Head Lice

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
Hi

Seems to be an infestation at my daughters school at the moment . On Friday I saw some of these little beasties creepy crawling around in her hair.....yuk.

This is my first experience of lice, hopefully the last, so I spent my weekend with one of the nit combs and various lotions and potions trying to get rid of them. The best thing I used was a hair straightener, it seemed to fry them and their eggs, they were falling out.

How long do I have to keep checking, I have done the nit combing twice with lots of conditioner, she has lovely shiny hair right now. Is there a really effective one stop lotion or potion to kill them outright with out harming her?? She has stopped scratching completely

Would be inerested to know other peoples experiences/advice

2
The special shampoo kills all the living lice. But the eggs stay glued to the hair and need to be combed out...

Can you still see eggs in her hair? I might be mistaken, but I think you have to repeat the treatment one week later, to be on the safe side, no?

And the best (!) if the infestation is still going strong, nothing prevents your daughter from catching some again... Some hair attracts lice, it's the colour or something. I'd advise tying your daughter's hair to minimise contacts with potentially infected other heads. And apparently essential oil like lavender sprayed in the hair is a natural repellent.

In a class I was teaching in some years ago, a little African girl got lice and her hair was so fuzzy that we never managed to comb it (we tried with her mum but it was too painful), and the parents had no choice but to shave the poor girl's head... Lice can really be a nightmare for parents and kids

3
Old fashioned method for protecting the hair against infestation is to not have loose hair, hair was kept flat and tied back, especially long hair was plaited.

The fashion these days seems to be long loose flowing hair - perfect for attracting lice.

4
Ask at the pharmacy. You can buy "Läuseshampoo" there and they will tell you what else you will have to do. I think you have to wash the bed-linen as well but I am not sure. Check with them they will know what to do. It's actually very common with children.

5
Hi there,

As I'm a hairdresser I come across lots of cases with them. But these days the lice are becoming immune to all these shop floor remedys!.

Personally and have always found the easiest for eggs is to use a conditioner 2 time a day until all have gone.

To prevent further problems with them use a tea-tree shampoo and conditioner I have and many of my clients have used this and hand had no further problems

6
Bed linen and towels should be washed at a very high temperature - especially the pillow cases, even the pillow itself.

7
Some doctors tell you to wash everything that touched an infested head (clothes, bed linens, toys, etc.) at 60 or freeze it for 24h or keep it in a closed bag for a week.

Others tell you that lice can't live on anything else but a head and die in a matter of hours, so there's no point bothering...

No idea who's right though?!

8
Sometimes I'd like to put my grandchildren in a 'closed bag for a week', especially when I've found myself with headlice from having read them bedtime stories.............the grandchildren that is, not the headlice, although the headlice obviously appreciate the bedtime stories too in their own way

9
Soldiers in WW1, living in trenches, had lice in the seams of their clothing - according to my old dad. The lice lived, bred, and spread, from there to anywhere else they could find that was cosy and warm.

The soldiers ran lit matches up and down the seams to burn the eggs.

So, with this in mind, I`d say wash everything at the highest temperature. Or burn it

10
Went through bouts of lice a few times when I was young, most often when one of us was in kindergarten (shared nap mats I guess), which got to be pretty embarrassing when my sis and I were teens and our younger siblings entered kindergarten and "shared" the beasties with us.

The thing that worked best was to get our hair cut short'ish (the boys had military crew cuts), wash everything as hot as it could take, including removable cushion covers for sofa and whatnot. For everything else, there was (probably still is) sprays to help kill the eggs and bugs (mattress, arm rests on couches, etc).

11
As an adult, I got infected with lice twice, both from cute girls with long flowing hair I was tutoring when I was a university student.

First time, I self-medicated by putting lots of alcohol in my hair and wrapping it with plastic for about 1 hour a day. This killed the adult (egg-bearing) lice, but not the eggs. By doing it daily, at some point there were no more lice of fertile age . Of course my hair was completely dried out after a while, but got back to normal with some nice treatments.

Second time, I was freaked out, and I took the opportunity to have a haircut and dye my hair blonde. The lice were instantly exterminated by the dye chemicals, problem solved.

12
Thanks for the pointers,

It's funny how even talking about it i started scratching.....The hair tongs / straighteners worked pretty well actually, I think I fried all the eggs so I will keep combing them to get them out.

I have washed everything but she is 6 and her head goes everywhere.....can't wash my rugs too.

I try to put her hair up in a ponytail, but she keeps undoing as it seems to annoy her, it so putting hair up is difficult.

I am trying to get hold of that tea tree oil.

13
Pretty embarrassing too, when talking children for a haircut, to have the hairdresser whisper the reason they're not prepared to cut their hair.

We manage to get rid of all the lice during the holidays, only to have them reappear as soon as school restarts.

Plaiting doesn't seem to help much as I'm sure the lice use the plaits as a super-efficient rope ladder

14
It's amazing how the myths of head lice continue.

The lice that infest your clothes, those are body lice, not head lice...

Head lice cannot live more than 24 hours off the human body, and only transfer from person to person directly. There is a theory that the reason why kids catch them more because they tend to touch heads with other kids...head lice can't physically jump, but they are very fast climbers.

Most pharmacy treatments will tell you to treat, wait one week and treat again.

I'm not a fan of using 'tea tree' as a preventative, because I worked with tea tree oil for 2.5 years in a lab situation (developing pharmaceuticals with tea tree oil) and out of our team of 8, two developed contact allergies to the oil, so I would not consider it a good idea to use it 'every day' - it's quite toxic.

Generally when they re-occur it's the same infestation (you didn't manage to eliminate all the eggs the first time) - the lice are easy to kill, the eggs are very difficult to kill, so that's why you wait a week - until the eggs hatch, then you knock them all off before they have time to reproduce.

There is a 'dimethicone' based product that we used here in Switzerland - I found it to be very effective - it's called "Hedrin" - it's non toxic, doesn't sting in the eyes, and isn't a pesticide based product, and you put it in the hair, leave it overnight - wash it out in the morning - it works by suffocating the bugs - and it really does seem to work...

Please don't do anything too drastic. They aren't dangerous or poisonous, only about 20% of people are actually allergic and will itch, the other 80% of kids/adults have them and don't even know that they are there.

Head lice like straight, clean, not-too-oily hair. They are much harder to see on dark-coloured hair, and they tend to stick around the backs of the ears and across the neckline, where the skin is warmer.

15
When I was a child we used petroleum oil-was saying that it worked during the world war...- all in the end I had wounds not because of scratching my head, but no lice...

Nowadays, the shampoo (not the spray!) what you can get in the swiss pharmacies is pretty good.

So you make a treatment with (put it on, brush it out, wash it off), and you wash-iron bedding and towels. If the person was highly effected -the lice were moving- you should repeat the treatment on the following day, or even the next, if after all you still see some- don't worry, you will have to repeat the treatment anyway, in about 5, 10, 14, 20 days considering that your environment can be effected, so you can still get it back, even if you have killed them all.

Last but not least they like nice and shiny hair...

Good luck!

PS.:It happens quite a few times when children are growing up.

16
I used Hedrin for an infestation and since then have used Rausch Weidenrinden shampoo as the lice don't seem to like it. I work with kids and there are outbreaks every now and again.

17
Our best remedy is to comb the kids (and our) hair with an electric lice comb periodically and in particullar if they have been to camp or slumber party.

If they got an infestation, I first comb with the electric comb to kill off all mature lice and then I comb with normal lice comb to get all the nits and eggs out. Comb and repete twice daily (morning/evening) for at least a week. I don't use any chemicals at all as I find the electric + manual comb is just as effective.

Hair straightener was a good idea - hadn't thought of that one! :-)

18
Lice, and many other things, don`t like Permethrin . Difficult enough to find in the States, very unsure about Switzerland. This would be your preventative for clothing, bedding and the like.

19
My kids have had lice, and I think they have just gotten them again !

But about tea tree oil - some studies have linked gynecomastia in young boys with the use of tea tree oil. My wife is a researcher in endocrinology; she found this out. So it's not something to use as a preventative.

20
Ok! Hands up who, after reading this post, has given their heads a good scratch?

I would suggest a good insect spray and a shave, but these people seem to differ.

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