Now that it’s summertime, what are the best functional medicine practices for symptomatically treating mosquito, black fly, or bug bites? Would that answer change if the patient seems to develop impressive wheals as a bite-size reaction?

Amy Nett: Okay, so just sort of a generic treating bug bites and presumably what you’re concerned about here again, is a patient who’s relatively hypersensitive or hyperreactive at least to those bug bites. You could try using quercetin or other antihistamine support, but, of course, quercetin is going to be essentially a natural antihistamine, so that’s where I would start. If they’re having a stronger reaction, you might need to consider doing more typical antihistamine.

For a topical treatment on the bite, on the actual site, there’s a product called Emu Joy to relieve the pain. You can just get that actually on Amazon, and that can be used topically.