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From the lens Head Lice Treatments That Really Work.

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  • Head Lice Center Mar 14, 2012 @ 7:34 am | delete
    Very good information in this lens. It is important that people understand that the scalp absorbs a large amount of the substances we put on it. This is why home remedies, although they might not work as well as shampoos or lotions, are usually safer. Parents need to find a balance between safety and efficiency.
  • PamelaU Feb 22, 2012 @ 6:43 am | delete
    In the UK, there are frequent outbreaks of headlice, and the advice is to comb through as often as possible and send your child to school with their hair tied back. Unfortunately, lice are endemic, so if you keep children off while they have lice, schools would shut and we'd have an illiterate population!
  • lemonsqueezy Sep 21, 2010 @ 9:26 am | delete
    My only comment is reagarding the new decision that I keep hearing about to NOT keep head lice kids from school. OMG - keep the head lice at home... it is too hard to get rid of.
  • nitwitseattle Nov 4, 2011 @ 4:45 pm | delete
    It makes sense to keep kids home if they have live lice, but as I've blogged about, no-nits policies don't do anybody any good, because even if an egg hatched while a child was at school,that baby is not going to survive off of the head, and it's definitely not going to fall off.
  • kris Sep 2, 2010 @ 10:37 pm | delete
    when my stepdaughter came home with headlice we tried everything to get rid of them...but these ones were resistant to the treatments! we picked every egg off her head thru each individual hair yet we still had the problem. Finally i bought a hair straightener and made sure i pulled the eggs away from the scalp and burned them with the straightener. A few times of this...they are gone for good! Of course you have to kill the live ones first, and vacuuming and put away everything soft for 2 weeks and boil water for all hair items.
  • Momof4innh Aug 10, 2010 @ 7:41 am | delete
    We used Cetaphyl Cleanser. Worked great was non toxic and was fairly inexpensive. What I did was applied to hair with a lice comb starting on the bottom back layer and moving up the head layer by layer.Once applied dry with a blowdryer til dry. This takes a long time but it seems to seal in the suckers. Rinse it out in the am and then comb again layer by layer. Then wash as normal. One week later repeat this process. I found this was the least hazardous. It also didn't seem to damage the hair of badly as other means
  • nitwitseattle Nov 4, 2011 @ 4:48 pm | delete
    Yeah, I have to agree that the Cetaphil treatment works best, is the most gentle and most easy to do! I should know - I treat families for their head lice infestations as a professional.
  • gardenlady Sep 4, 2009 @ 7:58 pm | delete
    Nice lens. My daughter (who has very long thick hair) got lice at camp over the summer. I didn't think we'd ever get rid of them. You're right, the over the counter stuff didn't work, and the comb that came with the treatment was useless. I ended up getting a prescription that she had to leave on for 8 hours. It did kill the lice, but it was highly toxic and gave warnings about fainting & breathing difficulty from the fumes. I ended up spending hours hand picking the nits out of her hair. Now I know where to come for the RIGHT kind of comb if she ever get them again. Thanks for taking the time to make this lens.

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Azareal

Hi. I'm Dr. Anne Helmenstine, scientist, author, and mom. I write and edit About.com's Chemistry Website, which covers general chemistry, science proj... more »

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