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Merlin
June 14th, 2008, 09:26 AM
I was at the Cheltenham Science Festival last weekend and one of the talks we went to was by Nicola Davis, who used to present the really wild show and now writes nature books for children (among other things). She was discussing less popular but interesting creatures and asked who had been bitten by a flea: about a quarter of people put their hands up. Then she asked who had had head lice...

... pretty much every one of the couple of hundred people in the room put their hands up , adults and children. She did say she wasn't surprised by this!

Far fewer of us put their hands up for "who has had worms?" though.

freznow
June 14th, 2008, 09:28 AM
... I haven't had lice. Is this an anomaly?

I wasn't under the impression that most people have lice at some point or another. Maybe it depends on where you live.

Carina
June 14th, 2008, 09:42 AM
My children have had lice a few times this last year.But I have been so lucky not to get them.It is such a pain to get rid of them when you have five kids age between 2-12.

BlndeInDisguise
June 14th, 2008, 10:24 AM
I've never had lice, but maybe that's because I was homeschooled and my siblings were homeschooled as well. I was as exposed to the risk as other children. I hope I never get lice. That would be AWFUL!

missy60
June 14th, 2008, 10:30 AM
I have never had lice and I went to public school. It didnt know it was that common for everyone to have had them. My children never had lice either I guess we have been lucky.

AJoifulNoise
June 14th, 2008, 10:32 AM
I had an awful time with lice in the 6th grade... I just couldn't seem to get rid of the little buggers!

camillacamilla
June 14th, 2008, 11:24 AM
I have never had lice, even as a child. Of course, my mom was a nurse and stressed not to use other people's brushes, hats, etc.

Merlin
June 14th, 2008, 12:45 PM
In the UK at the moment they are almost ubiquitous - at one time schools used to send home letters saying that "a child in the same class as your child has head lice, please check....." - but once these were coming home almost weekly they stopped doing it!

One child in my son's class is so 'louse-phobic' that she used to throw a screaming hissy fit in the classroom if asked to go anywhere near any child who she suspected might have head lice: I gather sufficient numbers of parents complained that their kids were coming home in tears after being the target of one of these outburst that they had to have her mum into school to have a little word about it.

The point Nicola Davis was making, among other things, was that head lice are now almost completely immune to all the treatments on the market, and that is why we now almost exclusively use mechanical methods against them.

anna1850
June 14th, 2008, 01:08 PM
What's strange for me is that I used to live in Nottingham till I was 12 and from age 8-12 I seemed to get lice all the time. We were always getting rid of them then and I'd be clear for a month then I'd get them again. I don't think I went for more than 2 months in a row without getting them. But then I moved to York and I haven't had them since. Not once!

I know people do have them in York because one time at school a bunch of us were sitting at a table and there was a lice that had fallen out of someone's hair onto the table (eww) and we were all protesting that it wasn't us. But I've never had them here.

I'm really glad that I haven't had them since as we always had to use this stinky stuff that killed them that my dad made us put on our hair in the garden so we wouldn't stink up the house or we had to comb through the hair with one of those nit combs (and I had very unmanagebale hair back then so it took forever). Not fun.

Nevermore
June 14th, 2008, 01:28 PM
I've never had lice and I went to public school up until 11th grade, I have to wonder if this has something to do with the fact that most bugs don't like me. I get maybe one or two mosquito bites a year and I live in Florida, where mosquitos are found in great abundance, especially at the times when I'm outside. I've never been bitten by fleas or ticks. Maybe it's the vast quantities of garlic I eat? Whatever it is, it's pretty cool.

Anje
June 14th, 2008, 01:33 PM
I had them in 2nd grade. I think they went away with the first treatment, so they weren't a particularly bad experience. No one made a big deal about it being unhygenic, just that they were undesirable. So most of my memories are that I got to stay home from school for a day and Mom combing my hair out in the basement (we had a shower down there), acting grossed out whenever she found an adult.

Carina
June 14th, 2008, 01:38 PM
I used coconut oil to killl them and it worked like a charm :joy:Mother nature knows best(sometimes);)

Merlin
June 14th, 2008, 02:12 PM
Mother nature knows best;)

Sometimes yes, however all the herbalists seemed to have minimal success at preventing the Black Death killing half of the population of Europe..

LifeisAdventure
June 14th, 2008, 02:34 PM
Where I grew up in the US (East Coast / South), it was generally accepted that most public school children would get head lice sometime in middle school (6th-8th grade, 10-14 years old). My sister and I both got them, although my mother never did, and both of us were cleared up after just one treatment and never caught them again. That might be different in other areas though!

Pierre
June 14th, 2008, 03:12 PM
I have been bitten by fleas (from my cat), but as far as I know no lice. And if I did, I wouldn't use fell red smeddum, I'd use the lovely green smeddum that turns red :)

WritingPrincess
June 14th, 2008, 03:21 PM
I have never had lice, even as a child. Of course, my mom was a nurse and stressed not to use other people's brushes, hats, etc.
I, thankfully, have never had lice. My grandma is a nurse, and my mom wouldn't let us share brushes with anyone outside of the family. However, my mom and I love hats and I use hers whenever she'll let me.

ETA: Good to know that coconut oil will work against them!

Elainehali
June 14th, 2008, 04:03 PM
Do lice live in Colorado? I have never got them or known anybody who got them. Public school all the way too!

I hear tea tree oil is pretty effective in preventing them. Lice don't like it.

Magicknthenight
June 15th, 2008, 02:25 AM
I have gotten lice a few times before. Getting rid of them was really frustrating!:mad:
Last time i had them a couple years back i went into an ex friends house and got lice really bad! i mean...really. We did all the treatments with the little combs sprayed the couches, bedding, and put the stuffed animals in plastic bags for days. Well it wasnt working so i suggested to my nana that we use mayonnaise because i had heard of it working before. Well at first she was like :disgust: and she kept making me use the treatments but FINIALLY when we tried the mayonnaise it worked! Yup! basicially drowned my hair in it put a shower cap on (though it would leak out a bit :flamed: ) left it on for 4 hours then i washed it out and did it again the next week just to be sure. And thats the last time i had lice. I thought everyone got lice atleast once sorta like chicken pox but i guess i was wrong haha:). Maybe it does depend on where you live. I remember in elementry school they would come in with a big bowl of soapy water and have gloves on and look through our hair just to be sure! haha did they do that to anyone else?

k_hepburn
June 15th, 2008, 03:51 AM
I wonder what is the reason for lice being so much more prevalent these days. Thankfully I've never had them - so far ... - but I've had a closer shave than I liked when my sister came to stay with her two little sons, only to announce after arriving that the mates her eldest son had been having a sleepover with the weekend before had since been found to have lice. She gave her kids some treatments with secial shampoo and combing, preventatively, but still the thought of catching lice was basically freaking me out, but off course you can't hold off a cute two year old at arm's length when he wants to give you a hug. But basically I spend the entire week of their stay with my hair perma-oiled with a mixture of coconut oil, neem oil and tea tree oil.

But the thing that really puzzles me is why head lice are so common these days. I went through my entire time at school with only one child ever being found to have head lice. These days, if you've got kids at kindergarten or primary school age, it seems to be a most regular occurrence. And it doesn't really seem to make a difference what part of the world you're living in. Which leaves me to wonder if it is indeed INCREASED levels of hygiene that are allowing these critters to spread at the rate that they are.

katharine

Riot Crrl
June 15th, 2008, 04:04 AM
I think it's kind of like antibiotics too, a problem starts with making an incomplete treatment and use of the poison, which leads to poison-resistant lice, which leads to more persistent and resistant infestations.

Edit: and it only takes for some of the population to do this, then everyone else can fall to the already resistant version.

akka naeda
June 15th, 2008, 04:39 AM
I never had lice when I was little, the first time I got them was on a Geology residential about 7 years ago. At least, I discovered them when I got home:). Since then however I've had lice 3-4 times, possibly more, because my daughter's school had a run of them.
She actually had them a couple of weeks ago, this is the first time she has had them and I haven't! She's now louse free.

I comb until most of the lice are removed and then when there are only little ones hatching out then I use a chemical shampoo. It's worked every time so far. And then after that she gets her hair oiled and plaited and she gets checked for lice as soon as she comes in from school - if I find a large louse then I know she got it from a child at school and she has to wear her hair in a plait the next day too.

She's 10 and I don't do her hair for her in the mornings any more because she's a big girl now:D I only get to look at her hair once a week when I wash it for her, she obviously got the lice between washes. She told me it itched a bit, but not that much, and she had no idea how long it had been itching for:rolleyes:. I know of several kids her age (and younger) who wash their hair themselves too, as well as brushing it and if they have long hair putting in a ponytail. Those kids will never have their hair looked at by their parents unless they happen to see a louse letter from the school. And all it takes is one child like that to infest an entire class. I was going to tell her that at 10 years old she is quite old enough to wash her hair herself, but I'm going to carry on washing it until she's at secondary where there should be less chance of her getting lice (she'll be 12 by then).

Siava
June 15th, 2008, 06:10 AM
I had lice several times throughout childhood. My daughter contracted them at 3yo, but hasn't since.

Presto
June 15th, 2008, 06:31 AM
I've had it twice. Once, I was pretty young, but still fairly sure of where I'd gotten them. There were concrete tunnels at school to play in, they were small, maybe 2.5' to 3' in diameter. There was one girl I wanted to hang out with and she liked to sit in these tunnels. I don't think I got them from her specifically, lots of kids were in the tunnels from time to time, but we would sit in the curve, leaning up on the wall of the thing, and I remember the surface was unpleasant and pebbly and didn't like leaning my head on it.
The second time I was out of school entirely and my idiot boyfriend picked up a hat out of a salvation army donation pile and put it on. I got it from him and it went everywhere. O.O
Both times I didn't know there was anything other than a brand Nix of chemical shampoo to treat them. The second time I had the longest hair of my life, but the Nix fries hair, so I chopped it off. :(
It's good to know about coconut oil! I'll tell my sister about it, she has kids. Just in case...

Katurday
June 15th, 2008, 07:28 AM
I've had lice all up until I moved to Canada.
I think its because all my friends had lice that they never got rid of.
My parents would get rid of them, and poof, another invasion...

Even the thought of it makes my hair itch.

Chromis
June 15th, 2008, 08:20 AM
I've had lice all up until I moved to Canada.
I think its because all my friends had lice that they never got rid of.
My parents would get rid of them, and poof, another invasion...

Even the thought of it makes my hair itch.

I keep itching every time I see the thread title!

I've had lice a few times. Never shared my brush with anyone and we only washed once a week in my house, so you'd think the little buggers would want to come near me! (We were always taught that lice like clean hair best)

Velvettt
June 15th, 2008, 08:28 AM
Last year, when I went to visit my sons and their families, one of my grandsons came home with lice from the day care. I swear, my head itched and crawled for weeks after but there were never any lice on me.

I've never had them, nor did my sons get them, although I did take part in the monthly "lice checks" at their elementary school and we always found some on some kids.

FrannyG
June 15th, 2008, 09:04 AM
I've never had lice, but my daughter had them once when she was about 7. Everyone in her group of friends did. Interestingly, my son did not get them.

Every year we used to get several notices from the school telling us that lice was prevalent.

It's really common. It has nothing to do with hygiene, but that doesn't prevent a mother from feeling a wee bit guilty, I'm afraid.

systemaurora
June 15th, 2008, 12:12 PM
I had lice when I was a kid then again when I was a little older (12 maybe?) and then a scare over this past Christmas break... I wonder if you can get lice with "dirty" hair-- i.e. no 'poo or WO. I know that putting gel in your hair or not washing it at all for a while will make you less likely to get lice because they like clean hair best.

Tabitha
June 15th, 2008, 12:14 PM
I've never had lice - I don't have kids, and am old enough to have had Nitty Nora the Flea Explorer keeping a beady eye on things when I was at school.

I have been bitten by plenty of fleas, but cat fleas, not human fleas!

Sian100
June 15th, 2008, 12:57 PM
The point Nicola Davis was making, among other things, was that head lice are now almost completely immune to all the treatments on the market, and that is why we now almost exclusively use mechanical methods against them.

Oh no! Don't say that! :bigeyes:

Nevermore
June 15th, 2008, 04:05 PM
I had lice when I was a kid then again when I was a little older (12 maybe?) and then a scare over this past Christmas break... I wonder if you can get lice with "dirty" hair-- i.e. no 'poo or WO. I know that putting gel in your hair or not washing it at all for a while will make you less likely to get lice because they like clean hair best.

I don't know that lice like clean hair best, I've always been told that, but I don't think it's a truth. I believe they're noticed more with clean hair, with the more frequent handling and washing (in kids, obviously WO adults scritch and whatnot) and that dirty haired classmates are less likely to engage in the social grooming and clothing-sharing that cleaned haired kids do. If you were going to loan a brush to someone, would it be a child with greasy hair or a child with clean hair? I think most kids would loan it to a clean-haired kid.

Also, Riot Crrl is right, it's a matter of resistance, not of better hygiene leading to more louse infestations. I wouldn't bother with RID or other chemical shampoos, I'd use a good lice comb and smother my hair in olive oil or mayo.

hurricane_gia
June 15th, 2008, 04:31 PM
I remember being treated for lice when I was very young, about five years old, but it is uncertain whether or not I actually had lice to begin with.

See, I was the subject of a heated custody battle, and my mother tried to cut off my father's parental rights because she claimed that I had come home with lice after visiting him. But when asked by a lawyer to describe the lice infestation, she said that she found two white spots in my hair. My father's lawyer contended that this was not an infestation, and my not have even been lice -- I could have walked underneath a large houseplant and two spider mites fell in. And supposing I did have lice, there was no way to prove that I got it at Dad's and not at the daycare, or my best friend's house, or at the movie theater, or . . . At any rate, Mom insisted on doing the whole chemical treatment, comb my head thing every night for a week . . .

So I don't really know if I've ever had lice or not.

I did have ringworm once, but that is not a worm but a fungal infection.

Alethia
June 15th, 2008, 04:43 PM
I never had headlice as a girl, but I got them when my daughter brought them home. I am still growing back all the hair I lost during those rigorous nitcombings. It was brutal.