Body lice tend to pass from person to person in places where people have close physical contact or share resources like beds and blankets, such as shelters. Different factors may cause a person to live in a place where body lice can spread more easily. This can be related to socioeconomic or health inequities.
Head-to-head contact with an already infested person is the most common way to get head lice. Head-to-head contact is common during play at school, at home, and elsewhere (sports activities, playground, slumber parties, camp). Although uncommon, head lice can be spread by sharing clothing or belongings.
The longer answer goes back over 800,000 years. Scientists believe head lice began to evolve on a different path than body lice about the time humans started to wear more clothing. Body lice evolved to attach to clothing fibers which are typically thicker and stronger than a human hair. Head lice stuck with the scalp.
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. Your clothing seams are the most common places for body lice to lay their eggs (nits).
You can get lice by coming into contact with either lice or their eggs. Lice can't jump or fly. They spread through: Head-to-head or body-to-body contact.
In fact, adults can get lice anytime their hair is in close contact with the hair of someone who has lice. Whether public transportation, concerts, or crowded areas, any situation in which there is hair to hair contact puts adults at risk of getting lice.
If you became infested with head lice, the Egyptians treated themselves with an aromatic head lice formula made of water, vinegar, oil of cinnamon, oil of rosemary, oil of terebinth. They would treat ancient head lice with the formula and use a fine tooth comb.
Nymph: A nymph is an immature louse that hatches from the nit (egg). A nymph looks like an adult body louse, but is smaller. Nymphs mature into adults about 9–12 days after hatching. To live, the nymph must feed on blood.
Throughout ancient Egypt, people were tormented with lice. Remedies for the common person included eating a special meal mixture with warm water, and then vomiting it up. Others believed a recipe of spices mixed with vinegar rubbed on the scalp over a few days would suffocate them out.
Their full life cycle, from egg until death, lasts a maximum of 35 days. The eggs are called nits and hatch into small insect forms — called nymphs — which then grow into adult lice. The adult lice can begin to create more eggs as soon as they hatch and the cycle begins again.
Lice are attracted to the blood they get through your scalp – short, long, clean or dirty.
How does a person get head lice? A person gets head lice because the insects crawl from person to person by direct contact or by sharing items — including combs, brushes and hats — with another person who has head lice. Poor hygiene doesn't cause head lice.
Heat Method:
Products such as Lousebuster are very effective but even a home hairdryer can successfully treat lice. DO NOT USE HAIRDRYER WITH MEDICATED TREATMENTS OR TREATMENTS THAT CONTAIN ALCOHOL--THESE PRODUCTS CAN CAUSE FIRE AND SEVERE BURNS TO YOUR CHILD!
The oldest physical evidence of head lice on a human was a nit found on the hair of a 10,000-year-old body at an archeological site in Brazil. Lice combs have been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty, and even Cleopatra was said to have solid gold lice combs buried with her.
Clade A lice most likely migrated from Africa to Eurasia and subsequently to Europe, Asia and the New World. Theoretically the first peoples of the Americas could have brought lice during migration to the New World, where lice remained in situ for thou- sands of years (Light et al., 2008) (Fig. 7).
Are pubic lice an STD? Pubic lice often get lumped in with sexually transmitted infections (STIs). That's because people get pubic lice most often during sex. But pubic lice are not an actual disease or infection.
Not everyone feels lice moving around on their scalp, but some people do. Dr. Garcia says that most of her patients say they “don't feel anything,” but others may get a creepy, tickling sensation as lice move around their head.
Adult lice can live up to 30 days on a person's head. To live, adult lice need to feed on blood several times daily. Without blood meals, the louse will die within 1 to 2 days off the host. Life cycle image and information courtesy of DPDx.
Parasites such as lice have a role in the conditioning of a 'natural' immune system and reducing the likelihood of immune dysfunctions, a study of mice from a Nottinghamshire forest indicates.
The louse with the "long fine claw," they conclude, likely made its way to the Americas with early human migration. Human pubic lice, also known as crab lice, can occur anywhere there's hair, you know, down there, including the pubic and "perianal" hairs.
The ancients managed their lice by suffering through them, combing them out, affectionately picking them off each other's heads, dousing them in oil, or simply shaving. (Thus the wigs.)
Adults are not immune to head lice. In fact, if you have any close contact with children or even parents of children you can be at risk of catching them if they have them. Lice transfer primarily through head to head contact, so you would have to get close to the other person.
There is no specific hair type that lice prefer. All lice need is a clean strand of hair to attach to. It doesn't matter the thickness, the length, if it's been colored, if it's straight, or if it's curly. It has been found that people with longer hair tend to report getting lice.
'' Generally, children are less protective of their personal space, more likely to come into physical contact with one another, and more likely to share personal items like clothing or hairbrushes, which make it easy for the bugs to travel from person to person.
So, the realistic answer is “No, you can't drown lice.” The best treatment for lice is to get them picked out by a professional – Lice Geeks, for example – using the right comb. Even over-the-counter shampoos and products aren't as effective as a well-trained professional wielding the proper comb.