argh! head lice!

Squidgy

My poor baby has headlice (well not anymore, I've got rid of them - poor thing)

It just got me thinking, what's fact and what's fiction?

Is it true that they only like clean hair, and prefer thick long hair?

What's the best way to treat them? I don't really like using chemicals on my ickle two year olds hair.

Squidgy

catznine

I do feel for you! I work in a school and the problem erupts every now and then. If you don't like the chemical treatments there is an electric comb that zaps the nits as you comb their hair. It is called a magicomb and I think costs about £15. Try Boots or any good chemist. To prevent re-infestation try conditioner in the hair - makes it too slippy for the horrors to get a grip apparently! Also tie back girls hair as tightly as you can (without causing extreme pain of course :eek: as they do love to put their heads together for a natter! Oh and use a drop or two of tea tree oil in the final rinse after hairwashing - they don't like the smell! This I do myself and so far so good! I am not too good at links but if you type electric nit combs into your search bar lots of helpful sites should come up!

Good luck

Catz

VickyA_2

Head lice aren't really worried whether the hair is clean or absolutely filthy. There was a girl at my last teaching practice (a Yr 1) who's hair was a) a greasy mop and b) absolutely crawling with the little blighters. One of the teachers (lovely, clean hair) had managed to pick head lice up from her class.

lesley2004

I have never used chemicals when my childen have been infected, I just wet combed with plenty of conditioner every 2 days for a fortnight. You have to persevere it is the only way. It is often the same kids who spread the lice as they never completely get rid of them

Once you have got rid of the hair lice make sure you thoroughly wet comb your little ones hair once a week with plenty of conditioner. If you do this then if your child becomes infected again then you will catch any lice before they multiply!!

robnye

catznine wrote:

Oh and use a drop or two of tea tree oil in the final rinse after hairwashing - they don't like the smell! Good luck

yep i heard this the other day, never tried it on my 3 daughters, but as the youngest is still at junior school, dont have to worry about the older two.

still washing with conditioner and using a nit comb seems to clear it up, until she goes back to school....

they definately love clean hair.......

Quackers

Conditioner every 2 days really is the best way BUT I'm a bit dippy and forget so I use something called 'nice'n'clear'. As well as getting rid of the lice it can also be used as a deterrent 'cos you can rub a bit into either wet or dry hair to keep those lice at bay.

It is expensive but I find it fab and it has no chemicals - it contains something called Neem oil which is a natural seed oil and somehow it kills them nasty lice

They even have their own website which has some good info:

http://www.nicenclear.co.uk

System

When my kids had head lice i just put a few drops of tea tree oil into the shampoo and massaged it in. It actually stunned the little blighters and they used to lie there stunned in the lather. I also added it to the conditioner too for a double dose and wet combed their hair every 3 days until i was sure they were all dead.

Ticklemouse

My kids haven't (yet) been infected although there have been a fair few reports of them at school/pre school. I have one of those electric nit combs and a large bottle of value conditioner waiting. I heard that you leave the conditioner on for 2 hours before you comb it out - it suffocates the bleeders! Mind you, don't fancy trying that with a 2 yr old - I can foresee conditioner on carpet, clothes, walls etc etc etc

filigree_2

I've been wrestling with my own infestation for months till I went to the doctor who gave me a clean bill of health! I know I had lice at some point because I spotted a live one, but at some point I got rid of them. I was hurling all sorts of cures at my hair and I'm not sure what finally did the trick. I can tell you what I did try:

Massaging loads of mayonnaise into the hair, leave it in for an hour, shampoo out
Use tea tree shampoo and conditioner, put a few drops of neat oil in to each application - more of a deterrent than a treatment
Rinsing with white vinegar (you knew vinegar would feature at some point!) - not recommended if you have paper cuts. Ow ow ow!
Bleach or permanent hair dye - not suitable for children but worth considering for adults
Soaking hair in olive oil with a few drops of tea tree and lavender oils mixed in, then comb out (adding conditioner makes the combing easier)

and finally the weird one... I use Lush bath bombs (thankyou Santa) and lie back in the bath so my hair gets saturated. I know it relieved the horrible itching, don't know if it killed any lice. Lush bombs are mostly bicarb of soda, so some kind of bicarb rinse would be a cheaper alternative.

In future I'm going to regularly dye my hair (I usually do that anyway) and persist with adding tea tree oil to my shampoo. Hopefully if I make them unwelcome they won't come back!

Curry_Queen

The best way to get rid of lice is to comb damp hair daily for at least 2 weeks with a good quality metal nit-comb (preferably double row of teeth) ... no need for chemicals, expensive treatments or faffing about with lotions and potions!

Lice have a 2-week life cycle from hatching out of the egg (nit) to becoming fully mature and laying more eggs (nits). By combing on a daily basis you will remove the lice as they hatch (you'll notice larger adult lice in initial combings and they will gradually get smaller as you catch the newly hatched ones. These won't get chance to lay any more eggs so after 2 weeks you should have broken the cycle

I followed this method every time my kids got them and it never failed and they were lice free after 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately, not every kid in school gets treated at the same time so you need to be vigilant during an outbreak and check/comb hair on a weekly basis to catch them early.

iglimpse

As the mother of 3 girls, all with thick wavy hair, I decided to read all the science evidence when I got fed up with this trauma.

There is nothing you can apply to hair that will deter head lice. They can only be caught by direct contact. If you lather yourself in any potion / lotion it cannot work as a deterrent. They do not arrive on your hair then go onto somebody else if there is no further direct contact. They do not fly or jump.

You cannot simply LOOK in hair for head lice, you are deluding yourself if you find nothing. Conditioner applied to wet hair and a cheap fine tooth comb (with white sheet to see the blighters) does stop them gripping and hiding. It is not a treatment in itself so it does not kill or suffocate them, they always become stunned in any lather - stunned is temporary!! It is the only reliable way to detect them, provided you do it meticulously on all the hair.

TIME is the best treatment against head lice, if every parent (mainly 3-10 yr olds) regularly wet combed with conditioner, to detect them, large outbreaks would be very rare (they would still exsist, cannot be eradicated). The peak time for outbreaks is Oct / Nov. I wet combed with conditioner every week during the winter, less often in the summer.

If you do not do this, you will be faced with a large infestation that will then take a lot more TIME to clear. If you can do it regularly, the kids do get used to the routine. There is no easy quick fix soloution to this problem. TIME is a precious commodity but the trauma and stress of dealing with an outbreak (as opposed to finding them in one child without spread to all the others), is far worse. You have to invest the time to prevent the problem becoming more severe.

Chemical treatments are useful in a large infestation but that is only half of the treatment. You will still need to wet comb (every day) until you have broken the life cycle, then every week to prevent another large outbreak. Their food source is the scalp.

There is no evidence that the electric combs or other antiseptic treatments work. But regular combing is better than nothing. Chemicals should never be applied unless you find live head lice, they cannot work as a deterrent either. Itching on it's own (like I am now) does not mean you have lice.