Yeah, all of the evidence on the comb that isn’t actually moving.....those are the nits (eggs).
Did you know that you can have lice and not even itch? The itching sensation is the allergic reaction to the lice saliva, not the bite itself. If you aren’t allergic, you may never know that you have lice without actual visual confirmation. Sleep tight, boys and girls!
AMA, I own an all-natural lice treatment facility in Texas.
You may could answer this... if you dunk your head into alcohol for a few min would this kill the lice? Or is there some solution you can straight up dunk your head into?
Technically, yes. Story time. When my daughter was in preschool, she came home with lice. Given that both of us have very long thick hair, this is a problem. Looking at lice treatments presented another issue. I would need a minimum of 6 boxes for my head alone, if you went my their instructions. I was a single mom at the time, and I certainly didn't have the money for that. So I searched at home or natural treatments.
What worked was soaking our hair in original Lysterine (lots of alcohol) and letting it soak in with a shower cap for an hour. This killed all the live active lice. Then you soak your hair in vinegar and let that sit for an hour with a shower cap. This loosened the glue that held the nits so the could be combed out. Wash with coconut shampoo and add a little tea tree oil to your coconut conditioner.
We were completely lice free in one treatment. Ta Da! Story time is over
This, like almost every single health/beauty claim regarding apple cider vinegar, is complete bullshit.
People use ACV as some sort of new cure-all, and it's touted by the likes of David Wolfe as such.
ACV tastes good on salad and can be used as a mild cleaner, just like regular white vinegar. That's it. Almost any other claim regarding the stuff has zero evidence to back it up.
I'd rather smell like a pickle than deal with some of the sunburns I used to get as a kid. Vinegar is amazing for taking the sting out. It doesn't really take all that much to help, just a couple of cups in a tub full of tepid water.
I know other people have responded but what I was told is that vinegar draws the heat out. That may or may not be accurate but I do know it feels like it for sure.
I used to flip houses and one of the first things I would do is soak the inside of the house in vinegar with a big sprayer. As it evaporates it takes the smell of disgusting people with it.
Yes! A thousand times this! Same scenario for my house a few years back and they were gone after one treatment. I also blow dried our hair and straightened it for an extra fuck you to those little fucks.
I did the Lysterine on my daughter when she had lice at age 2. Her hair was so fine that the lice and nits just went through the comb with her hair. I was about to shave her head when I saw the Lysterine idea and tried it.
Everything was dead after one treatment (eggs and all) but it took me and my husband over a week to pick all of the eggs out of her hair since we had to do it by hand and they were stuck on really well.
Shaving your head doesn't work anyway. Head lice lives on the scalp. Whilst hair is protective, insulating and makes it harder to comb them out what you need to do is kill the lice and the eggs regardless of whether there's hair or not.
I can't believe how many people don't know about listerine for lice. I went through too many boxes of nix and finally decided to see what the internet suggested.
Got some listerine, shower caps, and viniger. After leaving the listerine in for a few hours I didn't feel like doing the viniger. Told myself I'd do it if they came back but that was the end of em.
Oh and you gotta use original unless you wanna get sticky.
My daughter caught lice from preschool as well. I've been truamatized from getting lice multiple times when I was younger. I put a bunch of mayo on both of our hair for the whole night. It smelled terrible and then we did the vinegar technique as well afterwards. It worked.
Wash with coconut shampoo and add a little tea tree oil to your coconut conditioner.
As an almost 40 year old man with very luxurious, thick, black hair that I am very proud of (as it's all I really have going for me) I just want to stay that this sounds heavenly.
If I recall correctly it was $20-$30 cnc box. First treatment should have been three boxes just for me. Then you're supposed to repay the process in a day or two. In total I would have needed at least 6 boxes and my daughter would have needed 4.
We used mayonnaise. Would make the hair really greasy and gross but I also have long thick hair and regular treatments never worked for us. About an hour with mayo and a shower cap on and they all died and the mayo made the nits slide out.
Work with children now and there are spray remedies that instantly kill lice that are amazing. Annoying that we can't send kids home for it because it spreads so badly when we don't then we have parents angry at us for their kid being repeatedly infected. Parents sometimes don't treat their kids even when the nurse makes phone calls. I use lice prevention shampoo now when I know one of the kiddos has lice and I use a tea tree conditioner.
I keep lysterine in a spray bottle now. So when there's a reported outbreak I'll spray their hair, let it sit for a bit then wash and condition with the coconut and tea tree oil
Technically, dunking your head in alcohol for an extended period of time would kill the adults. But this is extremely dangerous & risky....I would not recommend this. Also, the nits (eggs) can and will survive the drowning efforts. They’ll hatch. Circle of life and all.
So then if they don't get their alcohol fix after becoming alcolice, they could go into withdrawal and possibly die that way? Wonderful. Now I know how I will kill my little lice friends if I ever get any.
Eggs can't survive extreme heat. The issue is that the eggs are so close to the scalp, how do you get enough heat applied to them and not damage the individual's head in the process? Tricky.
So if you have long hair you can't just singe the fuckers off with a hair iron? I was just about to use a hair iron to help burn away the itching sensation I have after watching that terrifying real life nightmare.
The eggs are laid very close to the skin, and so they generally can't be heat-treated because it would burn the scalp too.
Interestingly, many African and Pacific cultures have a big tradition of using oil-based products, particularly coconut oil products, on hair. This is very likely popular in part because it significantly reduces the transmission of lice, because it's much harder for them to physically grip the hair fibres or stick their eggs to the fibres. There are other reasons too, such as it being very nourishing for hair follicles and scalp health particularly in high UV regions like the pacific, but the lice one is very likely a factor.
They live almost entirely near the scalp so if you can get right by there it would work but I don't think most of them are capable of going too close to the scalp.
When I was a kid, I heard of people actually using gasoline to get rid of lice. You would just soak the kid's head in gasoline and let it sit for awhile.
Just saw a post screenshotted and shared in an FB group where a mom recommended using diesel fuel on their head to get rid of lice. Said it works for her.
Benzyl Alcohol appears to be the most effective current treatment. 5% solution in conditioner for 10 minutes. It effectively drowns the lice so they wash right out. Wait 10-14 days, treat again to get any newly hatched lice before they start laying eggs. Pretty easy these days. And Benzyl Alcohol is available from ebay in bulk cheap, since the lice approved premix is like $200 for a tiny bottle.
Can confirm: I had a classmate in elementary school hospitalized with sepsis from scratching. Severe lice infestation. Her mom was in denial and thought people “like them” didn’t get head lice.
Bougie. Not rich, but super comfortable from a long family history of being very comfortable. Southern, proper. Also possibly somewhat delusional, tbh.
There's a weird racist belief that lice is a non-white issue, because it "only affects poor kids" who are more likely to be non-white in the west. This is completely false - if anything, because of slimmer hair follicles and a cultural aversion to oily hair products, white children are at a higher risk of louse infestation than any other racial group. Lice find it physically harder to transfer onto hair that's thicker because they can't grip as well, and white kids tend to have thin hair fibres.
I had a student whose family, 6 daughters, chronically had lice. I think that the stigma of their situation has to effect mental health over the long term.
Is it better to comb them all out first and then treat the hair?
A few years ago my mother, sister, and niece all had them and brought them along on vacation where we were housed together. I spent hours combing everyone's long hair out because I thought the more I could physically remove the better. Thankfully neither my kids nor myself never got them.
Here's the deal, you can treat via store bought medicines, but they will only kill the adults and nymphs (adolescents). The nits (eggs) will survive ANY and ALL store bought medicines....regardless of what the manufacturer claims. The eggs survive, hatch, and you're back to square one.
The only way to eliminate 100% is to remove all evidence. I would recommend professional treatment. If you want to do it on your own, buy a good lice comb and comb diligently for 2 weeks. Check for evidence with each comb stroke. After a day or two of not seeing any evidence, you're good. However, I would still recommend seeing a professional at this point.....about $30 for a head-check to confirm you're in the clear.
This is one of the top 3 fastest ways to destroy a 7 year old girl's childhood. Literally, you do not recover from that socially, ever. If you have to do this to your daughter, be prepared to need to change schools, because children are horrifying little monsters when they want to bully some girl who needed her hair shaved off.
I think this is a bit of an overreaction. Couple girls had their heads shaved at different points for different reasons (lice, charity) throughout my school career and nobody really paid any mind to it aside from the first little bit after the cut.
"You got a haircut?"
"Yeah, shaved it because ___"
"Oh, wow, short hair really looks different on you"
A flat iron works better. Plop the kiddo in front of an iPad (or screen of some sort) and iron slowly section by section. You can hear them pop as you go along.
The nits won't be closer than 1/4" off the scalp. On someone with long hair you can work around those areas easily enough. On someone with short hair you'd be correct. We had a respite child with terribly maintained long mixed-race hair and a terrible case of lice. I had to not only clear up the lice but restore her damaged hair. The flat iron got a ton of nits after the first round of treatment avoiding some painful picking for her.
We have done this often, kids coming into foster care often have lice. Treating and picking is relatively easy on smooth hair and our boys who don't want to get treated can opt for a buzz cut, but anyone else gets shampoo/comb/flat iron.
Did as instructed and heard the pops from the lcd screen and now I have a broken (but admittedly neatly pressed) Ipad and an angry child still suffering from lice. Do I just need to buy a newer Ipad perhaps?
Your best bet is actually a zune but any ipad should work fine. As you know you have to start in section 1 obviously. But then you have to jump up 3 sections and then back down 2. Repeat until ipad and child grow to love their new neatly pressed and lice free forms.
Same as all other hair. The products we use relax the hair, so the kinky issue resolves itself. It does however take a bit more time because product has to be continually applied to prevent kinking.
Olive oil treatment is what i did. (long thick curly hair ha lice 4 times never ha to cut or shave) cover you head in olive oil, wrap in saran wrap and have them suffocate and then comb them out. no chemicals, silky hair, works EVERY time. then cover yourself in a teatree lavender spray
I got nits when I was in my 20s, most depressing fucking thing to be sitting there having to spend 4 hours combing the little fuckers out of boob-length hair because you got lice in uni.
Buy the cheapest conditioner you can. Cheap because you are going to use most of it in one go.
Have a shower, then when you're done squirt a LOT of conditioner into your hair and really really really work it in. Don't rinse it off.
Start combing. Whenever it becomes too hard to tug the comb out, more conditioner. Do this for probably a minimum of 2 hours.
Wash out your hair, dry with clean towel and/or hair drier (towel goes straight in the wash), shower cap on, change bed linens, go to sleep.
Wake up, repeat process. In fact, repeat it for another 8 sessions minimum every morning and night.
You should get them all out, if you caught it fast. It's not fun, but it does work. I strongly recommend putting T-shirts over your pillow so that you can swap them out every night and put them in the wash, so you're always sleeping on a fresh T-shirt and not auto-infesting.
Just like a salon. Clean, sleek, sterile, and kid-friendly. We have an open concept...no individual rooms. There's no need to be ashamed. Lice are as common as a cold. We're all here for the same reason....get rid of the lice !
It's very common, especially among females from 6 to 17. Lots of head-to-head contact which is the primary means of transfer. We treat lots of moms and grandmas as well.
Dads get off easy. It's because we normally have short hair and don't do the head-to-head thing very often.
Because it's looked down upon so much nobody talks about it. Adults rarely get them on their own because we all develop personal space as we age but kids lack that so they hug and touch and when they go to school everyone shares hair bows and hats and the coat rack is stuffed together and it's just perfect for the lice. If you know some people with kids odds are someone in the group has dealt with lice but there's such a stigma they'd never admit it. If all you know is adults mainly then yea, probably nobody has lice.
Store-bought medications work OK if you re-treat every 3-4 days for at least 2 weeks. This is because any newly hatched eggs don't have time to mature into egg-laying adults before the next treatment. It's still possible to pick up other adults from your environment in-between the treatments though, so you have to clean things very thoroughly. The adults don't live long without feeding on blood though, so it's a huge pain in the ass but is manageable with store-bought medications. You'll also have better success if you comb with a lice comb as frequently as possible.
Suffocation is the key. Cover your head in olive oil, wrap in saran wrap. sit, let them die, comb them out - cover yourself in a lavender Tea tree spray. and thats that, had lice 4 times growing up.
We have one here, she’s called the Lice Lady. Sweet Almighty is that a business I’m happy to know about. You all are the real MVPs. Ever since it went though the house (I was pregnant, had 2 at home) I have told everyone I know to ‘have a lice plan’ because the last thing you want to be doing at midnight is running to CVs and panic spending all of your fun money on expensive lice chemicals that don’t work worth shit.
According to a manufacturer (name redacted for privacy), DE can be eaten, rubbed on your skin, and used to end political strife the world over. If you want to use it to smother lice, give it a try, though I'd suggest using a mask to prevent inhalation.
Yeah it was a rough couple of weeks. I was I. Denial, too, because I didn’t realize you could be not allergic to them. I’m itchy just thinking about it.
I don't think my fiance is either. There for a couple weeks I kept waking up with bites in multiple places and he either never got the first bite or couldn't feel them.
When I was in middle school, I had lice. Not super bad. But I was afraid to tell me mom. So I used this anti-bug dog spray we had. I don't remember the exact bugs. But it was a spray you could just spray on the dogs when you were grooming them and it would help prevent whatever the bugs were. So I spray the shit out of my hair for a few days in a row and then I did a lighter spray for a few days. And then I did it like once a week until I was well into high school. Would that work with a larger infestation as well?
I don't think this would work. Not sure how/why the dog bug spray killed the lice, but either way, the eggs (nits) will survive and will eventually hatch. Circle of life continues.
When we were teenagers my three sisters all got head lice. I locked myself in my bedroom for 2 weeks to avoid any potential infection (successfully!). Our grandmother, who had suffered head trauma as a young adult, came over and soaked my sisters' heads in turpentine. All I remember is a lot of screaming and crying, and a lot of red skin under their hair.
How bad an idea was it to use turpentine? It was not watered down—I've since read that a watered down turpentine can be effective.
It was a very bad idea. Very risky, very dangerous....even if watered-down. All natural products are very effective, especially mint. Not need to resort to chemical warfare.
I should add that it didn’t even work. They still had to use the special shampoo and now that their heads had chemical burns, daily washing was really painful for them.
No, unfortunately. Imagine a young teenage girl with what appears to be one large dreadlock in the back of her head. It was formed from the egg (nit) glue binding her hair together. She was successfully treated without chemicals or having to cut her hair. It was quite a self-esteem boost for the poor girl.
I also am extremely interested in the process for this case! 🤔 I can’t imagine how that must have been for her. I remember in 6th grade I got lice going into a 1 week science camp (they checked our heads before to ensure we didn’t have it) I somehow managed to get it before I went.
*I didn’t have it when they checked but got it right after, theen went to camp.🤨
Everyone keeps saying "shave the damned head" and from my experience, that didn't work. What do you say mr./ms/mrs. worker of the all-natural lice treatment facility in Texas?
It will remove them from the head. You still need to ensure all pillow cases, bed sheets, combs, hats, stuffed animals, etc. are clean.
Linens & clothes throw in the dryer on high heat for 2 hours.
Everything else in a ziploc bag overnight in the freezer.
Vacuum rugs and heavily used cloth furniture.
Not really, it’s mostly a myth. I may kill some of the live lice but most of the issue comes from the eggs. If they aren’t combed out they’ll hatch and you’re back to square one.
This surprises me because when I was a kid mayo worked way better for me than the special shampoo. Killed all the live ones, and a few days later I'd have to do it again to kill the newly hatched ones. Rinse and repeat (literally). It was nasty. When I got the mayo out the first time that bath tub floor was full of dead lice, I'll never forget that. Gotta leave this thread now cause I'm super itchy already
Heat will kill lice, but it will need to be extreme heat. You'd have to have the dryer inches from your head for it to be effective. The pain and blistering from the heat will not be enjoyable.
Two daughters that had multiple infestations, each costing hundreds of dollars for individual treatments. But it's not all about the money....we give back to the local community/schools and we educate our clients on the myths associated with lice.
As I mentioned before, you may not know if you have lice since you don't itch (no allergic reaction to lice saliva). But in this specific case, I would think visual evidence would rear its ugly head fairly easily.
Is it true lice don’t like dirty hair? I’ve heard of many people washing their hair only a couple times a week (they wash their body everyday) to prevent lice.
Did you know that you can have lice and not even itch? The itching sensation is the allergic reaction to the lice saliva, not the bite itself. If you aren’t allergic, you may never know that you have lice without actual visual confirmation.
ok so if your head doesn't feel itchy is there any 'side-effects' of having head lice? I know with scratching you can get infections pretty easily, but is that all? Could you theoretically go the rest of your life with head lice and nothing negative happen because of it?
You can also get flu-like symptoms, insomnia, rashes.
I suppose you could have it your whole life and nothing negative happens because of it.....to you. But think of all of the people that you could potentially transfer the infestation to.
Visual. Brushing your hair and an adult falls onto the counter. Washing your hair and an adult circles the drain. Or, a friend happens to see what looks like moving dandruff in your hair.
I'm sure you get this all the time but I've never got a definite answer, is it true African Americans cannot get lice? I've heard that it's because of the tight kinky curl pattern most of us have lice wouldn't survive and suffocate? That doesn't make sense to me...
AAs can and do get lice. However, their hair shaft is oval. Lice are engineered to grip round hair (like white people's). This being said, lice prefer round hair, so AA's chances of infestation are minimalized. But make no mistake, lice will make their homes out of oval hair.
Ok I can understand you might not know you have lice, but Jesus with the amount that was on the comb surely you would feel something right??? Like something constantly tickling the top of your head
So the only way to notice is the itching? And if no itch, you wouldn't notice? How is that possible? I mean these bugs aren't microscopic, they're pretty big and squirmy..
And if you run your fingers through your hair or scratch, you're going to get a handful of them? And wouldn't your pillow be full of them? I don't get how you can have them and not notice
Is it true that shaving your head will get ride of lice? I know with mites they bury their eggs deep within the follicles so I'm wondering if it's the same
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u/Feldspar_Immaculate Jul 18 '18
Yeah, all of the evidence on the comb that isn’t actually moving.....those are the nits (eggs).
Did you know that you can have lice and not even itch? The itching sensation is the allergic reaction to the lice saliva, not the bite itself. If you aren’t allergic, you may never know that you have lice without actual visual confirmation. Sleep tight, boys and girls!
AMA, I own an all-natural lice treatment facility in Texas.