subject: The Best Head Lice Home Remedies For You And Your Family [print this page] When you are the one that must implement good head lice home remedies to kill head lice, then be serious about the job and make sure you 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. Based on the way people commonly feel disgust when they learn about a problem 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. When using this method, it is usually helpful to rinse the hair with Vinegar. This helps dissolve any remaining grease that was used and this also makes it harder for any elusive eggs to stick to the strands of hair.
Another non-pesticide treatment you might want to consider is using a medication named Ulesfia. You would need to ask your doctor about this because it does require a medical prescription. When using this product, the hair needs to be saturated and left on for ten minutes before being washed out. This product also needs to be applied again in seven days to kill any freshly hatched lice from nits that may have been left behind. 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 would include remedies made from herbs or spices or 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 careful inspections you can avoid any unnecessary inconvenience of treating children 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 you children to avoid activities that could cause direct transfer like climbing on and wrestling with each other, sharing combs, hair brushes, hats, hair ties, bows or any other item that might have direct contact with the hair or scalp. If children will take these preventative steps, the likelihood of another "lice attack" is minimized. Through the whole family's education, awareness and good habits of personal interaction, you are practicing the best preventative steps that will help avoid having to deal with this lousy problem in the future.
The Best Head Lice Home Remedies For You And Your Family
