Headlice Treatment and Prevention

It’s the moment all parents dread: the day they notice something moving in their child’s hair. It’s headlice, and lice have to be dealt with. Immediately.

Headlice will set up home in any type of hair, long or short, clean or dirty. They are highly contagious and if your child catches them they must be got rid of straight away. Your child will no longer be regularly inspected by a ‘Nitty Nora’ so it is up to you to watch out for those unwanted guests.

Before your child even goes to playgroup or nursery be prepared. Get a fine-toothed lice detector comb now – your local pharmacy will have sold out by the time an outbreak is detected.

So your child has got nits. What do you do? There are a lot of shampoos on the market which claim to get rid of headlice. Some work, many don’t. The ones that work may have strong insecticides in them, which can get into the bloodstream. The problem is that the lice become resistant to the insecticides, so we need to keep using stronger and stronger ones.

There is one way to get rid of them that they have, as yet, built up absolutely no resistance to. Old-fashioned wet combing. Wash the hair, use lots of cheap conditioner and wet-comb the hair with the fine teeth of the lice detector comb you bought. The conditioner makes the hair slippery so that the lice slide off, and makes it less painful for your child too. Any lice found must be removed. This bug-busting method needs to be done in a systematic way, at least twice a week, until the infestation is gone. A helpful kit is available from Community Hygiene Concern, a pesticide free bug-buster kit which is available online from their website for £5.95+p&p. There is also lots of useful information on how to ‘bug-bust’ there too.

Prevention is much trickier, as they travel easily from head to head from close contact. The advice is not to use treatment lotions as a preventative method. You may not, in any case, wish to regularly bring your children into contact with insecticides. There is really only anecdotal evidence for various other preventative measures.

Tea Tree Oil is the most popular suggestion, many people claiming to have avoided infestation completely since using shampoos containing it, or having adding a few drops to their children’s regular shampoo. Apparently the lice simply hate the smell of Tea Tree Oil! Neem Oil is a centuries old treatment that many people find effective too. However there is no real way of completely avoiding lice.

There are a lot of advice leaflets on treatment available, which may be distributed at your child’s school. Read them carefully. What may appear as a medical information leaflet may actually be from a drug company promoting its products. The same goes for the large number of websites on headlice. Remember to check the source of any information before you decide to follow a course of treatment. For some unbiased advice on both chemical and bug-busting treatments visit the Department of Health’s website to download their leaflet on dealing with headlice.

Finally, remember that everyone in the family will need to be treated whatever method you decide to use, and if anyone suffers from asthma, eczema, is pregnant or under one year of age you should always ask your doctor’s advice on treatment.

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