor:
I've wondered about this.
I just get a wee red dot from midge bites, and it vanishes a day or so later. I've grown up being 'midged' regularly.
My wife, who is Swedish and didn't encounter midges until about 10 years ago, gets big, itchy-sore lumps that last for days.
Our daughter only gets red dots, but she's just 2½ years old so that might change.
This is obviously a very small sample size, and I've heard of people that have had plenty of childhood exposure to midges but get big lumps.

Anecdotally, it does seem to me that childhood exposure to midges makes you less likely to get a really bad reaction to them. It may simply be natural selection, though - maybe kids that live in the Highlands and react badly to midges don't make it to breeding age.

In reply to jonny taylor: its odd, i never even seem to get bitten by them... maybe i'm overcooked

In reply to jonny taylor:

you are quite right, using a child as a decoy while you sit quoffing beers by the campfire is a viable scheme.

Place it some distance way and watch them feast as you enjoy a nice bottle of cobra : 0

In reply to jonny taylor:

I have three children. All were bitten by midges as babies on camping trips. Now teenagers, one reacts badly to bites while the other 2 don't.

Incidently my wife is reacts negatively to bites while I don't.

S

In reply to jonny taylor: I have only one daughter but it makes me feel better about myself nowing that even when i'm gone the midges will still be tormenting her,he he he.

Some say this works well.

==>http://www.alternativeinsectrepellent.co.uk/?gclid=COXDk7_ruKECFSaElAodIQ1c...

Alternatively undistilled vinegar can also keep them away (or so they say).

In reply to jonny taylor:

my dad says that i had a bad time as a kid with the midge but at the ripe age of 25 they don't bother me nearly as much as my nice soft English girl friend. I get about one bite to ten of hers and one tick to 15 on her.

black fly and mozzys are a different thing however - North Ontario sucks (even more in the summer)

In reply to Horse: Just timy bleached skeletons the next mornimng, I'm afraid... with some midges the size of hens hovering nearby

In reply to jonny taylor: "AVON Skin so soft" and a head net is the universally recognised prevention- ive just bought a couple of bottles for the summer... them wee beasties make me shiver thinking about em.

In reply to jonny taylor:

Marmite, Galric and Fire. S'nuff said.

In reply to jonny taylor: i spent half my life up to the age of 15 in scotland, getting bitten billions of times.

they still like eating me now.

In reply to jonny taylor:

It could be that you react badly to midge bites, your children will be genetically programmed to react similarly. Such allergy is certainly hereditary in horses. You probably shouldn't have bred, or of course you could move to Iceland where Culicoides midges are not found.

In reply to jonny taylor: The people of Lapland had a few different techniques to deal with the buggers, one of them was to when the season started to go out near naked and get eaten to near death and then be immune for the rest of the summer. A more reasonable approach is just to let the kids run around a bit dirty and stop using all of these "kills 99.9% of bacteria" things and stop using alco gel unless you work in a hospital.

In reply to SouthernSteve:
Fortunately for the gene pool I haven't!

In reply to everybody:
Sounds like the jury is out! Who knows, I may report back in 10 or 20 years time...

In reply to skog:


Exactly the same with me and my (French) wife. She's been in Scotland for 22 years, and it's not got any better!

In reply to seaofdreams:

Yeah, but I don't get horrendous allergic reactions to them. They just like biting me

To the OP: In terms of allergies, if you are exposed to something all the time, you can often build up a tolerance to it. If however you are exposed to something and then don't see it for years, and are then exposed to it again, you can get really nasty immune responses. So by all means expose your kids to midges, but if you want it to do any good you will have to keep on doing it regularly rather than doing it once and then not doing it again.