As a parent, you have probably either had to deal with head lice yourself or at least know parents who have. If you’ve heard much about lice, you are also likely to have picked up some myths about them that you never realized are myths. Head lice are bad enough without any confusion caused by unsubstantiated information or outright falsehoods about them, so let’s delve into some of these.
HEAD LICE MYTHS
- Lice Only like Clean (or Dirty) Hair You may not want to hear this since you might be so studious about bathing and shampooing your kids regularly but lice don’t care about their victim’s hygiene. They are attracted to a warm, moist scalp that has hair on it regardless of whether that hair is shampooed every day or far less frequently. Some parents experience embarrassment at discovering their children have lice but they shouldn’t.
- Lice Can Jump Lice have no wings and no strong hind legs, so they can’t jump or fly. One of the good things about lice is that their ability to spread is limited to crawling from an infested person’s head or hair to that of another person.
- Itching Is an Early Sign of Lice While itching is a fairly common sign of lice, it can actually take a while to develop. It’s also important to note that this symptom is an allergic reaction to the bite of a louse, and some people may not be allergic, which means they’ll never develop this symptom.
COMMON WAYS TO TREAT HEAD LICE
One other thing about lice that could have been included in the list of myths above is that all you need to do is go out and buy an off-the-shelf lice shampoo and this will solve the problem. While these can work in some instances, many lice have grown immune to the chemicals in these shampoos since they’ve been used for so many years.
The spotty success of over-the-counter treatments causes some parents to turn to home remedies, but this may not be much better. These primarily rely on coating your child’s hair and scalp with a natural substance, usually mayonnaise or olive oil, to suffocate the lice. One problem is that lice can hold their breath for hours, so your kid has to have this glop on their hair overnight. Also, it only suffocates the live lice, so you have to do it a couple more time at one-week intervals to catch those newly hatched lice that were nits during the first treatment.
One big problem with both of these approaches is they downplay how painstaking the removal of head lice truly is. You have to be very thorough because just one missed pregnant female louse or a couple missed nits and the whole problem starts all over again in a week. So, what is the solution?
A PROFESSIONAL TREATMENT FOR HEAD LICE
There are businesses that do nothing but remove head lice infestations from families just like yours. Chances are they have to be fairly competent at doing it too. If they weren’t, then they’d be hard pressed to stay in business if head lice treatment is all they do.
Lice Lifters of Lancaster is a lice salon that specializes in the safe, effective treatment of head lice for families in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area. When you bring a loved one you believe may have lice to our kid-friendly establishment, we first make sure that this is their problem. If they are discovered, we then utilize methods and products that are 100 percent safe for your loved one but downright deadly for the unfortunate critters that decided to make a home on their scalp. We’ll get your family free of lice in a single trip to our salon, and you’ll be back to having a happy family that’s not experiencing irritation or discomfort on their scalp.
