Soak combs and brushes in hot, soapy water after each use. Wash bedding, stuffed animals, clothes, hats, towels and other personal items in hot, soapy water. Dry items on high heat. A temperature greater than 130 degrees Fahrenheit can kill head lice and nits.
Body lice treatment
If you have body lice, the first step is to wash yourself with soap and hot water. You also need to wash any contaminated items, such as clothes or bedding, in hot water. Dry them in a clothes dryer on high heat. Any clothes that can't go in a washing machine should be dry-cleaned or ironed.
Body lice are similar to head lice but have different habits. While head lice live in your hair and feed on your scalp, body lice usually live in your clothes and bedding. They travel to your skin several times a day to feed on blood.
Never use gasoline or kerosene to treat lice. Several effective medications are available, including over-the-counter products containing pyrethrins or permethrin. These may be sold by the brand names Nix, Pronto, Rid and Triple X.
Launder clothing and bedding immediately before lice treatment on your child so any live lice living there can't crawl onto lice- free, just treated heads! Laundry water should be at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit to kill the lice.
Spinosad (Natroba).
Spinosad is approved for adults and children age 6 months and older. It can be applied to dry hair and rinsed with warm water after 10 minutes. It kills lice and nits and usually doesn't need repeated treatment.
What repels head lice? Coconut, tea tree oil, lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, lemon grass, and peppermint are scents popularly believed to repel lice. Using any coconut scented shampoo and conditioner is an easy way to increase your defense. At 1% concentration, tea tree oil killed 100% of head lice after 30 minutes.
In some hosts, lice have their own predators, such as fungi or bacteria.
The lice may make your head itch. This is because of your body's reaction to the lice bites. You can treat lice and their eggs with over-the-counter medicines. After treatment, your skin may still itch for a week or more.
The reality is that any adult who has hair can get head lice. However, it is incredibly rare for adults without children to get head lice. One of the major reasons for this is that people typically do a good job of controlling head lice.
Lice cannot “fall” on pillows, sheets, stuffed animals, and other bedding unless the hair that they are attached to fall. But they can't live on these surfaces, or on hats, scarves, furniture, or carpet. They also can't live on pets or any other animals. Nits can't live without a human host.
Head lice seem to be more common in Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian American people than in African American people.
Alternative Head Lice Treatment Strategies
When applied, the treatment may suffocate and/or create a habitat unfavorable to the head lice. Mixture of equal parts of: baby oil, dawn dish soap, and listerine. Leave on for 10 minutes.
Location: Lice lay eggs called nits while dandruff causes flaky skin. The two look similar, but close inspection reveals key differences. Nits stick to the hair while dandruff flakes, easily falling off of hair. While dandruff is visible on the scalp, lice lay eggs on hair, not the scalp.
Evidence of lice can often be found above or behind the ear, but they will not enter your ear—even if your ears are hairy. Itching inside your ears during a lice infestation is a sign of an allergic reaction. 5 Lice also cannot get into your brain through your ear or by burrowing through your skull.
A combination of anise, ylang ylang, and coconut oils has been shown to be effective against head lice.
Tying hair, pinning into a ponytail, bun or a braid, makes it difficult for parasites to spread and limits the risk of head lice infestations.
This is a tactile hallucination known as formication. People with this condition are convinced the bugs are real, even with reassurance from others they are a hallucination. This makes formication difficult to treat for the person and their medical provider.
Do head lice prefer a particular hair or blood type? No. Head lice are not selective and do not prefer a particular hair type or length. Head lice can infest hair that is clean or dirty.
Finding eggs (nits) without lice does not necessarily mean that there is an active infestation; nits can be found for months after lice are treated. Because lice lay eggs at the base of the hair shaft, the identification of nits within ¼ inch of the scalp suggests (but does not confirm) an active infestation.
Psocids are soft-bodied insects. They are less than 3/16 inches long with long, slender antennae. They are generally white, gray or brown in color. Psocids have either four wings or are wingless.
Formication refers to the sensation of ants crawling on or under the skin. Although there is a physical sensation, there is no physical cause. Feeling sensations without a physical cause is a type of paresthesia. Potential causes include Parkinson's disease, anxiety, perimenopause, and schizophrenia, among others.