We all know someone who has been bitten over the years by these pesky little buggers! You’ve probably been bitten yourself at some point, but what should you do when bitten and what can you do to prevent getting bitten?

Horseflies tend to live in grassy areas, around water and trees and love the heat and warm blooded mammals therefore, as more and more people venture outside for picnics, exercise and social gatherings wearing less clothing exposing more skin the horsefly has an abundance of blood to feed on!

• Red meat, pork and poultry.

• Seafood.

• Beans.

• Dark green leafy vegetables, such as spinach.

• Dried fruit, such as raisins and apricots.

• Iron-fortified cereals, breads and pastas.

• Peas.

Essentially, there isn’t enough oxygen left in your body (as oxygen cells piggybacks iron cells in your blood) to digest the food you’ve eaten after all the other tasks you’ve done prior to this moment; therefore, your brain tries to conserve energy demand and tires to shut you down. 

Of course, its 3pm and we still have pot load to do, so we head for the caffeine or a quick slap around the face to wake yourself up – sound familiar? Yea? You need more iron!

If this is you, I’d probably consider a couple of months worth of iron supplementation as well as adding iron rich foods to your nutrition!

Firstly, draw a circle around the bite to keep an eye on how big it gets. It will most likely be infected, so get it and keep it clean and ice, ice, ice! Get it cold! Quickly! 

The more time and frequency you can get the bite area cold directly afterwards will help no end! This process will draw bad blood away from the area and take nasty crap with it and bring fresh blood to the area – like washing it out.

You will most likely have been bitten on a limb such as leg or arm, so elevate! Raise you leg or arm as high as you can for as long as you – preferably with cold treatment to the area too! Again, this will promote drainage of the area.

Next and quite important – get an antihistamine! Something such as Benadryl works well – as long as you’re not allergic of course! 

The swelling is your body producing histamine into the blood stream to help the white blood cells fight and defend the immune system – It just isn’t the best process for this bite and can cause more issues. Taking an antihistamine, along with the strategies above – will help no end and hopefully prevent the need to take antibiotics! – that’s a different story!

If you do not take action early from the bite as mentioned above (Ice, elevation, antihistamine) you will most likely end up needing antibiotics!

If you need any further help with this or other health and fitness issues, please do get in touch.

If you found this article useful, please do share it on your social media platforms or email it to someone who maybe suffers with bites.

Thanks for reading.