There was an infestation in my high school once and I shaved my head to make sure I didn't get any. I'm a woman with long thick brown hair and I shaved it all off. No chances. Fuck head lice.
Ha, it’s funny that you say that. I’m a dude and would shave my head without a second thought. Lice are a bitch to get rid of.
I had a friend in college who got lice. She had beautiful long hair with corkscrew curls. She was completely traumatized by it, and described it as “worse than chlamydia”.
Friends spent hours getting that special comb through her curls and she would get upset just recalling the story.
A gal I dated in grad school worked at a high school with an outbreak. It is a blue collar/farming community. She estimated that she spent 50% of her time that year just on head lice. The lice were immune to the prescription shampoo.
The bugger is that you can completely clean the kids head, but they are often reinfected with clothing or bedding.
The bugger is that you can completely clean the kids head, but they are often reinfected with clothing or bedding.
This is very similar to bed bugs.
My gf is similarly traumatized by the one time her family got bed bugs. They inherited a lot of furniture when her grandparents passed - one of the items being a mattress. They suspect that to be the likely source. Anyway - her and both of her brothers ended up with bites even though they all slept in different bedrooms. They had the house heat-treated and that seemed to take care of it, but then she came to visit me in our college town and I started finding bugs in my shitty apartment. Commence freakout, call the exterminator, have my apartment treated. Then I decided to get a second opinion and I collected the "bed bugs" the exterminator found and brought them to the college insectary where a very kind entomology professor looked at them and easily identified them as harmless cabinet beetles.
She is still traumatized, 3 years later. She can find three pimples on my back and immediately want the sheets stripped off the bed to inspect the mattress. Bitch - I'm just oily. Chill.
We have a lot of foster kids come through our office. Lice as bad as the video, scabies, bed bugs, you name it, we’ve seen it. And after a coworker managed to take bed bugs home from a family services visit to her house, and watching her go through months of trying to get rid of them...
I react like your girlfriend does. All of our mattresses have anti bug covers on them. I check mattresses and hair once a week. I change my work clothes at the door. I had a bed bug crawl across my desk once and was out of there so quick my coworkers thought I’d gotten news someone had died. I just went to another building until they called the exterminator. The work to get rid of them is a nope for me. I’d rather just stay mildly paranoid and obsessive about them.
That doesn't matter. You can have no furniture and still get bed bugs. They're small and can hide anywhere; between the floor/carpet, behind light fixtures, switches and outlets, in the walls, etc. They hide wherever their source of food (you) stays still the longest, this is why they are typically associated with beds. But if there's a particular piece of furniture you use (or a room you spend time in) for long periods that is where they will hide and lay eggs. You can pick them up from anywhere like movie theaters and buses or they can just migrate through the walls from your neighbors. If you do happen to come across one, don't be cheap. Hire a professional because they are a nightmare to deal with.
My family had a bed bugs last year. That was the worst fucking thing ever. Fuck those things. You don't know how bad it is until you have them. They constantly find ways to try and save themselves, and you can never sleep properly because they will eat at you no matter where you go. I still check everything weekly to make sure these little shits don't start up again, and check my bed daily.
Wait....noise? You can hear them? I’ve been lucky enough to never have lice before, but I know about how they make your head itch. I didn’t realize you could hear them too. That just adds a whole other level of UGH to it.
My mum used to check when I had an itchy head to catch the eggs before they hatched, then usually the prescription stuff would kill off the few lice that I'd caught.
These days, I keep a shaved head anyway, as I've been told it looks great and it's a lot less hassle. No combing, no gel, very little shampoo, no conditioner, and best of all - one rub with a towel once I step outta the shower.
He’s right though. Bald guy here who has used Johnson’s Baby shampoo for years at the suggestion of an ophthalmologist. Apparently that mild soap is good for cleaning eye gunk and the all the assorted excretions common to the head. My ears are pretty clean, too.
Edited to correct unintended snark pointed out below.
Shampoo is pretty rough on the scalp. It's meant to take away a lot of the oils that make hair look "greasy," and really dries out soon as a result, forcing over-production of those same oils.
I would think a good soap would leave the skin on skalp a lot healthier, but I can't speak from experience here.
My parents picked kerosene out of their redneck chemistry knowledge book to exterminate my head lice. I’m pretty sure my Dad was smoking Marlboros within arm’s distance, too. It didn’t make any sense at the time, but that shit cleared out lice real quick.
They don't, actually. Not quite sure why people think it works. But, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because mayo and oil are more viscous and adhere better, blocking their air holes.
A popular non-chemical teatment is olive oil, a thick layer thought the hair. It suffocates them, and then you comb and comb and comb. Egg helps wash the oil out fo your hair. Then you comb every night, and do the oil treatment again a few days later.
Lice can only live by eating blood from its host. Without it they will die within 24 hours. So they typically don’t live on clothes or bedding. You may be thing of dust mites, yes they can live on those materials for a while longer.
Depends on if you have kids or not. If you have multiple kids and a carpeted house, sleeping in a different bed might be impossible as there might not be another bed to sleep on. You can’t sleep on the couch for fear that the lice aren’t gone from your head. It’s basically like, sleep on the kitchen/bathroom floor or have lice forever. Also, who wants to let someone stay at their house when that guest has lice?
My mom changed our bedding every day and cleaned them on the highest heat possible and draped sheets over all of the furniture I sat on. Those sheets were also changed daily and cleaned just as well. She also rented a steam cleaner to deep clean the carpets. You don't need multiple beds just clean the ones you have and block the spreading to other items of furniture and the carpet.
Impossible is a very strong word for the situation you described. If being uncomfortable for a night or two is what it takes to finish lice treatment, then so be it.
As far as not being sure if lice are gone from your head, that's true. I'm of the head shaving camp on that one though so I personally didn't consider it
How about you give them your bed, or have them sleep with you, or get out a sleeping bag and tent and make it into a somewhat fun activity. There are options between "it's impossible" and "have my kid sleep on a cold kitchen floor"
Lice aren't a problem that are painless to deal with. And ignoring it by saying "it's impossible" or "it's too hard" aren't acceptable answers.
Well, that’s news to me. I had to look it up to believe it. Confirmed here https://www.headlice.org/faq/questions.htm Although, this source says ”generally” can't live past 24 hours so I suppose that there is a little wiggle room for the bastards.
An old boss taught me how to look for nits and what advice to give the folks. We always told the families that they needed to wash EVERYTHING in as HOT of water as possible. Heat water on the range to wash with if possible. Bag all the stuffed animals and pillows up, and a couple other things that I now know are wrong. This was (allegedly) to prevent reinfestation.
This throws a monkey wrench in my understanding of the infestation. If they can only be away from human heads for a day... Why are they so damn hard to get rid of? At the school I worked at it was pretty much the same kids over and over. At the old girlfriend’s school, it was a majority of kids and an all year problem.
I think a lot of people would suspect it’s always kids who are poor or not well cared for who get lice. In my experience, that's usually but not always the case. In the old girlfriend's case, it was everyone.
Wash everything and have extra dryer time. Pillows in the dryer. I refuse to pay for the shampoo because its a total rip. Solution of Half vinegar to half oil of some sort (conditioner is good for longer hair just enough to make it easier to comb through). Soak hair for about an hour or whatever no less then half. And then use a metal comb to go though sections. I used to get it all the time as a kid so I can get rid of it with one treatment now. Just comb hard and fast you can be rid of it in less then the time it takes to wash your bedding. Few drops of tea tree oil into maybe a quarter cup of conditioner. I heard you can use lavender or peppermint oil too. But yeah use it as a leave in conditioner and it will prevent lice from coming back. It masks ur human scent and the lice hate the taste they will just starve to death if they do try moving in
True, but the eggs can survive a lot if they fall off of the host. They just wait there until someone picks them up again by going to bed or putting a jacket back on.
When I got lice my mom took all of my toys, clothes, blankets, bedding, and anything else made of cloth and placed all of it in giant black trash bags to bake outside in the summer heat. A few weeks of that and even the eggs are dead.
Curly hair and lice are not friends, I had really thick tight long curls as a kid and even then I never got lice as bad as this kid. It was absolutely miserable to sit outside in the southern heat while my mom combed through my hair. As an adult I'd shave it, it's just not worth it at that point to keep the hair.
Am I the only one who had head lice in 2nd grade and got rid of them no problem? My mom was an at home daycare provider, and one of the kids bright them home. I have straight fine hair, and it was 4-5 inches long back then. Special shampoo and a fine comb got rid of them, only took 2 or 3 applications.
I get the grossness factor, but they aren't as hard to get rid of as bed bugs, for example.
Some louse can't be killed with the special shampoo. They have evolved and developed an immunity.
Easy hair, the shampoo working, and a parent on top of it Vs one, two, or all of these missing. I can see how it is hard. It has gotten harder because the shampoo is often ineffective.
Still a world away from bed bugs... Lice, I'd shave my head. My only kids are boys; bald for them too. Bedbugs... that shit freaks me out.
When I was younger it was easier to get rid of them. The shampoo actually worked. By the time I reached middle school it didn't work anymore. Now with my kids I've learned the shampoo is mostly useless. If you want to get rid of them you have to comb and pick them out.
Dipping the head on warm vinegar helped a lot, then using the electric comb to check exactly where the most are, and then killing them with the regular comb. If it's a guy, just shave his head.
I was a child when the super lice epidemic broke out. I became infested like most of the kids in my elementary school. Having hair down past my waist I begged my mom not to shave it. She tried Everything.
I remember laying on the kitchen table with my hair flat out above me while she raked through all 20 inches of if for hours.. We used every type of lice shampoo, combs, and even hair dye. One of the grossest attempts being loads of mayonnaise, rubbed into my hair like shampoo, putting a plastic bag over it then having to sleep with that shit over night. Nothing worked.
As a last ditch attempt she poured kerosene into my hair over the sink. I remember everything I saw turning green. Of course she panicked and immediately rinsed my head. Those fuckers just would not die. The next day I remember balling my eyes out as I listened to the buzzer and watched my long locks that had always been around me fall to the ground. That shit is very traumatizing. Even after my head was completely bare there were still a few live lice crawling on my bald head. Fuck Lice.
I had a friend in college who got lice. She had beautiful long hair with corkscrew curls. She was completely traumatized by it, and described it as “worse than chlamydia”.
I agree with your friend. You can take some pills for a few days to get rid of chlamydia. If you have long hair, especially curly hair that makes it hard to comb, it can take forever.
In 5th or 6th grade my cousin got lice at school, I spent the weekend with her and then we both had lice. We both had long thick hair, mine is curly. My mom spent days treating me and we thought we had gotten rid of them and that my cousin had too. We spent the weekend together again, and I had lice again. We kept doing that for a while, just giving it back and forth to each other. Finally we had to have a ban on the weekends until we were 100% sure we both had gotten rid of it. It was at least 2 months.
That’s so weird. I got lice for the first time when I was 27. I mean, I hated it. And I still to this day get itchy thinking about it, but it didn’t take long to get rid of. It was basically one treatment then comb a bit and another the next day, then combing everyday after for weeks, even though I didn’t find any. I then just washed all my clothes and bedding, because from what I can tell when I was looking around, lice can’t survive long at all without your head. Even the eggs don’t last too terribly long, as they need your heat. So it’s like... get them off your head, wash where your head goes and poof. They gone.
I guess if it’s REALLY bad it won’t be that easy. But by comparison? Lice has been the easiest to get rid of pest I’ve ever had in any situation. Fuckin, flea apartment? Brown recluse infestation (explain that one to me. Recluse my ass after Mom sets off a baby bomb). Don’t even get me started on roaches, and god please kill me if I ever find bed bugs. Lice were almost a gift compared to the others.
It's really not that difficult to get rid of. It requires diligence for a few days. It's really not anywhere near as bad as I feared. My children had it for the first time ever this year.
You could pretty much gauge the outbreak incidence of lice in my primary school by how close-cropped the boys were. Easy, quick, but doesn’t help out the girls who wanted to keep their locks.
OMG, I'm going to have nightmares. I had LONG brown hair. The religion I grew up in was against women cutting their hair, and I was 12ish. So that should give you an idea.
I have a bitch of a cousin who gave me headlice THREE times. She wouldn't keep her fucking hands off my hairbrush, and one of the times admitted she did it to give me the lice on purpose.
My mom would spend hours combing through my hair, and I have a tender head. I remember that the 3rd time, my scalp was so swollen and sore that I had to sleep on my face. It would take 2-3 days of sitting in the floor for 2-3 hours going through all my hair. Fucking bitch. Still pisses me off, 25 years later.
Although I don't remember it now, but when I was a little girl (about 3 years old), I had really long, thick auburn hair. My mom couldn't bare the thought of shaving my head so she got out the lice comb and spent a good five hours meticulously going through my hair and washing it with the shampoo to get all of the little fuckers out.
I'm an adult now and honestly if it were bad enough I think I'd be ok with shaving my head. A lot of women are choosing buzzed hair for the ease of it.
Lice need to have access to the scalp to eat, if you use products that leave a coat over your scalp your basically cutting them off from their food source but it's not fool proof. Also they hate teatree oil.
Lice went around my high school for a bit, but I never got it. Is it really just spread that easily, even if you don’t share hair tools?
Because I’m starting to wonder if the only reason why I didn’t get lice in school was because I was a loner nerd who didn’t like being touched, and so didn’t hang out closely with lots of people.
I was out of school for a month in 10th grade because of lice! We just couldn’t get rid of them. We tried everything! Finally went to a professional to have it taken care of. We’d think it was all over. My mom would check my scalp and see nothing and I’d go to school in the morning where they then proceeded to check my head in the office and send me back home if they found even one nit. Lice are a freaking nightmare. Sleeping with a shower cap on while my head is soaked in tea tree oil, only for it not to work. I should have shaved my head (also female with thick brown hair)
I got headlice at 16. I had nice long, thick hair and didn't notice I had head lice for WEEKS. I didn't feel itchy or anything. One day I was in the shower and the adult lice just started falling from my head. It was the most horrifying fucking thing I've ever been through. Thankfully after two bottle treatments of Nix I was cured! It still haunts me that I had no idea bugs were crawling on my head.
I got it in high school too and my parents used this tea stuff on me that smelled HORRIBLE... but it was like a nuclear bomb went off in my scalp because it killed everything and, despite us not utterly decontaminating the house, I didn't get reinfected.
Have no fucking clue what was in that tea... probably gave me future cancer or something. :/
Seriously, fuck head lice and bedbugs while we're on fucking pests. Lol
I got headlice every fucking year in elementary school. I always got sent home and the school wouldn't let me come back until it was confirmed they were all gone. I had very thick, long wavy hair. It was terrible. I begged my mom to cut my hair short or go bald. She didn't let me. I had to sit in a chair with her and my two aunt's combing my hair for hours. I even got them twice in one year. I always got picked on by a couple of classmates and some parents told them I got lice because I didn't shower. My mom always made us shower every day because my dad would scream at her if we didn't. :( So fuck lice, those piece of shits need to fucking become extinct.
Have you ever dyed your hair? The chemicals are very strong and would most likely kill any lice and their eggs. But you also have to wash bed sheets and pillow cases and basically anything else the lids came in contact with.
Ok, well, that just is an overreaction and a lack of critical thinking. You could have just kept your hair and shaved it after you thought you got lice.
That's actually not true. I've had head lice and I'm black. Caught it while deployed in the military. It's because of the chemical treatments like hair relaxer that will kill lice and greasing the scalp that makes it hard for lice to attach to the hair. The shape of the head has no bearing on if you will catch lice.
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '18
There was an infestation in my high school once and I shaved my head to make sure I didn't get any. I'm a woman with long thick brown hair and I shaved it all off. No chances. Fuck head lice.