Tips for Removing Head Lice

May 23, 2008 by Tammy

Head lice are a problem that much of the world faces. The little pests can quickly infect a household, workplace, or school, and getting rid of them can prove to be difficult. They cause an incessant sense of itching of the scalp, and they’ve been irritating humans for untold centuries.

In this article, we’ll offer some tips that can help you to make head lice infestations disappear quickly and effectively. By learning how the lice behave and what techniques are the most useful for dealing with them, you’ll be better suited to solving head lice problems in the future.

When you are working towards manually removing the lice and the nits, be sure that you’re in an area that has a good source of light. You may want to perform the procedure outside, as sunlight can provide an ample light source and you won’t have to worry about the lice escaping inside your house and possibly afflicting another individual.

You may want to consider buying a specialized comb for dealing with head lice. These combs are often boilable so that you can use them repeatedly for whenever a case of head lice arises. The combs also have long, fine teeth that can be used to successfully pull the lice and nits from the hair.

Removing the nits that the lice leave behind can be difficult. They are attached to the follicles of the hair with a special agent that lice produce, making it nearly impossible for the nits to be taken away easily. In order to loosen up the adhesive that holds the nits in place, you may want to use white distilled vinegar.

Sometimes, cases of head lice can persist due to a lack of proper cleaning procedures. You should wash and dry the bed linens of the affected individual to ensure that no nits or lice are present that may be able to re-infest the individual. Remember, it only takes one louse to fully infest a person’s scalp!

When you are combing for lice, be sure to repeat the process for a few days in a row. If you happen to notice the presence of more nits, the problem has not been successfully contained and you need to continue the process.

You may want to consider enlisting the aid of another when helping to de-louse a member of your family. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, and lice tend to avoid light and can crawl fast. By having two people looking at once, you’ll be better suited to eliminating the problem.

If you are unable to remove all the lice and nits by hand, you may want to use a medical treatment to eliminate the infestation. Use caution when using this method, though, because most of the treatments available are pesticides that can be damaging to your health.

If you’re using a chemical treatment to eliminate your lice problem, be sure not to use the same treatment repeatedly. If it doesn’t work the first time, the lice may be resistant to that particular treatment, and using it further will only be damaging to your health.