Head Lice Information – Lice, Nits and Their Life Cycle

There are countless myths about head lice and this is why it is essential to have access to reliable, unbiased head lice information. Here is a detailed description of the head louse and its eggs, called nits, as well as details on the life cycle of head lice.

The Head Louse

The head louse is a small wingless insect, which body is flattened. Its color is white but once soaked with blood, it becomes red or black. It measures 2 to 3 mm. Wingless, it does not fly nor does it jump but it moves quickly (speed of 23 cm per minute under natural conditions) between the hair to which it clings tightly with 3 pairs of short legs. Its abdomen is wider than the rest of the body.

The head louse breathes through holes that can close themselves and become impermeable to water. These openings also have a function of excretion. Its head has short antennae and highly specialized mouthparts that allow the head louse to perform piercing and sucking actions. Feeding exclusively on the blood of its host, who it bites 2 to 4 times per day for meals that last about 30 minutes. It can live on the scalp for over a month (30 to 40 days).

Far away from his host, the head louse rarely survives more than 36 hours, it dies of starvation or dehydration. It must indeed be regularly fed with blood, and the weather and moisture conditions necessary to its survival are quite strict: temperature between 28 and 32 degrees Celsius with 70% to 80% humidity. The head louse is an external parasite of humans, which means that it absolutely must be on a human in order to survive. We know of no head lice predators.

Nits

The eggs of head lice are called nits and have the appearance of grain with a caramel color when laid, and they become more or less white when they are empty. Nits are very hard to spot as they measure approximately 0.8 mm and are glued to the hair by a secretion of the female louse.This secretion (cementum) coats the base of the nit and the hair which hold together firmly.

The female lays its nits at the root of the hair very close to the scalp (less than 1 mm) where the incubation is easier thanks to the heat and humidity. After hatching, the empty shell of the nit can remains on the hair for several months. Whitish, it gradually moves away from the root as the hair grows. Empty nits can easily be taken for dandruff but unlike those, they are resistant to washing and brushing hair.

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Head Lice Treatment – Home Remedy For Head Lice

Head lice thrive on humans as hosts and mostly live on human head and neck. Feeding off of human blood, they try to stay as close to the skin or scalp as possible. They use their six lags to firmly attach to hair shaft and move around. These legs are the reason head lice treatment can be somewhat difficult.

The female head lice lay eggs, also known as nits whose color ranges from white to gray. If you have natural dark brown hair like me, having your head infested with gray head lice is truly a nightmare. I remember hours of tedious head lice treatment my mom performed that I had to endure. White ones are very difficult to detect if a person has blond. They seem to use good camouflage.

If the incubation is successful, they morph into baby nymphs. The louse goes from a nit, to baby nymph to a full-grown louse.

Head lice prevention

Wash your head regularly to minimize the risk. Head lice are not a sign of bad hygiene, but washing the hair and thus the scalp, might just help, so why not?

Shaving your hair off is fine if you are a guy, but what do you do if you are a female? For longer hair, the best “tool” to help you prevent head louse from multiplying is a nit or head louse comb available at any store.

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Home remedy for head lice

Head lice oil

Ingredients

* 10 drops of rosemary essential oil

* 10 drops of lavender essential oil

* 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Olive oil serves as a carrier oil, it dilutes the other essential oils keeping them from quick evaporation.

Rosemary and lavender will kill and smother the lice.

Preparation and use

* Add the essential oil to the olive oil

* Massage the scalp and apply all over the hear

* Put a shower cap on and leave on for 1 hour

* Wash off using a head louse shampoo following the instructions on the bottle

Head lice treatment lotion

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The rosemary and lavender essential oils in this lotion kill the nits, and vinegar makes it easier for them to slide down the hair shaft.

Ingredients

* 6 drops of rosemary essential oil

* 6 drops of lavender essential oil

* 5 deciliters of apple vinegar

* 5 deciliters of warm water

Preparation

* Mix both oils with vinegar and warm water

* Use the lotion to thoroughly wash the hair and scalp

* Put a shower cap on

* Leave it on for 15 minutes

* Use the head louse hair comb to comb the hair thoroughly and then wash the hair off using warm water

After this, wash the hair with head louse shampoo using the instructions on the bottle.

Thyme shampoo

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Ingredients

* 1 teaspoon of ordinary hair shampoo (baby shampoo will do)

* 2-3 drops of essential thyme oil

When we say thyme, we usually think of food and oil wide use in food preparation. However, thyme and essential thyme oil are great antiseptics and disinfectants, and also great natural insecticides. Thyme essential oil shouldn’t be used undiluted so you need to this:

Preparation

* Mix the essential thyme oil with shampoo

* Massage the scalp and apply all over the hair

* Leave on for 5 minutes and wash off using lukewarm water

* Following the instructions, use a commercial head louse shampoo

Tea tree oil remedy

Ingredients

* 20 drops of tea tree oil

* 2 oz of olive oil

* 10 drops each of: rosemary essential oil, lavender essential oil, and lemon essential oil

Preparation

* Combine the ingredients and apply to dry hair

* Cover with shower cap, wrap a towel around it, and leave on for 2 hours

* Rinse off using a regular shampoo until you remove all the residue

Wikipedia.org also suggests blending equal amounts of vinegar and olive oil and adding 20 drops of tea tree oil.

Apply the mixture to damp hair, massage and comb the hair. Wrap the hair in a plastic bag for 3 or more hours. Use this head louse treatment for 10 days or at least repeat in 4 to 5 days.

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Head Lice – Home Remedies That Work

When you know you have lice you are looking for the appropriate treatment and you have to choose between shampoos or other chemical products and head lice home remedies. This should be taken seriously, there are a lot of treatments available to the general public, most of them are quite efficient if done correctly, but some of them are chemical and can have side-effects.

For example, do you know what kind of substance you are putting on your child’s head when you are using lice shampoo? That the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends Nix as the most effective treatment for head lice, does not mean it is actually the most effective and anyway you are still using pesticides. While some people feel like chemical products are the best and only way to get rid of head lice, other people definitely want to look for more natural options.

If you do some research you can quickly come up with a long list of home remedies and natural treatments against lice, but not all of them will actually work. This depends on the type of remedy, on the degree of the lice infestation you are facing, and on the way you do the treatment, as a good treatment will not work if not done correctly. Here are some remedies that have been tested and have proven to work, whether empirically or scientifically.

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Some essential oils have proven to effectively fight head lice. You can also do it yourself at home by following this recipe: Mix 2 ml of lavender essential oil with 1 ml of essential oil of peppermint. Add 1ml of melaleuca essential oil and 1 ml of tea tree essential oil. Then add 10 ml of alcohol 40 degrees. Pour the mixture into a spray bottle and spray the neck and temples every morning as a prevention measure. You can also spray hats and scarves to prevent the risk of transmission. If your hair is already infested, spray 12 times on your head and rub your hair and scalp. Then comb your hair section by section with a head lice comb to remove dead lice as well as nits.

Another head lice home remedy that works well is olive oil. You can put together one liter of olive oil, 20 drops of lavender essential oil, 20 drops of geranium essential oil, 2 sprigs of rosemary and a few mint leaves (optional, as this is only for the flavor). Apply this mixture to dry hair after brushing it. Then you will want to comb the hair in order to distribute the mixture, especially if you are dealing with long hair. Leave the product about 24 hours and make 2 normal shampoos to remove the fatty oil.

A cheap and effective method to fight lice is to use alcohol (flavored with lemon or orange) that you can put on your children’s hair. Of course you have to be very careful so as not to pour it into their eyes! But it is highly effective because head lice die within minutes and the hair stays shiny. Eventually, if your goal is to prevent lice from coming back, a good measure against lice is to put a few drops of lavender oil on the collar of your kid’s shirts. Lice hate the smell and this will keep them away.

Most head lice home remedies do work, in spite of what you will sometimes read or what people will tell you. If you choose to use them, remember that there effectiveness will depend mainly on your ability to prepare and apply them correctly.

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Head Lice Treatments – What Experts Do Not Tell You

You can search online or speak with experts; no one will tell you the truth about head lice treatments. They will tell you to apply lice shampoos, to comb nits out, to repeat the treatment, but all this will not help you get rid of these parasites because there is a missing piece in the puzzle.

And the most important point to understand is this one: there is no product that can remove adult lice AND nits at the same time. Not one. No head lice treatment, whether made with chemical products or natural products or home remedies can eliminate both adult lice and lice eggs. For example, if you only put vinegar on your kid’s hair, you will not get rid of the infestation. The same thing is true if you only apply a shampoo, or coat the hair with olive oil.

Why is that? Well, this is because an adult louse is very different from a louse egg (also called nit). And this is obvious, when you think about it. An egg of any species has nothing in common with an adult of the same species. This is why to eliminate each one you need to use different techniques. And this is the same for head lice.

But no one tells you that. So most people buy some anti lice shampoo, apply it following the guidelines of the manufacturer, and after 7 days they are back again…What happened is that the product only killed the adults, and now the eggs have hatched. And people end up thinking that shampoos or other types of head lice treatments do not work.

So every time you have to deal with an infestation, you need to do a specific treatment for adult lice (and nymphs, which are the “children” of lice), and another specific treatment to kill the lice eggs or nits.

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Purely Natural Treatments for Head Lice Could Be Stored Within Your Fridge

If your youngster has brought head lice home from school, you aren’t on your own and you merely need to open the refrigerator door in order to obtain natural treatments for head lice. These parasites survive off of human hair and lay their eggs there, they are termed as “nits”. To get rid of head lice you also need to remove the little eggs, and a lot of parents have spent evenings “picking” these kinds of nits out of their kid’s hair.

Adults could get a case of these parasites and they also may be spread rather easily by using another’s brush or comb, therefore making them contagious. If they aren’t removed speedily, they are able to damage the roots of your hair and you may experience hair loss as well as a fever. There are actually some natural treatments for head lice which are very effective and they’re typical ingredients are located within your fridge.

The sulfur content found in onion juice could be quite effective against getting rid of these types of little varmints. You could juice an onion and slowly massage the juice into the top of the head. Leave the onion juice on your hair for at the least 3 hours then wash it out. If you carry on this regiment for 3 continuing days, you may find this an effective purely natural remedy for head lice as well as eggs.

It is possible to rub the hair and scalp with finely-chopped apple bits thirty minutes every day. The juices from the apples can provide acids that are a natural treatment for head lice with continuous use over 3 days.

Garlic and lemon juice is certainly one of the natural therapies for head lice that could be made into a paste and rubbed into the scalp and allowed to remain over night. By morning, you can scrub the mixture out and you are going to discover the lice are completely eliminated within just 5 days of regularly employing this regimen. Garlic is really a member of the onion family, that contains the exact same sulfuric qualities and the acidic blend of lemon juice will get rid of the lice as well as their eggs.

Rubbing olive oil on your head will make the lice as well as nits easier to slide out, while giving the parasites less dead skin as well as hair follicles to feed on. Just apply the olive oil until the hair is rather wet and cover using a shower cap for approximately 3 hours. Comb the hair and they’ll slide right out!

Purely natural therapies for head lice include things like tomato sauce, put on the roots of the hair and allowed to remain in for a couple hours prior to washing. The acidic content of the tomato sauce will get rid of the lice and lots of people have had success with this particular technique.

Schools sometimes endorse this combination as 1 of the simplest all-natural treatments for head lice. You could make use of plain generic mayonnaise, left on for 2 hours, followed by shampooing as well as a vinegar rinse. For those who comb the hair by using a metal nit comb, you could easily get rid of dead lice and nits.

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