I need help with information about head lice, please

[Jilly]

I received a phone call whilst at work yesterday from a friend and she was telling me about the head lice that her grandchildren brought home from school. To be honest, despite having a child who went to all kinds of school and programs, being a scout leader, art teacher and librarian, I have absolutely no experience with head lice, save for the yearly scalp searching that I helped the health nurse to do. Additional honesty means that I have to share that I laughed a lot and she was miffed with me.

I apologized and called her today to see if she was still speaking to me.

She said that she has thoroughly cleaned and sanitized her house, has used a few different types of lice-be-gone-dammet shampoo, but she still has the critters.

I asked her why she thinks she still has them and she told me that she can feel something on her scalp.

So, I researched it a bit and here are some of the things I learned.

Lice do not live in the house, but pretty much just on the head. If they fall off, they die fairly soon without blood meals. So, all that cleaning is pretty much pointless.

Those lice shampoos are not really shampoo, but a carrier for insecticides. Using several different brands over the course of a month seems to be a bad idea.

The same cautions are for using any kind of insecticide bombing of the house.

Tea tree oil, neem, olive oil, petroleum jelly, coconut oil, and the like have approximately an 80% success rate, and might have to be repeated several times, which seems to be much better than the other stuff, anyway, so might be worth a try.

Heating the head/hair/scalp to higher than 53-point-something degrees desicates both lice and nits. I read a really cool study on it. My friend has one of those old bonnet style hair dryers, so we might try that.

My guess is that even though she has managed to survive at least four or five treatments with the lice shampoos, the lice and nits have probably expired at some point and the crawling feeling she has on her scalp might be because she injured or disturbed the skin so much that it feel weird and crawly. Someone told her to use vinegar, and she has been doing that, but constantly rinsing with vinegar might be drying in itself to cause some itching. Frankly, just talking to her made my head feel itchy, as does writing this. Erp. Shudder.

I am going to her house tomorrow afternoon to use a nit comb to check her head. I am taking my blow dryer, some of her favorite chocolate and more apologies for finding the whole thing so amusing. Shame on me. She wants me to cut her hair, but I will leave that as a last resort.

So, my question is, does anyone have any tried and true treatments for getting rid of head lice and nits?

[Tussiemussies]

Hi Jilly,

Did a search on Google for natural treatments and this is what came up:

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+get+rid+of+head+lice+and+nits+natu rally&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

Hope this helps! Chris

[Jilly]

Thanks, Chris. I missed most of those links. The photo of a jar of mayonnaise on one of them is making me hungry, but I am resisting the urge to make macaroni salad.

I am adding onion juice to the suggestions, although I just have to draw the line at custard apples. Sheesh.

Anyway, whatever she decides to let me use on her, the most important thing is to do the whole nit combing process as often as possible, even if I have to go over there and help her with it every day for a couple of weeks.

Well, off to bed for a couple of hours. Thanks again, for the help.

[Float On]

My oldest son got them on a mission trip to the Indian reservation. Those poor children have heads full of lice because most of the parents won't treat them.
I did add strong tee tree oil to his regular shampoo. Every night we combed and mayo'd his head (real mayo not the fake stuff) and he'd sleep in that all night in a shower cap with wrapped tight with saran wrap. Every morning more tree tree oil shampoo and a hot blow dry. I didn't wash everything in the house. They never jumped to other people (though we all itched liked crazy in sympathy). The dog didn't even get them. It took a good week or so and then we repeated the treatments once a week for a while...just in case. We never had them again and we've returned to the reservation several times.

Sometimes you just can't help but be exposed to those critters. Your friend probably assumes everyone will look down on her or will somehow just know. Just reassure her that it's not uncommon, it's not from being 'dirty', it doesn't only happen to poor people, and the critters are strong and pretty resistant to all the commercial treatments (which are probably not healthy for us either).

[sunnyjoe]

In many communities there are now specialized salons to deal with lice removal. Ours offeres natural treatments and experienced people to comb them out. They also sell preventative products (we use a leave in spray). Maybe your friend would be reassured by a visit to such a place?

[creaker]

If she's just using "she can feel something on her scalp", she needs to do something else. She should get someone who knows what they are doing to check for her, it's nice that you are doing that.

Episodes like this can make you hypersenstive to everything - normally you can feel all sorts of somethings everywhere, but usually you aren't "listening". I'm getting itchy just thinking about it.

[Aqua Blue]

A friend told me that her parents cared for a lot of foster children when she was growing up and many of them had lice. Her Mom always had my friend and her siblings rinse their hair with vinegar after washing. She said that she and her 4 siblings never had head lice. We decided the vinegar must have pickled them!

[Gardenarian]

Oh yes, we had a bout with head lice. A friend recommended the Nuvo method (http://www.nuvoforheadlice.com/) and it worked for us. Not such a big deal - I have found it much more difficult to get rid of fleas.

The Nuvo method is applying Cetaphil cleanser (or generic equivalent) to wet hair, and then blow drying until very dry. The Cetaphil effectively "shrink wraps" the lice, drying and killing them. You need to do it once a week for three weeks (I think), but we had no itching or signs of lice after the first treatment.

The lice poison shampoos are just that - poison - and I had no desire to pour that stuff on my 9yo's head.

(The reason the site is so hard to navigate - well, originally the guy was trying to sell the Nuvo method and prevent other people from sharing the info on the web. The courts ruled that illegal as he didn't invent Cetaphil. It was a clever idea, and I guess he is still angry about not be able to get any money from it.)

[Float On]

I'd never heard of using Cetaphil, Gardenarian. That sounds very interesting. I wonder if it would work on Fleas - they are so hard to get rid of anymore. I'm afraid I'm making the dog sick with all the flea baths I've had to give him. He hates the drops so much and they don't appear effective anymore anyway. Not sure I could get him to stand still for a blow dryer on the cetaphil but I may just try.

[redfox]

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00656/head-lice.html

[Jilly]

Cetaphil was one of the treatments I found earlier this week. Both of us are relatively resouce-compromised, so buying any is not possible.

She has been rinsing her hair with vinegar, and the research I did indicates that it helps to dry out, desicate, the lice and nits. Not sure I entirely understand the science, but the process makes sense.

The problem my friend is having is not embarrassment, but the lack of someone to examine her scalp and remove the lice and nits. She has three lodgers, and not one will help her, not so much by deliberate unkindness, but because of the ick factor. It was an entirely different experience to perform the search on an adult than on a child, so I am not judging them. I found it difficult and I was very motivated and fully committed to doing it.

She used the nit comb as much as possible, but I found large infestations on the sides of her head, where our hair is thicker, just above our ears. Like me, she is beginning to thin on the top, so much easier for her to comb out the critters and their spawn.

What we had available yesterday was half of a jar of mayo, a shower cap and dish soap, as well as a little, teeny bit of vinegar, because she has been rinsing her hair every other day with it. She also has one of those hard bonnet hair dryers. So, I checked her entire hear, covered her scalp with the mayo, put on the shower cat and she did two 20 minute sessions under the dryer.

I went home and she let the stuff sit for a couple of hours and then washed with the dish soap. Following that, she did one last rinse with apple cider vinegar (all she had left). I also left the sites open on her laptop so that she could read more about what we will be doing and why we are doing it. Prior to this, she just used a different

When I go back on Monday morning, I will be taking the olive oil that I use for soap making, more vinegar and better lice combs. On my way over there, I will be stopping for tea tree and neem oils and the pharmacy for some of the lice-be-gone stuff that Dr. Weil suggests, none of which I can afford, but I took some of the money I had put away for something else.

Much thanks to everyone who helped me with this.

Oh, and we are such creatures of habit. The first thing I did when I finished exploring her scalp was to run my hand through my hair. Erp.

[Packratona!]

Just saturate your hair in petrolium jelly and put on a shower cap. Keep on for a couple days then wash it out with hot water and lots of repeated shampooing. Comb through with a lice comb to get rid of the dead residue. Also a good idea to go away for a few days while you do this; any living bugs in your house will be dead of starvation by the time you get back.

[Gardenarian]

Also a good idea to go away for a few days while you do this; any living bugs in your house will be dead of starvation by the time you get back.
That is a really good idea - the constant laundering and vacuuming really is awful. And while your head is covered (in whatever) you will not be spreading lice.

[Jilly]

She decided that she wanted to try the Cetaphil method. I researched it and we went through what the process requires, and she still wanted to do it. So, we did.

She used more OTC chemical stuff on Saturday and I am pretty sure that she did so again yesterday. To be honest, whilst the layering of different chemicals freaks me out, I think that if I had those miserable critters I would immediately design a helmet thing that covered all of my hair and I would fill it with chemicals and wear it for a week. I swear.

Anyway, I suspected that she would not be able to resist the allure of malathion and its friends, and came prepared with lots of nitrile gloves, to keep my hands from absorbing any residual stuff from her hair and scalp. They are the same gloves I use for house cleaning. I have a compromised immune system and anything in that realm has the potential to cause problems for me. Whatever, I took them and actually needed them beyond my often misdirected need to control things.

I went through her hair first, and there were few nits to be found, and no live lice. We did the whole Cetaphil thing and during the final combing prior to using the blow dryer, I combed out tons of nits. I also suspect that the vinegar rinses she is doing are most likely softening the glue that holds the nits to the hair shafts.

Using that cleanser is expensive, but not as much as some of those get-rid-of-lice products. I looked at some of them, and there are lots, when I was looking for better lice/nit combs to buy. I also had to find a beauty supply place to buy the pointy-top applicator bottle you need to apply the cleanser.

Just a note: If you cannot find one of those bottles, whilst they make the application process easier, unless the licee has very long and thick hair, you can get by without it.

The theory behind the cleaner's effectiveness is that when dried it forms a plastic-like coating on the scalp, hair, nits and lice and they die. When drying her hair, I could feel the coating forming on her hair and on my hands, not using the gloves so that I could assess how dry her hair was getting.

The next step was to allow air circulation and to sleep with the gunk on her hair and shampoo it off in the morning.

Whether or not that happens is anyone's guess. She shared with me today that she did not like any of the combing or stuff on her hair, preferred the OTCs and that she did not like the look of her hair with the cleanser dried on it. Since the directions said that it should stay on overnight or at least 8 hours, her plan is to shampoo it out 8 hours after we began the process.

Now. I understand that she does not like the process of anything, that she has been struggling with this for 6 weeks and that by this time I would have sold everything I own, including my big girl panties, take my self to some big city and pay to have a whole team of licenators use that machine to clear my noggin of every last living thing.

The process is frustrating and we will get through it.

[Tussiemussies]

You really are a sweet friend Jilly!

[Jilly]

I do not know about that, but no one is helping her, and I only found out about this last week when she called me at work.

Besides, a sweet person would not be thinking such terrible things about the people in my friend's like who should be helping her. She has three sons, as many daughters-in-law and several nearly adult grandchildren. She watches the younger grandchildren whenever anyone needs her to do so, has two boarders and a live-in boyfriend. Today the boyfriend was noodling around, chatting with the guy he had hired to work on his vintage car and when I suggested that he help us, his reply was that it makes him shudder and that if he was going to do that dirty work, he would have to be a hairdresser and be gay.

Frankly, if I had not been up to my armpits in Cetaphil and nits, and if I did not love my friend, I would have told him off, crafted him a new one and left. Instead, I stewed and tried to figure out how we can do this next week without him on the property.

Sweet? Not me.

[Tussiemussies]

I think it takes a special kind of friend who is willing to get in there after your nits!!!