One word: ‘Instagram’
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Im ashamed to say that I only recently found out that head lice and pubic lice are very closely related. You have probably known this for years (or perhaps its more polite that say “Im sure you have no knowledge of this subject whatsoever”) Anyways, apparently they only differ in the adaptation of the “gripper” organs to hair. I never really put together the phrase “crabs” and pubic lice. I feel silly in retrospect.
This worked well for me 5 years ago. You still have to fine comb the hair. There is no escape from the nitpicking. But… Quit Nits is the best stuff I have tried.
Never waste your money on RID, and avoid mineral spirits. They’re dangerous, smell awful, and make small kids cry. The smothering oil practice works too but, as mentioned above, it’s something you do with a lot of combing. Traditionally we used Alberto VO5 hot oil treatment + nit combs. I suspect the European practice of using silicone oils may be more effective. And unlike Alberto VO5, it doesn’t remind me of Lancers, Mateus, Sanka, saccharine, Harvest Gold toilets, Avocado Green refrigerators, Dacron polyester double-knit sweaters, Heath kits… yeah. None of that groovy stuff. The ‘wet head’ will still be dead, and the point is to kill lice; the 70s can rest in peace.
Also, re: Quit Nits, for all you guys whose aversion to ‘homeopathy’ is so strong you can’t stomach it even as a marketing gimmick… oh well. It’s not a bad thing to be a mobile biome. Itchy, yes. But not bad.
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lice were just a part of growing up and using public pools. There wasn’t much stigma involved. The medicine of choice then was virtually kerosene. (It could have been kerosene, my parents were pretty thrifty.) We would go on long walks once my mother applied the “medication” to give it time to work. Once, on one hot day, likely because of our dark hair, our heads began to smoke. We stood in the shade for a while as my father sort of swatted at our heads. It was a fast walk home, not unlike walking home barefoot from the beach when we visited our grandparents. Running from shade to shade, we avoided the sun. From that point onward, the long walks only happened after we washed that substance out of our hair.
As to the isopropanol, from what I remember, the adults would be susceptible and would at the very least relax their grip, but I remember somebody saying that the eggs were very resistant and didn’t die. The glue that adheres the eggs was weakened. The problem was it also gave us terrible flakey scalps and it burnt terribly, as we were scratching our heads. I also would not use something so flammable if I didn’t have to.
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Years ago I heard about the Lousebusters system of using hot air and a comb to kill lice. It was FDA approved and killed the lice dead without chemicals. And I thought, "Amazing! Schools and others could buy this hot air blower for…say…$50 or $100 bucks, and if there’s a lice outbreak, take care of it easy peasy."
Now I see they’ve rebranded it as Airalle and sell franchise opportunities and charge people $175 for a hour long treatment that also includes lots of combing with various mousses and topical rinses? Hmm…
I still wonder what the temperature of that machine is, and if you could replicate it with just a hair dryer and a lice comb? They say it’s cooler than most hair dryers.
Here’s the original video for the Lousebuster,
… and in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway …
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Hmm are those lice eggs heat resistant? Would a hair straightener kill them off?
Also, the Canadians cut the hair of First Nations children in residential schools
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My guess is that parents in Jason’s neck of the woods won’t have used pesticidal treatments anyway, preferring drum circles, Dr. Bronner’s(*), and cider vinegar. .
(*) Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Bronner’s would work. Stuff’s intense.
True, but that wasn’t for the purposes of shaming (although it was shaming). That was for the purposes of assimilation and its attendant cultural erasure.
Same crap, different suckage.
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I wonder if ants could be induced to delouse people. Carpenters ants do roam around hunting down smaller creatures in the trees.
Yea, but you really don’t want to have ant-eaters crawling all over you the following day.
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Ok, mind blowing time:
If humanity were organized enough and everyone rich enough to do it we could do planetary lice treatment for maybe three weeks and make head and pubic lice extinct.
You know they had to have done this in star trek.
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The answer is mechanical. Also communal.
Do you want to chuck pesticides on your kids’ heads? Not me!
Get the best nit comb (we use Nitty Gritty NitFree Comb).
Wash Hair. Condition hair. Leave conditioner in. Brush hair thoroughly. Soak brush in Milton’s diluted fluid.
Nit comb the hair carefully, in segments. After every (every!) pass, wipe it off on a kitchen towel (paper towel).
Do this once every 7 days. If you can, twice a week. You prevent the eggs / infants that you miss growing up to reproductive age.
Make sure your friends and acquaintances do it too. You should also do it; unless you’re bald.
Wash the sheets, pillowcases etc at 75 degrees C.
Carry on.
Again and again. With persistence, the nits fail.
It’s the only way.
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We’ve found the shampoos work OK, but there’s a trick… you MUST lather it in, then add some more for good measure, and keep the hair smothered in the shampoo for at least 10 minutes before rinsing. Then comb out, then rinse. Then do it all again for another 10 min.
The other mistake I have heard a lot of people doing, is trying to get by treating 2 kids with one bottle. This is compounded by the fact that whenever there’s an outbreak, all the local pharmacies sell out of the good stuff. Yes it’s more expensive to buy one bottle per kid, but well worth it to do the job properly.
And of course, if one kid gets them, without any questions everyone else in the house gets shampooed, including parents, regardless.
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Yes! This is what I’ve been saying. We just need to have every living person shave all at once. No need to be embarrassed by your closely shorn head, because everyone else will have the same. In fact, you wouldn’t even want to wear a wig as it would be socially unacceptable to have hair during the event. We need to set a date - something like the 3rd full moon after the winter solstice in 5 years. Then get the word out - EVERYWHERE.
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