subject: Head Lice Home Remedies For The Win! [print this page] If you are facing the job of using head lice home remedies or other methods to get rid of lice in your home, take the job seriously and do it right. As a parent, thinking about a commercial shampoo to kill head lice, think about the toxic chemicals that are in the product and consider whether you want to put that on your child's skin.
Even the well noted American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the Nix shampoo product as being the most effective treatment for hair lice but if you choose to use it, you are putting pesticides on you child's skin. Because of the societal disgust that is frequently associated with head lice, many parents just want to use the surest, quickest way they can think of to get rid of the nasty little insects. Many other parents, choose to take the healthy and safety of their children into consideration and look for more acceptable alternatives.
Certainly, you want to get rid of the lice and all their nits or eggs. If your child has allergies or even if you are just concerned about using chemicals on your child then you start looking for alternatives. Likely the simplest and most time tested of the head lice home remedies used to avoid the pesticides would be to use a fine lice comb and perhaps tweezers, and manually remove the lice and their eggs (called nits) from the hair. Combing like this can be time intensive and it needs to be done daily for several days in a row. Even for those who use lice shampoo, the tedious process of carefully combing out the nits is still necessary.
Some people follow a common home remedy that has you put a substance like mayonnaise, Vaseline or Olive Oil all over the hair and left on for at least eight hours to smother lice to death. When you leave this greasy mess on overnight using a shower cap to keep the greasy stuff contained, then it is widely reported that this works very well. While this is a messy way of getting the job done it works well. Many experts are of the opinion that it is because by cleaning up the hair afterwards, that process actually removes all the parasites and the eggs at the same time. If you use this method, it is recommended that you rinse the hair with Vinegar afterwards which helps dissolve any residual grease that was used and by doing this it makes it harder for any remaining lice eggs to stick to the hair shafts.
There is a non-pesticide treatment you may want to consider using. It is a medication named Ulesfia. If you were to use this it would require you to ask your doctor about it as it does require a doctors prescription. When using this product, the hair needs to be saturated and left on for ten minutes before being washed out. This product should be applied again in seven days after the first treatment in order to kill any newly hatched lice from eggs that were left after the initial treatment. It basically works by suffocating the living hatched lice.
There are other home remedies that have been reported to have worked to rid the hair of lice. These treatments would include remedies composed of herbs or spices and essential or aromatic oils. The most common of these is likely the tea tree oil remedy but these methods like other home methods are not regulated by the FDA and their effectiveness is not certain.
On the preventative side of things, do a little research and become familiar with how to identify adult lice, nymphs (young lice) and nits in the hair and do periodic inspections of young children, particularly if they have frequent interaction with other children. With knowledge and frequent inspections you can avoid any unnecessary inconvenience of treating children for lice when there is not a need to do so. Practicing preventative procedure helps you avoid the problem for the future.
If girls wear their hair up and if it has gel in it, these procedures reduce the chance for lice transfer from one child to another. Teach your children about lice. Lice are only transferred by direct contact from one person to another. They have no wings and do not have the ability to jump. Teach the children to try and minimize activities that cause direct contact with each other like climbing on or wrestling with one another. Kids should also avoid sharing hair brushes, hats, hair bows, helmets or any other item that might have direct contact with the hair or scalp of someone else. By teaching your children to take these important steps, the probability of another "attack" of lice is significantly reduced. Through education, awareness and good personal interaction habits, you are taking the best preventative steps to avoid having to deal with this lousy problem in the future.
