Head Lice Treatment Choices
Head Lice Treatment – A World of Choice
Finding out that you or your child has head lice is not a sign that your personal hygiene is lacking as the louse is just as likely to make its home in the hair of on who washes daily as one who is less frequent in their regime. Furthermore, it can be several weeks before the presence of lice is detected, these creatures are tiny and the itching that is the major symptom has been known to appear after as long as three months, meaning that by the time you make the diagnosis the lice have spread to others.
The various methods of head lice treatment can be wildly different, and while many people prefer to use over the counter, or prescribed, insecticide lotions and shampoos, there are a variety of home remedies for head lice that can be tried.
If you want to search these in depth then run a web search with the words ‘head lice information’ and you will be directed to a wealth of websites dealing in head lice symptoms, the head lice life cycle and more, and even to sites that display some quite amazing head lice pictures.
However, let’s look at a few of the more popular treatments for head lice: one that is essential whether used on its own or in conjunction with others is the wet comb technique, sometimes known as Bug Busting. This involves the use of a special head lice comb, a device with very close teeth that drags the louse from the hair and, hopefully, the nit too.
Another method of treatment is to wash with a shampoo containing the essential oil Tea Tree Oil, which comes from an Australian plant by that name and is known to have certain healing qualities. It is claimed to drive the lice away and, as it is completely harmless, may well be worth a try. Equally harmless is the practice of rubbing vinegar into the scalp, as this loosens the ‘glue’ with which nits are attached to the hair, making it much easier for the nit comb to remove them, but bordering on the bizarre are the smothering methods: in these, a substance such as mayonnaise, or preferably olive oil, is applied to the scalp, and it acts to seal the holes through which the mites breathe, thus suffocating them.
Whichever method you use there is plenty information available on websites, and it is worth reading the testimonies of others before trying out different methods.
Head Lice Hatching Routine
Dealing with Head Lice
One of the difficulties involved in treating a head lice infestation comes from not understanding the life cycle of these annoying but oddly fascinating little creatures; diminutive they may be, miniscule even, yet they can cause a lot of trouble in a very short time!
Fortunately the age of the internet has led to us being able to understand the way these creatures live their lives – and feats on our blood – much more readily thanks to the prevalence of highly detailed and illustrated websites that show us exactly what happens, where and when. Summarizing the head lice hatching point is essential to understand where we need to be, and what we need to do, to catch these pesky creatures in order that they do not spread out of control.
The head lice is distinct from the nit – a point many people are unaware of; the former is the living creature, the tiny wingless insect that crawls around in your hair and pierces the skin to suck up blood – while the latter is the egg of the adult, and is by far the most difficult part of the equation to deal with. Indeed, the nits are so small that they may easily be missed with the best of head lice combs, and as such demand attention above and beyond that given to the living creatures.
Head Lice Treatment Regime
In any treatment regime – whether using the likes of Malathion or Permethrin head lice treatment, or even the controversial Lindane, or resorting to herbal remedies or the bizarre suffocation by mayonnaise ritual – understanding that there may have been nits missed in the first treatment is essential and understanding the life cycle – and where the hatching point is – is essential.
An adult louse lives for approximately one month, and in that time she lays around 200 nits – around six every day – and the nits remain as eggs, attached to our hair by a very clever natural glue, for about one week. Once hatched they become head lice nymphs, young lice that are rapidly – in one to two weeks – advanced to breeding adults, and the whole episode begins again.
Knowing that we have one week from laying to hatching means we need to keep an eye out for new born nymphs for that period of time after clearing the head of lice, and we then have a further week to get rid of them before they begin laying. This is why regular, thorough examination is the best way to prevent head lice, and why understanding the hatching routine is vital.
Most Effective Head Lice Treatment
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, using specialized surfactants and minerals such as bromides, is the fastest-acting and most effective head lice products you will find today without using pesticides.
- Kills all lice and eggs naturally in minutes
- Contains no pesticides
- Allows for easy pain-free, tangle-free nit and debris removal
- Rinses completely clean without oily residue
- Can be used multiple times safely
- Can be used safely after “other” treatments have been done
-Head Lice Hatching Routine-
Head Louse Treatment
Head Louse Treatment – A World of Choice
Head lice present an annoying problem to many of us over our lifetime, and those that have children will undoubtedly be affected by the creatures at some point. They are very small insects and, therefore, very difficult to detect, yet when diagnosed there are many different, and wildly varied, methods of dealing with them – some which border on the downright odd!
The first method of treatment we have to talk about is the most important – the head lice comb. This is a specially designed comb that is intended to help to remove the lice, and their nits, from the hair: it does so by way of very closely coupled teeth, much closer than a standard comb and tight enough to snag lice, and by having extra depth that can reach right to the root of the hair, where the eggs, the nits, are habitually laid.
The comb must be used with whatever other treatments are chosen, as it is essential in removing any stragglers that may have been left behind; when one considers that an adult female lives for thirty days and lays up to eight nits each day you can see how many eggs there may be and how easy it would be to miss some.
Further to the comb is the use of head lice shampoo, and this comes in two forms – insecticide and natural; the former involves the use of chemicals, such as the Ovide head lice treatment that included the insecticide Malathion, and while these are scientifically proven concoctions it remains so that many people shy away from using them for fear of side effects.
The alternative is shampoos that include natural ingredients, sometimes herbal remedies that are believed to provide relief from the louse problem. Among the most popular is the use of the essential oil from the Tea Tree plant, whose leaves have been distilled for many centuries by the Aborigines to provide the oil, which is regarded as having very strong medicinal properties.
When any of these are used it is essential that the shampoo is followed up by a rinse and a comb through with the nit comb in order to check for any remaining lice.
The final method involves smothering the creatures, and is perhaps the most bizarre: the use of mayonnaise, smeared on the head, or olive oil may sound slightly ridiculous, but these substances at to fill the holes through which the lice breathe, leaving them suffocated and dead. Again, a comb through with the nit comb follows, and whichever method proves successful for you will become apparent.
