The Head Lice Life Cycle

The Head Lice Life Cycle

Treating head lice involves understanding how these annoying yet strangely fascinating little creatures go about their lives, and part and parcel of that is reading into the interesting quirks of the head lice life cycle.

First, it is important to know a couple of things that people often overlook: the first is that it is entirely possible for a patient to have the head lice eggs – otherwise known as nits – but for the head lice to have departed, and second is that you do not need to be someone with perennially dirty hair to suffer from a head lice infestation as they will inhabit anyone’s head!

Starting with the female adult head lice, she lives for as many as thirty days, feeding off our blood and scuttling around our scalp and hair. She cannot fly – no head lice can – and moves by walking from hair to hair, this being the reason why they spread quickly among children who enjoy unhindered physical contact with each other, and she lays up to eight eggs a day.

A quick calculation gives us in excess of 200 eggs over her lifetime, and each one of those head lice eggs is laid at the base of a hair follicle, and attached to the hair by a very strong adhesive that comes with it. The nits remain as such for a week, and when hatched they take another week to reach maturity, all this time feeding off the blood to reach the required size – about the size of a pinhead.

More About Head Lice Cycle

Once at adult status, they begin the cycle again, the females laying every day to add to the population of breeding lice. This continued cycle explains why much in the world of head lice treatment involves repeated routines over a period of weeks; it is possible to remove all the adult females in one wet combing session, yet be left with a series of eggs that may hatch in anywhere between one and seven days. This means that regular inspection is necessary in order to make sure the new head lice do not reach breeding age and begin to create yet more nits.

Understanding this head lice cycle is key to successful head lice treatment, and with the many information sites that abound on the internet it is even possible to look at some very detailed head lice pictures in order to be able to recognize the creatures, and being able to recognize and correctly identify the presence of head lice is one way of making sure that an infestation does not get out of control.

Best Treatment For Head Lice

Liceadex Lice & Nit Removal Gel 
Liceadex One Step Lice & Nit Removal Gel is a special, one of a kind, natural formula that provides a safe effective way to kill lice and their eggs, without traditional and potentially harmful pesticide ingredients like permethrin or pyrethrum found in many over the counter solutions or expensive, multiple-step, essential oil-based solutions. Our formulation is one of the fastest-acting and most effective products you will find today. Treat head lice now!
-All About Head Lice.