Head Lice Nit – a Guide

Millions of people, primarily children, will suffer from head lice during their lifetime, and it is an irritating experience that makes one feel as though they have become dirty. In fact, having head lice is not necessarily a sign of inefficient hygiene, as the louse will happily live on the cleanest of hair, and as they are so easily spread and difficult to detect, it can be the case that a population has become established before the host notices. Indeed, with the symptomatic itching taking weeks in some cases to manifest, it is easy to see how an infestation of itchy head lice can be easily overlooked.
Nevertheless, there is one important factor that is essential to treating the problem, and that is that the head lice nit is central to the eradication of a colony; the nit is the egg of the louse, as distinct from the head louse itself, and it is a very minute egg that is laid attached to the lower part of a hair, near the scalp, and it is attached by a notoriously strong ‘glue’.
The traditional, and very successful plus highly recommended, method of dealing with head lice is to wet comb the hair with a special head lice comb; indeed every method of treatment will include this routine at some point. The problem is that, while the comb is likely to remove most, if not all, of the live lice, it is also likely it will leave some unnoticed nits behind.
A nit remains in that state for a week before it emerges as a young, very tiny, louse, and just another week down the line it has feasted on enough of your blood to reach adulthood; the problem is clear – if nits are remaining, they must be caught before they hatch and, if not, before they reach breeding age. This is why any routine involves paying extra attention to removing the nits.
One method of making nit removal easier is to apply vinegar – common household vinegar, preferably white – to the scalp, as the acid in the vinegar dissolves the adhesive that holds the nit in place, making it far easier to drag the nit from the hair with the comb.
Nits are so small that even the most in depth examination is unlikely to see them all, so if you do find yourself dealing with a louse infestation, make sure you repeat the process once the lice have been removed.