Head lice has to be by far the most common, as well as annoying, child related health condition.
Although head lice is harmless it is extremely frustrating, time consuming to treat and often reoccurring.
The most obvious tell-tale sign your child has ‘nits’ is constant head scratching.
You could take some sort of solace in the fact that your child is not alone and that aside from the pain of the time and effort getting rid of head lice and the annoyance of the constant head scratching, head lice is essentially painless.
Whilst it seems little consolation nearly every child at some point during childhood will have had head lice.
It is extremely rare that a child will go through childhood without head lice at some point, regardless of the best prevention methods and hygiene.
Head lice is not as a result of poor hygiene as they actually prefer clean hair truth be told.
Head lice has a more commonly used name of ‘nits’.
Head lice aren’t able to fly or jump and can only spread by crawling from one head to another, so head to head contact.
They can only live on hair that is attached to your head as they suck blood from the scalp, so the previous job of needing to wash the bed clothes, and everything else, isn’t as much of a necessity.
It is recommended to wash them just as a precaution but it is not essential.
Head lice can usually (‘live’) be found on the crown, behind the ears or above the neck and around the hair line.
Some children that are affected have a huge uncontrollable need to scratch, some don’t.
You will often also see little white dots which are the eggs around the hairline.
As mentioned the myth that they like dirty hair is untrue but if given a choice but they will ‘live’ on either clean or dirty hair.
The females lay the eggs and ‘glue’ them to the hair shaft.
The annoying thing about head lice is that while these eggs hatch around a week later around 10-14 days later they are grown and ready to hatch their own eggs and so the vicious cycle continues.
When it comes to treatment it is a bit of a trial and also patience and persistence. Unfortunately and irritatingly, there is no one certain way to get rid of head lice.
Research has shown that the commercial treatments can be seen to be becoming less effective as the lice appear to have become more resistant to them.
This is not always the case so it may pay to trial them yourself. There are insecticide and herbal treatments that can be used and these products kill the lice but not always the eggs.
It is recommended not to use commercial treatment on children under 1 year.
Eggs and the lice need to be removed manually.
One way to do this, and it is generally considered the best most effective way, is to use conditioner and coat the hair fully.
Once covered use a nit comb and comb through the hair to get out the lice and eggs, wiping the comb clean after each comb on a towel.
The conditioner makes the hair shaft slippery, stunning the lice. You need to completely cover all the hair and ensure that all hair is combed.
You can continue to use the conditioner method (which needs to be re-done more frequently but is less expensive) or if you use a commercial product, wait 5-7 days and re-apply the treatment.
There is no guarantee all the eggs have hatched. That is the frustrating bit as it does tend to take a while and a few treatments to completely rid yourself of them.
Some swear by prevention which may be in the form of tea tree oil shampoo or a few drops in the water spray that you do your child’s hair with as they tend not to like tea tree oil.
There are a few prevention methods going around but it is a trial and error situation for your family and what you are willing to use on your child’s head.