How To Treat a Mosquito Bite

Mosquito bites that seem to be as much a part of summer as a day at the beach and pink lemonade, though not nearly as pleasant as either one. From home remedies to more sophisticated preparations you can get from health food stores, treating mosquito bites is almost as easy as getting them.

Some mosquito bite remedies you can pick up at your local health food store include tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract.  Tea tree oil is great to use if there is any inflammation from the bite.  A few drops applied directly to the mosquito bite every couple of hours will greatly reduce the redness and irritation as well as to quell the itching. 

Grapefruit seed extract has so many other uses besides treating mosquito bites use that it is a very practical solution to keep in the house. Like Calamine lotion and tea tree oil, grapefruit seed extract has the same properties that help to alleviate itching, reduce inflammation, and accelerate healing of the skin.  Apply grapefruit seed extract directly to the mosquito bite.  If someone's skin is sensitive, you can mix the grapefruit seed extract with a little water or vegetable oil.  Because of the diverse uses of grapefruit seed extract, once you’ve seen how well it works as a topical application for treating mosquito bites, you may never want to use anything else.

One of my memories of a summer evening with Grandma was her paste of baking soda and water, which she applied liberally to my brother’s mosquito-bitten arm. It seemed that after that application, I would never hear another word about how itchy he was. Now this might have been because he didn’t like that ugly looking blob of paste on his arm and was worried he’d get more of the same, or it could have been that it really did help. I remember trying to help by asking whether she had any Calamine lotion because that was my mother’s choice of remedies, but Grandma didn’t have any so she used her own paste of the baking soda and water which she told me was every bit as good as Calamine lotion and probably better for treating mosquito bites.