Why You Shouldn't Panic About Super Lice
(Unpleasant topic, I know! But I think it needs to be addressed.)
Mr. FG recently sent me an article about the outbreak of Super Lice*, which are resistant to the Rid/Nix-type treatments available over the counter.
*I think that article has some ridiculous info/advice. Directions to keep using the ineffective OTC stuff? Saying that nit-picking doesn't work? Come on.
The super lice have apparently been found in 25 states now.
While I hadn't heard the term "super lice" before, I'm quite sure that's the variety that we had, given that the over-the-counter stuff we tried was pretty darn ineffective.
It did nothing to kill the lice and their eggs, and it made our heads so itchy.
(Mr. FG and I didn't have lice, but treated ourselves proactively, and our scalps itched like nobody's business.)
What DID work for us was the tea tree oil/conditioner treatment, in combination with combing.
And the great news?
No matter how the genes of lice mutate, this treatment will always work, because it relies on immobilizing and loosening the lice rather than on killing them.
I seriously wish I'd had this info when we first got lice, because it would have saved me so much heartache.
(And money. That lice stuff isn't cheap.)
I was a wreck when we got lice and I have all the sympathy in the world for other parents out there dealing with it.
So, that's why I wrote a post about what worked for our super-lice infestation.
If you have school-age kids, pin the post so that you've got it handy just in case.
And if you have friends who are dealing with this, please feel free to send them the link too. I hate for people to spend money and time on treatments that don't work, especially when there's a cheap AND effective treatment available.
You can get rid of regular lice and super-lice without expensive insecticides or prescriptions, so if you get these unwelcome visitors, don't panic. It's going to be okay.
(But you might still cry. I certainly did. 😉 )
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Have you had any experience with super-lice?
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P.S. If you are unsure if your kid has lice but are worried they've been exposed and you want to check, the method I outlined in my post works great as a diagnostic tool.
Apply the oil/conditioner, comb through with a nit comb, and if your kiddo has a lice infestation, you WILL find them this way, because adult bugs cannot move when they're covered in conditioner and oil. If you find no lice, you can safely assume that your kid's head is clean.
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When my children were younger, they all came down with lice, and as a teacher, so did I.
After using all of the harsh, and expensive treatments, my wise young son said, "Mom, why don't we just vacuum them out". So we did! My husband got the shop vac out and vacuummed all the lice out. It actually felt good on our heads, except with my girls and their long hair.
Hope this helps.
The vacuuming might work for the lice that are alive. It's the nits(the eggs) that you have to worry about. They are firmly attached to the hair and will hatch later after you have vacuumed. I'm a nurse and have dealt with huge outbreaks in a hospital setting so I know how fast this can get spread.
I suppose the only way that vacuuming would clear it up entirely is if you vacuumed the hair every day, so as to catch anything that's hatched since the last vacuum.
I feel like vacuuming long hair would be a bit difficult, though!
Once my son started going to school I added Tea Tree oil to his shampoo. I've heard that lice don't like Tea Tree oil and avoid it.
After a few lice outbreaks at school, my aunt added tea tree oil to my cousin' s conditioner. She never came home with lice again.
This may seem *too* obvious, but why isn't tea tree oil an ingredient in all shampoos? Seems like it would be a proactive solution to a common problem.... (Maybe I should patent that ;))
I freaked out the first time my girls got lice too. The 2nd and 3rd time, I just made sure to be consistent with the nit picking. I didn't worry about stuffed animals or spraying furniture/car because they can't live long off scalp. Mayo and nit picking comb work great together! And I always did it with wet hair. I couldn't see nits or bugs on dry hair. I also agree with Kristen that you have to keep checking scalp thoroughly until you have several checks without nits. It's so tiring but necessary.
When my daughter got lice a couple of summers ago, nothing worked! She has very thick long curly hair. We ended up using mayo, applied it very generously to her hair, put on a shower cap and let it sit for 2 hours. Rinsed, washed and conditioned, then combed them all out. It worked! We didn't find any more after that, but I continued to comb out her hair every other day for a couple of week just to be safe!
I worked in a hospital setting and we got a bad lice outbreak. We put cooking oil all over the hair of the patients, covered in a shower cap, and left on overnight. Also, anything that can fit in a plastic bag that can be zipped shut and left for a week will kill any live lice. Lice need a host or they will die. Hair accessories, combs, and even comforters are fine to store in a plastic bag to kill live lice.
About five or six years ago, both my girls ended up with lice (youngest came home with it). We proactively treated them and both my husband and myself. While it was a pain in the you-know-what - especially since both girls have very long hair!, the most effective treatment was the conditioner and tedious nit picking! Not fun at all!
Had to giggle -- from The common everyday blessings to -- Super lice! That is for real 🙂
Had un-super lice when grown up daughter was 6, contracted at a sleepover. I agree -- it was the nit combing that did the trick and good point -- removal of super nits is just as effective as plain old ordinary nits. Here in So cal there are -- wait for it -- special Lice removal salons with colorful, kid friendly interiors. They have jokey names like "Nit Pickers!" and are kind of like hair salons. I wonder if they come to your house and launder every single article of clothing and steam clean the sofas and rugs (where kids slept on the sleepover) and rush out to the laundromat to do the big quilts and pillows and blankets? Will they nit comb your 6 year old's very long, very thick hair at 2:00 in the morning? I mostly wonder what they change? I guess you can outsource anything nowadays!
I'm so glad you addressed this. It's important information that many people don't want to talk about. We got lice 2 years in a row from summer camp and it was horrible with 6 kids to share it amongst. We ended up at a health clinic specific for lice and found out that super lice have been around for a long time. They are just slow in reporting on it. The medications they sell for lice, not only don't work but are dangerous neurotoxins. My cousin's daughter ended up in the hospital with neurological damage from trying OTC lice treatments (same camp.) The nurse practitioner told us the only 2 ways to kill lice are to dehydrate them or kill them with heat. The heat works on our bedding and stuffed animals (run them through the dryer for an hour on HOT) but you can't get high enough heat close enough to the scalp to kill them without hurting the child. Combing is the next best thing but drugstore combs don't work either. We finally found success with the spiral toothed combs (purchased from the clinic) and by flicking them in a bowl of water could tell what were nits or lice (gray when wet) and what were just skin flakes (clear when wet). They start to look very similar after hours looking at tiny things. Our school nurse scared 10 parents at lice check this year with kids who turned out to have a skin flake infestation. I didn't go to the clinic right away, because I was worried about cost. We had spend enough time fighting it on our own they only charged us $10 for both girls to guarantee it was over.
Yes! Tea Tree Oil is amazing. We had two back -to-back breakouts of lice in my church growing up. To the point that several of the mom's started an assembly line checking heads during Sunday school. We tried everything -- Tea Tree Oil shampoo (or maybe conditioner) is what finally kicked it. I was never allowed to share hairbrushes ever again after that -- talk about "not cool" in middle school. 🙂
We added tea tree oil to the shampoos and still got lice - TWICE!- last December. Hell, I tell you! We did use Nyda and it worked great, but it is expensive!! Hopefully we will never have to deal with this ever again.
Yeah, from what I've read, it doesn't work all that well in mild doses as a preventative.
I'm past the days of lice infested children, but my grandchild got lice, and her mom, my daughter, used a non-toxic method which worked; I don't remember which one, though. A thought -- would a flat iron or curling iron be hot enough to kill nits? I know the ones that are stuck right around the ear might be hard to reach, but there are some tiny flat irons out there. Has anyone tried that?
That, to me, seems like way more work than doing the combing with the conditioner! Of course, two of my girls have ridiculously thick hair, so that could be coloring my opinion. I cannot imagine trying to flat-iron small sections of their hair. Oy.
My girl with thinner hair would have been quite manageable that way, though.
We haven't had much luck with the over the counter lice treatments either. This year so far we are lice free. It seems like we get it several times a year when I have a Kindergartener. I do basically your method, but with mayonnaise. Maybe I'll try the conditioner next time, because the mayo is gross, but effective. I do find it's helpful to read up on the life cycle of the lice, because if you missed a nit and you treat again in the timeframe when any eggs would have hatched, you'll catch any stray ones that are newly hatched before they start the cycle again. I forget the exact time frame right now, but I think it's about a week later.
The conditioner would at least smell better. Ha.
And yes, the life cycle of the nits is exactly why I kept doing this every couple of days. That way I figured I'd easily catch any newly hatched nymphs before they matured enough to reproduce.
We ran into a lice infestation a few years back. I was homeschooling my niece at that time, as well as my own 4 kids. She picked it up at a gymnastics camp at the end of summer. All the girls ended up infested. I did as well as my mom. We ended up calling a local company called, The Lice Squad. They came an treated us all with the conditioner and their own oil mixture and combing. Worked amazingly well and so worth the money. She left us with lots of information on how to handle the lice in the house as well. I was so overwhelmed with it when we discovered it, but she was able to make it not as big of a deal as once thought. And when we were done with the conditioner treatments (I think we did them every other day for 10 days), our hair looked great from all the conditioning it had!
We have experienced lice in our house a few times. The first time was when my oldest two children were young. I panicked, and kept using the store bought treatments which did not work.
An older woman advised me to use this method: Smother them with olive oil overnight. After washing it out the next morning, spray white vinegar all over the hair. This bleaches the nits and they dry up. They are very easy to comb out with the nit comb afterwards. It worked! When my third child got them a decade later, I stayed calm and got rid of them the old fashioned way. Unfortunately our school system does not have a 'no attendance' policy for lice as it isn't considered a health risk. It is a common problem where we live as a result.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of schools have a "no live lice" policy but not a "no nits" policy.
But the problem with that is that nits have this nasty habit of hatching every day, so a kid with nits is just about bound to have live lice as well, since few treatments actually kill the nits.
We ended up with lice after having a couple of foster kids.
My kids have nicknamed the nit comb the "comb of doom".
After unsuccessful rounds with speciality lice-removal products, conditioner and oil treatments (our three girls all had waist-length hair) and lots and lots of tears, we bought a Robi Comb - it's an electric comb that zaps lice as you comb through the hair. The comb cost less than it would have for all the other supplies needed for three girls with long, long hair. Two days of combing with the Robi Comb and the lice were gone although we continued to use it for another week just to make sure. We also added tea tree oil to the girls' conditioner, and have never had another infestation (although there were others at their schools).
We have four daughters with long hair. When lice happened at our house I bought a fine toothed comb from the pet store. Then just Olive oil or mayo on the hair and lots of combing. I did that several days in a row. Other than the comb, which costs less than $5, this was free. Time consuming, yes, but frugal and no chemicals. The olive oil is actually similar to a hot oil treatment and smells better than mayo. Now I wonder if coconut oil might work...
I am glad my days of dealing with lice are over. I was a special education teacher and on Monday morning I had to check heads that had returned home for the weekend and had permission to clean said heads before they returned to the weekly boarding homes.
Then my children caught the rotters. By this stage I had worked in a health unit that had extensively studied the condition and comb treatment. I swore I did this every second day for three long years. I treated my girls but other parents did not. I bought a Robi comb so the girls could do their own heads on the day I didn't. High school and the end of certain friendships ended the problem.
I feel for the diligent parents who deal with this.
Lice has been through my daughter's pre-school class at least half a dozen times this year and we have not yet had it. With kindergarten next year, I'm sure it will pass through the classes there as well. Thank you for providing such great information so I will remain calm if this happens. This will be the first site I'll refer to!!
Luckily, we haven't had lice here, but we did some preventative treatments when my kids were younger.
However, recently an ophthalmologist had me use tea tree oil on my eyelashes because of mites. It burned, but cleared up my lashes right away.
I found it effective to shave the boys' hair off and to use a hair straightener for a few days on my girl's long hair. (and a wash and comb through for all after this)
Oh yeah, shaving a head is completely effective. They can't live on your head if there's no hair!
Unfortunately, this is kind of frowned upon for girls, and I have three of 'em. I'm not going to tell you the thought didn't cross my mind, though. 😉 In the midst of combing through thick heads of hair, the idea of getting rid of all the hair is very tempting.
Thank you for all this information! My two long haired daughters and I have lice. I live in Tokyo so I don't have access to all the tools mentioned but the advice is very helpful. I'm going to go comb now....
Do you put the conditioner on dry hair or wet hair
Damp hair worked best for us!
How much tea tree oil do you use and do you put it in the conditioner bottle- like the whole bottle you are using or do you
Put a drop or two in your hand with a big handful of the conditioner??
I put maybe a half cup of conditioner into a bowl, added a few drops of tea tree oil, and mixed it all up.