2/1/2008
What can we find in our beds?
After a day of hard work, you enjoy coming home, having dinner, maybe watching TV, reading a book, and later in the evening you will go to bed and rest. Your bed is mostly very comfortable and it seems to be clean, especially when you put new sheets on it. If you can not sleep at home (business trip or vacation), you probably sleep in a motel or hotel bed. In that case, you definitely think you are sleeping in a clean environment. Sometimes, you might stay the night with friends or family and then you sleep mostly in a spare bed, which also has clean sheets.
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6/28/2007
The Golden Rules of Housebreaking
Housebreaking your puppy is probably the most important thing you teach your dog in its first year of life. Yet, everyone has a different idea about how to achieve a housebroken puppy. Part of this is because each puppy is an individual and becomes housebroken at a different pace and in a different way. Also each household has different constraints and environments to work with. After 15 years of giving clients advice, and housebreaking my own puppies, I have devised a few golden rules to work with.
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2/8/2007
The history of the anti-mite product Acarosan®
For many years, we have known that house-dust mites, which live in beds, furniture and carpets of our dwellings, can cause allergies to humans. Therefore, it is not remarkable that as soon as this fact was known, many companies offered products to kill mites, in order to help cure the allergy. However, it is not the mite itself, but the allergens it produces that can make us sick. So an effective product should not only eradicate the mite itself, but also should remove the allergenic debris of this spider-like animal.
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8/15/2006
Dust, Mites, Allergens and Allergen Control
When beams of sunlight fall at a low angle in a room, you see an enormous amount of small dots which are floating in the air. These dots are dust, or more specifically, airborne dust. Dust is defined as a collection of particles that can become airborne, but on the other hand, you certainly know and see that dust can also be found on the top of furniture, shelves or cupboards. In this case, the dust is not airborne anymore, it is settled. Therefore, “settled” dust can be found also in carpets, in mattresses and in fact throughout the whole dwelling, due to the fact that the dust have penetrated or trapped into these items.
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5/11/2006
Mite Allergy and New Life
It is spring time, and everywhere you look in nature you see young life or the preparations for that purpose. In the meadows there are lambs with their parent-sheep, and many birds are preparing and/or building their nests. Also interesting to see is how well the parents take care of their offspring.
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2/13/2006
Entomophobia: the fear of insects, spiders and mites
To the above mentioned theme, I can tell you a true story (wink, wink). During her holiday in Africa a woman was bitten by something small while sitting on the porch of her hotel. The sting first became a small pimple, and then grew to be a furuncle (boil) over time. The woman did not like to go to a physician and tried to cure the inflammation herself with creams and tinctures. One morning she awoke, went to the bathroom and pressed softly on the boil so that it opened. To her amazement, many small black spiders crawled out of the wound. The woman only gave a yell before she fainted...
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5/25/2005
Living on the Human Being
You certainly remember the first man on the moon (Neil Armstrong), but do you also remember the first animal on the moon? No? Neither do I, but I know that a tremendous amount of living creatures (like mites, amoeba, flagellate, bacteria) also joined Neil on his first trip on the moon. These animals lived on or in the body of this astronaut, and also live on the bodies of all other human beings. This is very normal, and a good thing.
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1/18/2005
Mites Inside Greenhouses and Stables
Mites are not only present in nature, but also in houses, the so-called domestic mites. However, other “houses” are inhabited by mites as well. Mites are part of the normal ecosystem in greenhouses, stables and barns.
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10/18/2004
Therapeutic Regimen for Allergies
Around 55 million people in the US suffer from an allergic disease. However, only a small percentage of them are treated by a professional allergist. The therapeutic regimen of these allergists is diverse, and depends on the causative agent of the disease. Food allergies are treated differently than seasonal allergies (like hay fever caused by pollen), and these differ from the treatment of perennial allergies caused by mites or pets.
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8/8/2004
Parasites on our Pets
We know many types of insects and mites can be bothersome to humans, but they can also trouble pets such as dogs, cats and even horses. The best known of these ectoparasitic indoor insects are fleas. However, there are other insects and mites that can attack our beloved friends, such as ticks, itch, poultry or fur mites and chiggers. We also now know that just like humans, pets can be allergic to mite waste allergens, especially horses and dogs.
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