Lice Help and Support

[Herb]

The Sunday before just this last one, I caught headlice from a friend. Quite a few mature bugs were deposited into my hair and immediately started laying eggs. I didn't realize/start treating until late Tuesday. A massive undiluted vinegar rinse combined with strong dandruff shampoo managed to kill 99% percent of the live bugs, but as expected nits were everywhere. All of my exercise/free time for a week and a half has been sucked up with multiple daily showers and having my poor mom picking through my close to knee-length hair for nits. It's not fun and very time consuming! My hair isn't happy. It was in perfect balance just before I got lice, but alas. I've had to use up plenty of my good oil on it in these past days. Dryness is up due to too much clarifying, and I've of course been losing extra hair. But there are worse things you can do to your hair than lots of sulfate shampoo, coney conditioner and frequent undiluted avc rinses, right??
I still have some nits despite aggressive picking, and now the remainder are hatching. Those new buggers seem to be impervious to the vinegar, unlike their ancestors. Man, I just want this to be done!

Sorry for the rant. :o

Do you guys have any good tips? And how can I restore my hair?

[Anje]

Do you have a nit comb? I'd suggest getting a good metal one to help get them out. You're completely allowed to lubricate your hair with a bunch of oil or conditioner before nit combing, too, which will probably help with the dryness and with losing hair while combing.

[gazelle]

Lice drown in lavender oil or tea tree oil. You can do deep conditioning with one of these oils, but dilute them with coconut or olive oil. They can be extremely drying if used alone

[lunalocks]

You may have to resort to the bad chemicals. Sorry. Also, be sure all of your bedding is washed. Those buggers can stick around.

[wicked kisses]

If you are not averse to red hair, there are some wonderful henna preparations that kill not just the lice, but the nits too.

[Celtic Morla]

When my DD caught lice I gota sprayer and put about 25 drops of Tea Tree Oil in the water an dsprayed it on her hair several times a day. I also put TT EO in her shampoo. Its tough but it will kill them all just be diligent. Also make up a carrier oil and use lavender EO in it and oil with it as usual.

[Narya]

I agree with henna and tea tree. Both have worked for me in the past, and I go to them if I become paranoid about lice (working with kids)

Maybe you could also try some overnight deep treatments with heavy oils or very heavy conditioner/SMT, so they would kind of drown. I never tried it, so I don't know if that alone would kill them, but I'm sure that this combined with tea tree oil wouldn't help them at all but would hopefully bring moisture back into your hair!

[Glorylocks]

I've been told that if you soak your hair in some sort of thick oil. Like vegetable oil thick! Drench your hair focusing on your scalp and pile all your hair on top of your head. Put a night cap or shower cap or whatever you want to call it, over all of your hair and wear it like that over night. I was told that this should smother the lice and probably would help with removing nits too! I hope this helps!

[jasper]

The next time I have to deal with lice, I am going the smother in oil route. I have done the chemical shampoo in the past, but that was years ago and I think the lice around these days are resistant to the chemicals, and I am not wanting to put pestacides on my head anyway, if something like olive oil would do the job.

I know that getting them off clothing and bedding is important too. In the past, we would throw everything into hot wash and dry cycles, but that seems unnecessary too now. If the things are sealed up in plastic bags for several days, any adult lice or new hatchlings would die off.

[jacqueline101]

Okay get mayonnaise put it on your head and a shower cap or plastic trash bag make it tight and leave on for an hour and then rinse put vinegar on and leave on. That's what they did at my workplace and chemical for bedclothes towels and clothes.

[Herb]

UPDATE:

Thanks guys. The tea tree and olive oil every other night helped a lot. But they're still there. I feel so hopeless. Three weeks and dry, dry hair ... ugh. I hate this so much.

[The-Young-Maid]

Oh dear, that sounds awful. I've never had lice before. How long does it usually take to get rid of them?:confused:

[cheetahfast]

Have you changed your pillows?

[Herb]

All of you here better avoid them the best you can! I've heard this can go on for months.

I've been washing my bedding everyday for the past three weeks.

[Kitsu]

do a weekly check, maybe to coincide with a heavy oiling moisture treatment to help with lubrication. Vinegar rinse helps to loosen the nits. Keep using a fine toothed comb. But if the dead nits are really bugging you , you could always trying dying them with henna or some other dye to colour them so they aren't noticeable to you whilst you comb them down the hair shaft.

[Maelyssa]

Go out and get a very large container of olive oil. Absolutely soak your hair and scalp in it. Do not w ash out! Depending on length, secure into some sort of tight up do such as a bun. Try to keep any hair from hanging loose. Use a bandanna or scarf or even an old t-shirt to wrap as fashionably around your head as possible and leave it like this for a day. The next day wash, oil lightly, comb for nits and repeat the oil soaking and leaving it like that. Do this for at least 4 straight days. Preferably 7 days if possible. It basically suffocates them to death. If you keep up the process, every time they hatch they will die shortly thereafter without getting the chance to reproduce.

This worked on my kids after chemicals and nit combs alone did not solve the problem. Also make sure you use a clean scarf to wrap the hair each time after you was and re-oil.

Good luck! Oh and side note, those of us who were lice and nit free did the same thing so the little buggers wouldn't be able to latch firmly into any of our hair. Worked like a charm. Therest of the school year, the girls were sent off only in lightly oiled up dos to prevent reoccurrence.

[gazelle]

Lice shampoos didn't work for me when I was a child, but my mom was oiling the hair, wrapping the hair with plastic bag tightly, avoiding the hair getting air. And did not allow me to wash it until the evening. After we started this, me and my sister got rid off the lice

Continue oiling and it is hard but be patient. They will go

[sumidha]

"Go out and get a very large container of olive oil. Absolutely soak your hair and scalp in it. Do not w ash out! Depending on length, secure into some sort of tight up do such as a bun. Try to keep any hair from hanging loose. Use a bandanna or scarf or even an old t-shirt to wrap as fashionably around your head as possible and leave it like this for a day. The next day wash, oil lightly, comb for nits and repeat the oil soaking and leaving it like that. Do this for at least 4 straight days. Preferably 7 days if possible. It basically suffocates them to death. If you keep up the process, every time they hatch they will die shortly thereafter without getting the chance to reproduce."

This This This!

But you have to keep doing the oil until you find no nits, and then keep doing it another week or two for good measure, if there is even one left and you wash the oil out the whole process starts all over again. Stay strong and you will get through this! :)

[Milui Elenath]

Overnight oil or overnight conditioner treatments will suffocate the nymphs and adult lice so you can moisturise while killing lice! (Anything less will only stun them enough to remove with a comb) The eggs hatch every seven days or so and that is why the treatment needs redoing every seven days in order to kill off and prevent further lice and break the breeding cycle.

I also second the metal lice comb - I used my cat's flea comb when it happened to me - they are cheaper too :) and you can easily buy them from the supermarket pet section.

This website helped me deal with lice although I didn't follow the combing schedule exactly it helped me understand about how often to check. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/theliceprogram/ it advocates combing only to remove them but I think that would be a lot of mechanical damage.

If it ever happens to me again I will use a combination of oilings, combing and checking for the 21 days.

I hope all goes well, I know it's horrible having them. For me it was what lead me to LHC since I ruined my hair mechanically by freaking out and combing too zealously and roughly.

ETA I'm sorry I didn't read the post above first - I think Sumidha's idea is great if you able to oil this long all the better :)

[freecelt]

You have my complete sympathy! I had TB length hair which I ended up cutting in order to be able to comb them out. I haven't had the need to use it but I archived this EO (http://heritageessentialoils.com/no-lice.php) formula just in case ;)

HTH, good luck!

[NormaJean]

Oh, man, I feel your pain. The one time I had headlice was on TB length hair and I ended up cutting it off because there was just no way to get them out. I hope your experience ends differently! I was devastated by it.

[the.fee.fairy]

Don't forget to freeze your pillows. The actual pillow, not the cover.

Stick all pillows in the freezer for 24 hours in plastic bags. Then take out and beat outside as hard as you can.

Also, vacuum your mattress. If you can get hold of a steam vacuum, use that.

The little B*st**ds will live anywhere they can to get back onto your luscious head.

[lippleyluv]

Oh my. My daughter has lice. We probably all have them. She "mentioned" in passing (Oh, by the way...)that the school nurse had found eggs in her hair today but there were no live lice. Of course this was AFTER we had spent three hours at a family birthday party hugging people!:justy:They never called me. If they had called me I wouldn't be stripping my house and gooping up our hair at midnight, I could have started this at a civilized time of day.

So, here I go, pulling out all the "lice combat" tricks I have meticulously squirreled away over the last year. What fun.:no:

So, I have a question. What is the point of combing out the nits if you are conditioning/oiling every day or two? Is it an esthetic thing? So there are simply no eggs there? Or is it impossible to get rid of the lice completely if the nits are left on the hair shaft?

[elthia]

I know that some schools have a "no nit" policy. When my stepdaughter had lice, if we didn't get as many nits as possible out, we never got rid of the lice, but of course she would go back to bio-mom's and get reinfested, so YMMV.

Don't forget to treat the cars, often the headrests can harbor the pesky critters.

[Narya]

So, I have a question. What is the point of combing out the nits if you are conditioning/oiling every day or two? Is it an esthetic thing? So there are simply no eggs there? Or is it impossible to get rid of the lice completely if the nits are left on the hair shaft?
IME, nits are very difficult to kill, and sometimes finding the exact timing between treatments (so they have hatched but not laid eggs again) is difficult. If you comb and take them out, there are less nits to hatch, and so less lice that could potentially lay eggs again. Also, when you comb you are probably going to take out any lice that are not dead yet but the treatment left "dizzy".

[lippleyluv]

okay, thanks. I don't think the school has a no nit policy or they would have called me yesterday. Hmph. And thanks for the reminder about the car...I didn't think of that.

[lippleyluv]

Ummm...What to DO with the car? How do I de-louse it?