With children back to school this week it is safe to say we are about to see a massive spike in head lice cases! Head lice expert Dani Knapp, whose family business Nitty Gritty have been helping families tackle head lice for over 25 years, explains why cases become so extreme in September and more importantly how to deal with head lice when our children catch them.
“Head lice are spread by direct head-to-head contact which is why they are so prevalent amongst primary school age children. After the 6 week Summer break children are now back together in close contact; at their school desks, huddled together playing games in the playground and even just sitting on the carpet listening to story time. All this close contact gives head lice the perfect opportunity to migrate from one head to another and, before you know it, half a class can be infested with head lice!”.
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So what should you do if your child comes home with head lice?
It is really important to be doing regular checks on primary school aged children because if you catch them early before they have had a chance to breed and start multiplying they are much easier to deal with! And, despite what a lot of people believe, not everyone feels itchy when head lice are present, in fact less than 50% of people have this reaction. So do not assume that your child does not have head lice just because they are not itchy. Make checking your child for head lice part of your weekly hair routine!
What should you be looking for?
Head lice are small, wingless insects with flattened, elongated bodies and oval heads, they are greyish in colour and are about the size of a sesame seed. They have six legs with tiny hooks at the end of each leg for clinging onto the hair.
Head lice spend their entire 30-35 day lifespan in our hair and tend to stay very close to our scalps. They lay their eggs right at the roots of the hair, very close to the scalp where it is nice and warm so that when the baby lice hatch out they are close to their food source. You will usually find them near the temples, behind the ears, at the crown or at the nape of the neck, so these are the areas where you want to be paying particular attention to when checking.
Usually the first sign of head lice will be the eggs, as it will usually start with just one head louse crawling onto your child’s head and then beginning to lay eggs (each head louse can lay up to 8 eggs per day). The eggs then take approximately 7-10 days to hatch.
The eggs are tiny teardrop shapes, about the size of a pin head and will be securely glued to the hair shaft. Before they hatch, the ‘live’ eggs are a brownish colour, making them very difficult to spot in dark hair. Once the eggs hatch, the ‘nit’ which is the empty egg case, is a white or cream colour. So if you are finding ‘live’ eggs in the hair then there will definitely be at least one live head louse in the hair. If you are finding the empty egg cases in the hair then you will now have multiple live lice in the hair.
What to do if you find live lice or eggs in the hair?
Firstly, the most important thing to remember is if you find head lice on any member of your household, it is really important to thoroughly check each and every member of the household, as it is very likely that it will have already been passed from one family member to another.
When it comes to completely eradicating head lice it is all about breaking the life cycle and ensuring you are removing both the live lice as well as the unhatched eggs, otherwise the unhatched eggs will hatch out 7-10 days later and you will find yourself right back to where you started. Most over the counter liquid treatments only target the live lice and do not kill the eggs, which is why parents find themselves in a repetitive cycle of using treatment after treatment after treatment.
The most effective way to eradicate both the live lice and the eggs is to do exactly what the NHS advises, which is wet combing. Simply saturate the hair with ordinary hair conditioner and comb from roots to tips. Continue combing until you are no longer finding any live lice or eggs. You can use one comb to treat an entire family and what’s even better is that it’s a one-time purchase that will last you an entire lifetime, making it not just the most effective way to tackle head lice and their eggs but also the most cost effective too.
So now we know how to get rid of head lice, how do we avoid getting them in the future?
Well, there are a few simple, yet very effective things you can do to avoid catching head lice. The first and foremost golden rule is to tie back hair that is long enough to be tied back. By doing this you make it much harder for head lice to migrate onto your child’s hair as the loose strands of hair won’t be so accessible when your child is in close contact with another child.
Remember head lice can’t jump and they can’t fly, they need to crawl from one hair strand to another, so make that migration as difficult as possible for them. The other thing you can do is to keep a bottle of our
Nitty Gritty head lice defence spray next to your child’s hair brush. Every morning after you have brushed your child’s hair and tied it up simply spritz the hair with the defence spray and this will stop head lice from migrating on to your child’s hair.
Just like mosquitos, head lice are drawn to the scent of blood and will take any opportunity they get to migrate over to a new host, but our defence spray was developed to mess up their radar by disguising the scent they are looking for with a blend of essential oils that they find offensive. So, although it smells lovely to us, head lice will be repelled by it and not migrate onto the hair.
Most importantly, remember, head lice may be a nuisance, but they are not dangerous and are not a reflection of bad hygiene. Absolutely anyone with hair on their head can catch head lice! Don’t ever let them make you or your children unhappy.
You can find out lots more helpful information about tackling head lice on the Nitty Gritty website
www.nittygritty.co.uk
