Head Lice: The Latest Superbug to Become Resistant to Pesticides

The hair drier treatment several times a day works. Not to nit pick or anything.

Well, thank goodness my small child is a boy. If the lice epidemic gets here, I see a quarter-inch crewcut in his future. I did the painstaking delousing thing with my daughter back when, and I'd really rather not go there again.

Does anyone else feel like this is happening with fleas as well? I haven't found anything that can kill the fleas on our dogs this summer. In the past, regular baths and essential oils--with the occasional dip--were all that was needed. This summer, I've tried everything I can find with no luck at all.

To Megan,

Try frontline or a similar product, we use it on our dog and he has never gotten fleas.

why not shave the heads of the affected parties?

there must be some natural treatmnet for this...

baking soda?

lemon juice applique?

vinegar bath?

Buy your kid their own tball helmet -- the usual way they got spread when our kids got them....

And a good lice comb that gets the nits usually takes care of them if you do the washing, etc, as well.

The key to keeping lice at bay, is a bath. Many people only take a bath once a week, and that's bad. When my children was in school, after they came home, the first thing was a bath, and I have never had a problem with lice, colds, flu, and anyother infection. The book bags and shoes was in the closet by the front door, next step in the bathroom, clothes in hamper, and body in the bathtub, and clothes went in the washer the same day.

Hah hah, a bath won't get rid of lice or prevent them.

My idea is to get a pet monkey to take care of the lice problem. If you have ever watched monkeys in the zoo picking lice off each other and eating them you will agree that this method will be effective and will avoid the use of harmful chemicals on our children's scalps.

Hah hah, a bath won't get rid of lice or prevent them.

My idea is to get a pet monkey to take care of the lice problem. If you have ever watched monkeys in the zoo picking lice off each other and eating them you will agree that this method will be effective and will avoid the use of harmful chemicals on our children's scalps.

I had head lice twice in my life and the first time the usual meds worked fine but the 2nd time they didnt seem to do a thing. i went to the doctor and he gave me a scabbies med but the best known treatment for lice in the book is covering your head with mayonaise and putting a shower cap on. smells weird, makes your bed pillow oily but works like a charm.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, there were a lot of children that got lice. believe me everyone got it in her class, even several times during the year. She had it several times, and became allergic to the shampoo. It was then reccommeded to us to use a cream conditioner to cover the scalp and hair, cover with a plastic shower sap, and wait 2-3 hours. The nits came off with no trouble, after a good shampoo. I still had to use a lice comb after treatment. She was really happy that this was over and done with. The treatment wasn't that expensive either. Oh yes, you do have to wash everything, though.

"The key to keeping lice at bay, is a bath. "

Well...no, it isn't. You can't wash away lice. If your kid has it when they get home from school, a bath is not going to wash it away. Also, keeping your kid clean is not going to prevent lice.

It's nice that you bathe your kids often though. At least they won't smell bad.

Gloretha: Lice greatly prefers clean hair. It's a common misconception that you get it from being dirty.

When we were kids mom figured out you could leave certain shampoos and conditioners on for a long time to get rid of/ prevent lice. I think the key was dandruff shampoo and cocomide dea (could be mea) for conditioner. Leave each on a long time. I remember finding nits that had burst apart from the head and shoulders. Then we would comb it after the extra long bath. I had REALLY long hair as a kid with lice.

My mom works in a low income school district and her school tell parents that vodka will kill them if you use it on your hair a few times and then wash your hair after a couple of minutes of leaving it in. this gets them drunk if you will and they pass out and let go of the hair that they are on at which point you can wash them down the drain and out of your hair with your shampoo. hope some one finds this helpful cheers.

Tea tree oil works great on killing lice. Just add about 1oz to 8-10oz shampoo (I used to use Suave) and apply it to the hair just as you would the commercial stuff (Rid, Nix, etc). The tea tree oil kills the lice and de-gums the glue that holds the nits on the hair shaft.

And it won't harm your kids like the poisons in the name brands shampoos will (remember that lots of toxins are absorbed through the skin, so that stuff is soaking in while your kids are trying not to scratch.)

My daughter had lice with really thick hair when she was about 5. It was horrible, I tried everything except what I should have tried first. There is an electronic comb, battery operated that you comb through the child's hair and it actually shocks the little nasty things and keeps them on the comb. Then you take them off and make sure they're dead. I would use a piece of scotch tape or something similar and they would stick right to it from the comb. It does not hurt the child but it works! I finally got rid of them...You have to check for a few days but you will get them all. The price is about $30, but I spent a heck of alot more before I got it and it was the only thing that did the job. Who needs the pesticides when you can shock em and get rid of them for good.

I am a family doctor who has been tackling this issue both in Australia and in a school in Central Asia.
This article is interesting and accurately describes the problem of increasing resistance.
None of the following popular treatments have and evidence base yet but do seem to help in SOME cases. Drowning with mayonaise, hair conditioner and olive oil. Wet combing or Combing a head full of wet conditioner every 3 days til no more live lice are seen also seems effective but is painstaking. Tea tree oil and Lavender oil are popular in Australia as an alternative to pesiticides both as a treatment and preventative spray in school hats but is not evidence based.Tha hair drying 3 times a day is also a new one. I have heard no reports about it.
However while debunking some myths about lice it actually reinforces one of the main myths.
A diagnosis of Head LIce can ONLY be made in the prescence of LIVE LICE VISUALISED OR LICE COMBED from hair OR FRESH EGGGS visualised. The prescence of NITS (hatched egg shells) does not constitute evidence of a current infestation.
The Nit is actually the egg in which the lice lives. New eggs which contain lice are clear , translucent and close to the scalp and therefore almost invisible.
The very obvious and easy to see "sesame seed like" nit is the opened and therefore EMPTY shell of a hatched lice. It is pointless to remove these because nothing more can come out of it once it has hatched . Anything more than 2cm from the scalp is a DEAD EMPTY egg and hours of time are wasted removing these hairs. Insisting that children don't come to school or advising them to visit salons is a purely cosmetic event.
Evidence based articles to support this are available through Pub Med where you can visit both US and Brittish sites writen by Public health and Paediatric specialists talking about the microbiology of the problem.
DR C from Central Asia.

My mom said that back in the day if you got lice they would soak your head in kerosene. A bit flammable perhaps but effective.

Tea-Tree Conditioner
Lane Health products
of Gloucester in the United Kingdom is the sovereign remedy in our house as well as any de-tangling spray that contains citronella.
Brush hair each day and use a nit-comb.
That's the problem with pesticides and other poisons - creatures become immune to their effects or at least are able to continue functioning in spite of the toxicity.

I was under the impression that many bugs can't abide Tea Tree Oil or Citronella Oil - surely it would be worth trying shampoos based on these or even dilute amounts of the oil directly in the kids hair. Makes your kid smell a bit (I LIKE the smell myself,) but it's gotta be better than lice!

Hygiene has very little to do with headlice. Whether your hair is greasy makes odds nor ends to them, and a bit of soap and water definitely won't kill them. So please, get over this stupid misconception.

Anyway, if you can't remove the hair, then a lice comb and patience are pretty much your best option. Worked for me.

Gloretha, A bath is not a prevention for head lice. Lice actually prefer clean hair over dirty hair. Hygiene has nothing to do with catching head lice. A person with head lice cannot be assumed to be a dirty person.

Fleas... yep, we have fleas. Have had them all summer and have tried almost everything starting with the eco stuff. Didn't work. Now we are trying the nasty stuff. Have bombed the house twice. No luck. Dogs still have them and cats got them from the dogs.

I have 4 children that suffered this for 6 years. Over the summer they were clear but it seems the day school started it came back-----Coconut shampoo and conditioner i THE key. It repels them! I found this tip on a home remedy site and have been lice free since!

Gloretha: Medical research tells us washing hair is not going to prevent or remove lice infestations.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/headlice.html

This link is a rational explanation of head lice and treatments.

gloretha - really? "Many people only take a bath once a week" where do you live that that's the case? where we are, the vast majority of people bathe daily... anyway, just thought that was a very strange thing... :D

lice are a disgusting problem. we had one school year where it seemed we were always working to get rid of them. there was one girl in my child's class, who, for whatever reason, just didn't seem to even be trying to get rid of them. poor thing, you could see the white nits in her hair. . . like someone attatched a bunch of kosher salt or white sand to each strand of her hair.
we spent at least a semester constantly checking for lice, running the combs through our kid's hair, i started using products when styling their hair, too - having hairspray and gel in hair and regularly blow drying hair is why occurance of lice on teen girls is the least common of all child groups/ages.

My two sisters and I all managed to get through all our years of school without any louse problems. We all showered daily, but I guess it is just the luck of the draw.

I would just shave the kid's head. Boy or girl, they would end up a skin head. NOTHING escapes the Gillette Mach 3!!!

One of the reasons that the lice continue to be rounad even after using the chemicals is that people rely on the silly little plastic combs that are provided to them. These things are useless and leave eggs behind as they are too flimsy and the teeth are too far apart to get all of the eggs out. Best advice I can give is for people to have (on hand before they need it) a really good steel lice comb. Whether it is the Licemiester or the NitFree Terminator from a company called Kleen-Free or whatever comb they choose, they need a good steel lice comb - chemical treatment or non-chemical, the comb is going to be the biggest part of success or failure.

I know I got my NitFree one at http://www.kleen-free.com. I think the Licemisester one is also available online primarily as the drugstores seem to want to sell you their own brand or just let you fail with the shampoo provided cheap plastic one.

There are also lots of good chemical free porducts that works that do not include smothering your head in a bottle of mayo or something like that which seems to be a 50/50 solution for people - NitFree had one as do numerous other companies on the web.

In my mind, the solution to staying chemical free in this battle is to be a Boy Scout and Be Prepared. We have the comb and the NitFree mousse on hand and waiting - hopefully to never be used.

Lila

The fastest and safest way to treat or prevent head lice infestation and/or re-infestation is non-toxic X-PEL Anti-Lice Shampoo & Conditioner. It is available in drug stores or visit www.x-pelheadlice.com. X-PEL is the only non-toxic lice treatment and preventative recommended by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for distribution to government agencies.

One of my company's officers is a biologist who was asked to see what she could do about a trailerpark full of infested little kids.

What whe came up with was too good to be true. It's not a shampoo or a "treatment". It's a conditioner. So the little girls got to have nice hair the next day. The little boys could have cared less.

The basic formula is really simple:

1 part chlorine bleach
120 parts Dollar Store hair conditioner

Directions:

Thoroughly bathe the infested and wash their hair thoroughly. Towel dry leave damp. Slick back with brush. Using a common comb, incorporate the conditioner FULLY through the hair all the way to the roots. On an average kid, about ten minutes of combing per head, As you are combing, you should be able to watch the nits just sort of dissolve away. Have the child re-wash their hair with shampoo.

Your feedback on this would be appreciated.

===
Not sure we should put chlorine bleach on kids heads.

How to control Super Lice and Nits

As school starts, health officials and parents are bracing for this year's bout with what some are calling "super lice." Many head lice have become drug-resistant, and no longer respond to common anti-lice medications. For years, experts have warned that head lice are developing immunity to the insecticide POISONS used in prescription and over the counter lice treatments. Some say it takes just three to five years for lice to become immune to a new POISON. (That is why I patented the Ideal pesticide that can not create resistance or immunity - http://www.theidealpesticide.com .)

About the size of a sesame seed, head lice are six-legged parasites that live on the human head. And nits – eggs that females glue onto hairs near the scalp – can be difficult to spot. "The nits are usually sort of like a clear-looking, light color, tannish," The itchy condition is most common in daycare centers and nursery schools because of the close interaction among children.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 6 and 12 million children ages 3 to 11 get head lice each year. About 1 in 10 kids will contact lice by the sixth grade. Lice are spread by head to head contact with infested individuals, or they hitch a ride onto a new head on clothing, combs, brushes and backbacks. They can crawl, but they can't jump or fly.

Excessive scratching should be investigated further and the beginning of the school year is a time of year when lice is often discovered. Don't expect the school nurse to monitor your child for these critters. Take a few minutes and peek at the areas of the head where they like to hang out, that being the nape of the neck and behind the ears. Adults may or may not be visible, and nits are usually seen on the hair shaft close to the scalp.

After 11, most children shampoo their hair on a daily basis and use a hair dryer and often hair spray all of which helps kill even resistant head lice.

Head lice are perfectly evolved human predators. They establish and maintain residence on the human head. They copulate and reproduce on the host. The host’s blood nourishes them. Their success in infesting people far exceeds other human parasites such as pinworm or hookworm. Achieving control of these parasites can be difficult, time-consuming and frustrating, especially if you use the wrong products.

If you continue to be infested with live lice after treatment after treatment, discontinue all use of these synthetic POISONS and don't use any other synthetic POISONS in the vain hope of trying to kill the head lice. Remember, these products are not mere shampoos, medicines, crèmes or lotions, they are really pesticide POISONS.

You need to try Safe Solutions, Inc. FDA registered medical device called Lice R Gone. Lice R Gone will safely and far more effectively remove even resistant or super lice and has a money-back guarantee if it does not solve even your super or resistant lice and nit problems. http://www.licergone.com

The Institute of Pest Management, Inc and the author of THE BEST CONTROL II have tested and found Safe Solutions Lice R Gone® to be the safest, fastest and most economical lice and nit removal solution on the market, priced at just over a dollar per treatment, you simply can't afford to use anything else! One 8 oz. bottle is enough to treat an entire family's infestation. Lice R Gone® is registered as a Medical Device by the FDA and is protected by two patents in the USA, Canada and Australia. It is the only real money-back guarantee on the market today.

Please see: http://www.safesolutionsinc.com

When me & my older sister were little, we went to school with these sisters & cousins who always seemed to have head lice. They were the ones who always gave it to the other girls. During the time of the "out break" the children would be kept at home until they came back with a clean head. The nurse checked everyone, if they still had them they were sent back home. Anyways I had lice a couple of times when I was in grade school, my mom would always end up cutting my hair (shoulder length) which I hated. I had long thick hair when I was little (about waist length).

Anyways I got lice once when I was 17 (I got them from my little sister who was 7). I had a new boyfriend & I had to tell him I had head lice so his mom could check his sister. Ugh. Anyways my mom checked & said I only had them around the neck area, a few shampoo treatments, a haircut (cause I panicked) and they were gone. My mom attributed this to all the hairspray, gel & mousse I had put in my hair since I reached puberty. So yes, teen girls can get head lice. I also went to high school with a girl who for the whole time we went to school together always had lice.

I also got head lice when I was 23 (again from my little sister, who was a teen at the time & got them from our niece). Because I was pregnant I couldn't use the medicated shampoo for the total time recommended. None the less I cut my hair, again, which is always hard for me to do. Since I only had a small amount they were easy to get rid of, again my mother attributes to the amount of hair products (including a few hair dyes).

Hopefully my daughter doesn't get them, i'm trying to grow my hair to donate it & would hate to have to cut it (it's halfway down my back). My daughter doesn't seem to have the scent for lice or mosquitoes.

So as I have said teens can get lice, even adults & it doesn't matter if you use hair products or not but it does help reduce the amount.

Thanks for the post.

My daughter came home with lice after an outbreak occured at her school. I had tried everything before when my nephew brought them home while staying with me for a week and nothing ever worked. So this time I went searching, and found a chemical free alternative.
I found Wondercide, and let me tell you...I have never seen anything work so fast and so easily. Two applications of just spraying it on her head and those lice were history. I told all the parents at school and they were ecstatic.
Better yet, when I called to order it, the salesperson said it worked for everything. So for those flea problems, try wondercide. I can't wait to!
It seems like those super bugs are becoming to resistant to everything, but I think this might actually have their number.

My Family recently had a case of head lice to deal with, we bought some natural pesticide free products called "LiceKiller". We even bought the environment kit to treat our home so we didn't get a re-infestation. We purchased the product from Access Nutraceuticals. Here is their website be sure to check it out. "LiceKiller"

My Family recently had a case of head lice to deal with, we bought some natural pesticide free products called "LiceKiller". We even bought the environment kit to treat our home so we didn't get a re-infestation. We purchased the product from Access Nutraceuticals. Here is their website be sure to check it out. "LiceKiller"