Bloodsucking leeches bite to feed.
They only feed on fresh blood drawn from a living mammal or human.
Leech exhilaration is the state a person enters after leech therapy or after being bitten by a blood-sucking leech.
This high is generated by the following leech types:
Hirudo Medicinalis (Western European medical leech),
Hirudo Verbana (Eastern European medical leech),
Hirudinaria orientalis (Asian medicinal leech),
Hirudea Manilienses (buffalo leeches) and
Hirudenia Decora (North American leech).
Leeches have access to your bloodstream in several ways;
1. Through leech therapy / hirudotherapy.
If you are in a situation where leech therapy is needed to treat an illness or medical condition, or if you would apply a Hirudo Medicinalis or Hirudo Verbana leech as part of your body's acupuncture / acupressure point therapy.
Alternatively, leeches are applied to swollen or infected limbs or parts of the body.
2. Bloodsucking leeches are attached to your body by placing them on a vein or a suitable part of the body to feed them.
3. They can be bitten by a wild leech in the areas of their natural habitats such as leech lakes or ponds full of leeches.
As soon as you are bitten by the blood-sucking insect, the leech does very important work to secure its next meal.
First, he cuts the skin into a shape that resembles the triangular Mercedes sign.
Your multiple rows of teeth total 360 pieces and are arranged in such a way that the most painless cut is made for suction.
The leech thus forms a wound that heals easily, so that in the future it can cling to its prey repeatedly and feed on the blood of the same subject several times.
After cutting through the 7 layers of skin, a bloodsucker begins to excrete a strong group of no less than 360 enzymes to dissolve disruptive particles along the way and to dilute its host's blood to a point where it is extremely easy to suck in.
Among the 360 compounds that are excreted in the bloodstream is the most important complex called hirudin, the proprietary enzyme of the leech. Hirudin has the ability to dissolve calcified particles and cholesterol information.
In fact, the Hirudo enzyme complex is so powerful that it can dissolve almost anything on its way while keeping the blood vessels and capillaries in sync.
The leech spends about 5 to 7 minutes spitting out blood thinning and dissolving compounds by injecting them using its body's expanding and contracting movements.
As soon as everything in the blood vessels and capillaries has liquefied to a very fine degree and the leech has liked what it did, it begins to suck.
Sucking blood from its host takes an average of 10 to 15 minutes, so both injecting and sucking take a total of 30 to 40 minutes.
Once the hirudin and its compounds enter the bloodstream, they travel far and wide and continue to liquefy everything on their way.
This is the reason why most leech bites do not stop bleeding until 10 to 12 hours after feeding a leech.