I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I have learned so much about lice~ all the things I have done wrong, some of which can have tragic consequences (read here)

Here are some resources that have been really helpful to me:

Head Lice.org FAQ page

Pictures of Nits

The Best Comb I have found.


Some warnings for everyone who may read this and may not click the links:

OTC shampoos and RX shampoos are pesticides with all the dangers associated with them. No treatment completely removes lice, only repeated careful combing does. So why risk the pesticides.

Pesticide sprays for bedding and furniture are not effective. Vaccumming is.

Plastic bags and shower caps worn while sleeping, carry a huge risk of suffocation.

---------- Post added at 08:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:33 AM ----------

IF you decide to use a chemical treatment method:

• Don't use shower caps and never leave the product on longer than directed.
• Don't use a prescription product containing the pesticide LINDANE.
• Don't use a chemical treatment on or near the eyes.
• Don't use a head lice treatment on a baby.
• Don't use lice sprays.
• Don't buy products that are packaged with Lice Sprays.
• Don't treat individuals who are not infested.
• Don't use treatments to prevent head lice.

---------- Post added at 08:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:38 AM ----------

Signs of Pesticide Poisoning

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Thank you for posting these links... I hope we won't need them but several of the neighbor kids have been passing lice back and forth and I'm soooo paranoid we'll get them. :(

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

The steps I have used, and have found effective:

During the day:
1. Wash all bedding / stuffed animals. Any non-essential items placed in plastic bag until completely sure lice are gone. Anything unable to be washed can be placed in dryer on high heat.
2. Vaccum all carpeting and matresses.

In the evening:
3. Check every family member, by wetting hair and looking under natural light. Look especially behind ears and at nape of neck.
4. Apply conditioner or cream to heads effected.
5. Comb through hair with metal toothed comb. (plastic ones have never worked for me) Use a white towel to wipe the comb clean and inspect what comes off. Continue combing until no lice are seen when cleaning comb.
6. Blow dry hair.
7. Wash hair with a shampoo with tea tree oil added.
8. Place long hair up in bun or braids, maybe even use clean head scarves while sleeping.
9. Wash all brushes and combs.

In the morning:
10. Replace all hair clips etc with clean ones, put ones warn in laundry.

Repeat process every three days until no lice are found.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I stickied it.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

How often did you wash the bedding? After washing the bedding for 2 days and then not washing for 2 days (although I threw everything but the sheets in the dryer for a hour at a time), I'm thinking that it is an important step to wash the bedding every day. I would have been doing that if our washing machine wasn't broken right now and I was so tired of the laundrymat.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Dh and I were really paranoid because dd2 was the only one in our family to get lice and she sleeps with us still so we washed and/or dried our bedding every day for over a week and then switched to every two days and then spaced it back out to our usual once a week. I'm dreading the water bill we get next month!

I think drying everything in the dryer should probably be enough esp if you are carefully combing for bugs and nits every night before bed.

---------- Post added at 10:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 AM ----------

Also- for those who are trying to avoid or get rid of lice, we had good luck with Fairy Tales Haircare (Organic) Rosemary Repel Shampoo etc. Our neighbor girl always runs (or used to) to dd2 to hug her and she's had them so bad other kids' moms were noticing them :yuck so I assume that is where dd2 got them since no one else in the family every got them.

Anyway, everyone in the family has been using the Rosemary Repel product in conjunction with all of the tips Dana gave. I do think it helped! We got rid of them that way whereas another neighbor who got them from that girl ended up having to be treated with $150 Rx treatment that Medicaid paid for- and the girl who gave them to everyone STILL has them. I think they have become resistant to the chemical treatments. :rolleyes

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Robi-comb. :D Costs about 30 dollars. It is reusable, can be taken apart and cleaned if you want. It is basically a mildly electrified lice comb. It is chemical free. I had my kids cover their ears when using it, ears are quite sensitive. :yes Otherwise I tried it out on various parts of my own body first, it generally produces a mild tingle, if anything. Then just wash the bedding twice a few days apart.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I'll put in my two cents for another non-pesticide option.

I had lice for 6 months when I was a teenager and *nothing* worked to get rid of them. Not nightly combing, not pesticide treatments. Finally we slathered mayonnaise into my hair and then wrapped my head with saran wrap (ok, wouldn't do that part now...but an old towel would work) and slept on it. Apparently the mayo smothered the lice and my hair was super conditioned :)

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Any oil kills them, since they breathe through their skin. You need to use a lot though, and then after an hour you can wash it out and you will comb out dead lice. :tu We use sunflower oil (cheap organic sunflower oil is readily available to us)!

Neem oil kills them, and also repels them, but I wouldn't personally use it direct on skin except for very diluted. (Neem kills fleas too. :grin ) Tea tree and rosemary also repel them, but neem works best IME.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Wow... interesting! If God forbid, we end up with them ever again I will have to try this!

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I used the Robi comb but didn't like it. I had 2 different types of metal combs. One worked better on ds1's hair and the other worked better on ds2's hair.

Even if you kill the lice with mayo or any other oily substance, you still have the nits to contend with. I am rusty now on the development cycle, but basically you have to do a treatment every few days to kill any newly hatched lice before they are old enough to lay more nits.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I have had great success with the tea tree oil shampoo, but I still have them. I may try the oil-I do not like the pesticide stuff, ugh! Anyone try dying theier hair to be rid of them? I was thinking about doing that.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

I got rid of them when we had them within 2 weeks with no new outbreaks by constantly saturating our hair in oil (olive oil and coconut oil ... sometimes one and sometimes the other) and nit combing everyone about 3 times per day. We put oil in our hair at bed, nit combed, went to bed, nit combed when woke up, washed hair, nit combed again, oiled hair, nit combed at bed, put more oil in our hair before bed, repeat. Doing it every day was over the top, but I think based on their life cycles you want to do this every 3 days for 2 weeks.

We washed with tea tree shampoo and I did straight vinegar rinses on my hair and 50/50 vinegar/water on the kids' hair. Some things I read said that vinegar could kill nits and some say it didn't, but apparently vinegar does loosen the nit glue. I think I changed/washed the bedding every day for the first week (the washer broke at the beginning so we may have only done that once in the first 3 days, but I think I was changing it everyday because we had 3 changes of sheets for each bed). I put the pillows in trashbags and then put the vacuum hose in there to suck any lice out ... the bag and pillow should shrivel up if you are doing it correctly. I sprayed the beds and furniture with a mixture of vodka and tree tea oil, but it was also supposed to have cinnamon bark oil (? I think that was it) but I didn't use that because I was pregnant and also didn't have it on hand. I don't remember where I found the recipe for the spray, but it's supposed to be effective. I also spent $90 on a steamer to steam the mattresses, because I was wanting to cover every option since I was pregnant and had a 2 year old and 1 year old and didn't want to resort to pesticides.

I know I was obsessive with doing everything, but it did work. The main thing is to keep on top of nit combing and make sure you buy a metal comb.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Just wanted to add a comb that I love to this list. Just got it today.
Nitfree terminator comb. Combed out nits! And it camb with a nontoxic treatment kit.
Als to ask a question what kind of tea tree oil shampoo? Would paul mitchels work?

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

We had fantastic success with 1hr hair soaked w/mint mouthwash, then soak hair with 1 HR of white vinegar on top of the mouthwash and rinse. The only thing that ever worked.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

ok so I am following the reccommendations here- my dd had lice for over a week before we noticed, I checked, but she has super thick hair so I didn't see anything,so all her itching I thought was just dry scalp like I get sometimes. So anyway when I was drying her hair a few days ago I saw a bunch of them:( so needless to say she had a really bad case, I bought a homeopathic treatment at the natural foods store and left it on for an hour and combed out a whole bunch of them, but now she is left with a TON of the eggs in her hair. She has a tender head so we decided to cut her hair short for summer and layer it more so I think that will help. but she still has a ton of the nits- is there anything to kill them? we have been washing all her bedding daily and vaccuming the whole house daily, what should we be doing to her head at this point?

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Using a super fine comb to remove the nits, one by one. It stinks, it is a major pain, but otherwise you will end up invested again once they hatch. :hugheart

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

You need to obsessively comb for nits. It's not fun, but that's the way to get rid of them. Buy a metal comb because the plastic ones have terrible reviews.

At the time I was researching, there is nothing that can kill the nits. However, I read that 50/50 vinegar/water help loosen up the glue that holds the nit to the hair.

Keep the hair rubbed down with oil every 2-3 days over night. IIRC, you have about 7 days between a nit hatching and it laying more nits, so you want to kill any newly hatched nits that you missed before they reproduce.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Thanks I am doing the conditioner and metal comb daily- I got a finer metal comb and that seems to be helping...those darn nits some of them are just so tiny...it hasn;t been a full week since we started treatment so trying to comb hair daily for another week or so to be on the safe side- we have a new baby due anytime so really wanting to get this over with...

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Don't give up after a week though. You still need to do the oil in the hair every 3 days for 3 weeks (IIRC, I may be wrong) because you need to kill babies hatched from the nits before they are big enough to lay nits. You can probably slow down on the nitcombing to every 3 days too after the first week. If you stay on top of smothering any newly hatched babies before they lay eggs, it should wipe them out assuming that you have killed all the adults too.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

OK so it has been 2 weeks since any sign of adult lice, we did see one juvenile in my ds's hair 3 days ago so we did an oil treatment and combed it out and there was nothing else. we have been vacuuming all the carpet in the house every day and changing all the kids bedding every day.l we have gone down to washing/combing hair out every 3 days- I haven't seen any nits in over a week, how much longer do we need to keep this all up?

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

We checked about every 3 days and then once a week and even now I check them now and then, and it's been over a year. I'm paranoid, esp now that the kids are playing t-ball/ baseball/ softball and sharing helmets with other kids. :sick :nails

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Hi Folks! There have been some requests to sticky my post about lice, and I'm sorry to say that my employer has requested that I not post massive amount of lice advice online. I work for a business treating head lice. You can see our website here: http://www.mnlicelady.com/ It's part of a non-compete agreement for me to not publicly offer detailed lice advice online.

However, please know that there is a ton good information at the site listed above. Everything on our website is research-based. You'll want to click on the Myths-Facts link at the top of the page. The "Cleaning" portion of the website is a bit outdated, as we no longer recommend cleaning at all. Lice have been proven over & over again to only live on human heads. We offer a 30 Day guarantee at our salon, and we give everyone the advice not to clean.

I can take PMs regarding lice. Please don't hesitate if you have more questions. :)

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

So I'm adding my two cents here...

I got lice about 10 years ago, with Dreadlocks - meaning you can't comb them out!

I tried everything, even the hard-core chemicals! I wasn't going to shave my head (which is what I was going to have to do!)

I finally found Delacet and its Vegan and natural... and to be honest I didn't believe it would work. I was sure I needed chemical goodness...

Anyway it worked, first go! Its expensive, but worth it, 10 years on, I still have my Dreads and no lice

This is it here...

http://www.thenaturalproductscompany...-lice-solution

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Shoot. Midnight cafe, when I clicked this thread I was going to say " hey! Poke MCafe!! She had some amazing lice info but i can't remember any of the details "
Serves me right for not writing it down when you first shared it!!! :doh

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Stiina! I copied out some things I wrote in another thread. I think this much is ok to post here since it isn't treatment advice:

Don't worrying about cleaning your house. We offer our clients a 60 day guarantee, and we do NOT recommend cleaning your house. It is a fallacy that lice live in the environment. They do not. The research demonstrates that this is true. (NOTE: They *could* live for 48 hours off the human head, but they CHOOSE not to climb off the head because the risk that they will die before finding another head is pretty high. They are only transferred from person to person through hair to hair contact.)

Don't use lice treatment products like Rid or Nix. The lice in the U.S. are becoming resistant to these products, and they only work on 40-50% of live bugs. Nothing kills nits at all. They must be combed/nitpicked out of the hair.

You need a comb called The Terminator. This is the only comb worth having. You can buy it online or at some health food stores and kid's hair salons.

Your head can itch for days after getting rid of lice. The bites are like mosquito bites and take a while to heal.

The reason people believe that you must clean your entire house from top to bottom and bag everything is because people very seldom get all the nits out of their hair on the first go-round. It takes 7-10 days for nits to hatch and another 10-12 days for those bugs to grow into adults and begin laying eggs. So, when you have nits that were not removed, it looks like you have gotten lice again 2-4 weeks after the initial treatment. People have assumed for years that this means that the lice were still living in the furniture and stuffed animals, etc, but that is not the case. The truth is that the nits were missed in the initial treatment.

If you choose to go to a lice treatment business, be sure to look for one that is Shepherd Certified. This is the only certified method of lice treatment in the country.

Winniewildflower, Here's the deal: Sometimes, especially if a head is not terribly infested, some method of treatment or another will work. Maybe there were not a lot of lice on your head to begin with, you killed the hatched ones with Delacet (unusual, but not impossible), and you didn't have enough nits left to hatch out both a male and a female to keep perpetuating the life cycle. Lice hatch at the rate of 3 females to every male. Also, a head with dreads is not ideal for head lice. They don't have the freedom to climb around, as they do in straight hair, and it's possible that the males and females couldn't find each other or that the females couldn't find a whole lot of space to lay eggs.

Mostly I want to discourage people from using the chemical treatments because they're toxic and unlikely to work. Then you've wasted the money AND exposed everybody in your house to some fairly toxic pesticides.

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

Awesome. :heart i knew it was something about cleaning your house, but I couldn't remember if you said yes or no about cleaning. :)

Re: I think there should be a lice sticky.
 

The first and second links in the OP are the same - I can't find pictures of nits. I don't know what I'm looking for...