This summer my mother has decided that cure is better than prevention for insect bites.
She has a small device like a gas lighter that uses a peizo electric crystal to cause a small spark like a gas lighter but it is positioned so that when pushed against your skin it causes a small jolt. This she claims takes away the sting of an insect bite. I’ve tried it and it does cause a small electric jolt but I don’t know about how it could cure an insect sting whether it stops pain or otherwise. Could it work?
Sorry I only meant it to appear once
my guess is that it works by “pain relief via induction” i.e. the EXACT same way that “analgesic rubs” work (by creating another iritation at the site of the pain, the brain is fooled into forgetting about teh old pain) I use a similar method that didn’t require me to shell-out money for a “piezo-electric” device (which sounds fancy, but doesn’t really require piezo-electrics to work. A battery and a few wires would do the trick). I simply press my thumbnail into the mosquito bite and make a deep “+” sign in the middle of the bite. Seems to do a pretty good job of relieving the itch for a while.
BTW, piezo-electrics is simply the notion that some materials have a crystal-distortion/electric relationship (i.e. running electric current through them causes a distortion in the crystal structure, and “bending the crystal” generates an electric potential." They have a variety of uses, from highly sensitive Scanning Tunneling Microscopes to the rather common Quartz Watch. My feeling towards any health benefits is that you would get the same sort of relief from wearing a copper bracelet or some magnetic shoes around (i.e. none).
Probably, but I think that it’s been done before.
Back in '84, when I was recovering from some nerve damage in my leg, I used to get a really painful sensation. It felt like my leg was falling asleep and catching fire at the same time. My doctor prescribed a TENS unit, which was a small box with a probe that went over the affected area and gave a small shock every few seconds. The idea was that the regenerating nerve was creating its own sensations, which could be overridden by the pulses out of the TENS unit.
I wonder if these work for the same reason that it helps to rub your scalp after you hit your head. Maybe the extra sensation “tires” the nerve endings for a while…?
I saw something a few days back where a reporter was talking to an expert on health care hoaxes over the ages. He had a collection going back to the old snake oil days. He had one of these devices, which were all the infomercial rage a few years ago. According to him, they had been banned by the government when it was discovered that they were nothing but BBQ lighting devices, being sold at exorbitant prices.
I’m sold.
Supposedly it has some basis in fact, but the ‘facts’ I know are vague memories from a story I read in the distant past.
It goes like this: An urban doctor in South America went to a remote village for whatever reason. While he was there a child was bitten by a venomous snake. The child was rushed to a villager who had an old motorcycle and the owner pulled loose the spark plug wire; attached the bite area between the wire and the top of the spark plug and kicked the engine over several times. The result of that was that the venom vas rendered non-toxic.
So the doc goes back to the lab and, after suitable experimentation, discovers that snake venom is protein and protein molecule chains can be disrupted…or destroyed… by either a strong electric current or a high voltage or a combination of the two, I don’t remember. He develops a do-it-yourself venom neutralizer consting of a battery and a coil, or a magneto, or something that would put 50kV at <1amp across a bite area and it worked wonderfully.
I never saw any medical evidence; I doubt it would be effective against mosquito bites and I certainly do not wish to defend the theory or any part of the story. I’m quite sure that the piezoelectric part of the original post is bunk and does not work as advertised. I’m merely passing on what I remember reading FWIW.
Try Benadryl extra-strength gel topically on insect bites.
Addendum:
I believed the story enough that for years afterwards I carried a magneto in my back pack on camping trips in case a rattlesnake got me so I could beat the damn snake to death with it.