Do B Vitamins Keep Mosquitoes Away?

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I am a Registered and Licensed Dietitian with The Austin Regional Clinic and I'm going to answer the question do B Vitamins keep mosquitoes away? Now this myth has actually been around for many years. A lot of people feel like Vitamin B 1 in particular which is Thiamine can actually keep mosquitoes away. A lot of people have said that if they take Vitamin B 1 or a Thiamine supplement before going outside or before working in the yard that it actually prevents them from getting mosquito bites however, when actual studies have been done on this it hasn't come to pass. Whenever research has been done by the Canadian government and the United States government to actually test this every time it showed that there was no decrease in mosquito bites and other people have tried it themselves and have also said that they didn't notice any decrease in mosquito bites and people that have tried it that feel like it does decrease their mosquito bites it may be coincidence, it may be something in their body where perhaps they were actually deficient for some reason in that particular vitamin and for whatever reason it may have increased their immunity to the mosquitoes. But again there isn't actually any scientific evidence and any of the studies that have been done on it haven't actually proved that it truly does work so your best bet is not to rely on Thiamine to prevent mosquito bites. Your best bet if you are a person who suffers from frequent mosquito bites is to use some type of insect repellent."