I just wanted to add a link to this site where I spotted a beautiful composite image of head lice eggs, juvenile and adult head lice. We have a similar image but quite honestly this one is better and worth a look.
OK everyone, did you find anything? What? Nothing at all!
Well that was a bit unfair really because I already knew the answer.
Head lice live on heads and nowhere else.
More’s the point; they don’t try to go anywhere else either.
Not bedding, not clothes, not hair slides and ribbons, nowhere.
How can I be so sure? Well, ever seen a fish try to live on dry land?
Ever seen a bird try to nest underwater?
Sound’s crazy when you put it that way but it is just about as unlikely that a head louse will stray outside it’s perfect environment as these other living creatures will go where certain death threatens.
Yes, certain death.
A head louse is highly evolved to thrive on us, humans.
So highly evolved are head lice in that, in fact, any other environment is a huge threat to their very existence.
Except on we humans, head lice die because there is no suitable shelter, warmth, food or fluids.
They need us for all these basic provisions and there is nowhere, except on human beings, that they find all these needs met.
That is why they are not to be found lurking in the house, its furnishings or the bedding.
So if they aren’t there why should you be wasting your time and energy cleaning for them?
Poor advice comes from well meaning people who do not know that they are ignorant.
They don’t mean to mis-direct you; they just don’t check their facts.
They read something and just accept it as true then pass it on without thinking.
They pass on their ignorance not someone else’s knowledge.
And you suffer the consequences.
So, save yourself a lot of time and energy and confine your efforts to clearing head lice and their eggs from your child’s hair and you will be more successful and much happier too!
Hate the description “Busy Mum”? Ever met a mum that wasn’t busy!
So if your child happens to get a case of head lice that is one more task for you to deal with. Now, imagine that you get advice the following advice on this new problem from a, so called, expert-
“To kill lice and nits, machine wash all washable clothing and bed linens that the infested person wore or used during the 2 days before treatment. Use the hot water (130°F) cycle. Dry laundry using high heat for at least 20 minutes.”
And then they add-
“Dry clean clothing that is not washable, (coats, hats, scarves, etc.)”
Oops, that just added a ton of work to you day didn’t it! And the cost will be phenomenal.
Boy you must be able to see those head lice crawling about all over the place, right? Wrong!
Go on, have a look for yourself. Find me a head louse in your home. Please, before you commit to all that work just take a real close look and see if you can find just one head louse off a head. Should be easy if all those web sites tell you to clean and hoover and scrub them away shouldn’t it.
I tell you what, if you have a library near you, especially a medical library, why not ask the librarian to do a literature search for you. Ask them to match head lice and environment and see what they come up with. Might take them a day or two but they love a challenge.
Let’s talk again once you have the results of this little test.
Would it surprise you to find out that one of the most commonly quoted pieces of, so called, head lice advice was wrong?
What if this piece of advice caused already stressed and overworked parents to spend hours and hours of their valuable time on a pointless and totally unproductive task? Wouldn’t you think that these parents would be angry to find out that apparently authoritive web sites were peddling nonsense while claiming to be providing valuable head lice treatment advice?
You bet they would!
Well, we are fed up of this scandalous situation and are going to start locking horns with these irresponsible sources of poor information and start challenging them to produce justification and support for their so called advice.
And the first source is no less than the CDC, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. Stay tuned for our first salvo against poor head lice advice.
This is just a short not to say the blog is back online after a long break and a lot of heartache.
The simple story is that I messed up upgrading my old MovableType blog! I messed up so badly that I locked myself out of the Head Lice Advice Blog and over wrote the old one so I couldn’t restore it either. Big lesson on backing up correctly and also about delegating jobs to folk who really know what they are doing.
Funny how that stuff we know really well seems so simple while getting off our area of expertise throws us and leaves us floundering. That’s a good lesson for the head lice advice blog too. Parents don’t expect their kids to catch bugs. They don’t go staring into a child’s hair every day just to see if there is a problem brewing up. This means a first bout of head lice usually goes un-noticed for many days…..usually weeks before becoming evident. So the problem is severe by the time parents take any action at all.
The first reaction is often panic or revulsion, neither of which help much but they are understandable.
Next comes a leap into action and a visit to the pharmacy or the doctor and the purchase of a bottle of “instant lice cure”
We’ve all done it. I am not being hard on parents here, it seems like the right thing to do but the results are often disappointing, even confusing. They are rarely successful. Then comes the deeper research to understand the problem of head lice a little better and to understand why the head lice aren’t gone. That is usually when parents discovery NITMIX and the pages and pages of advice and stories about curing head lice.
In the next few weeks I will be updating the head lice advice blog more often and talk some more about getting this simple problem licked.
Head lice treatment and childhood leukaemia link?
In a recently published study researchers in France concluded there was sufficient evidence of a link between exposure to various household pesticides and childhood leukaemia to warrant further investigation.
While such studies are far from producing conclusive links between cause and effect of a specific chemical they are often an indication that all is not well. Scientists investigated the history of families of diagnosed cancer sufferers paying careful attention to the use of pesticides in the home, garden and head lice treatments during both pregnancy and early year’s development.
What emerged was a consistent pattern that more families with childhood cancers had also used pesticides in ways that could have contacted their children in the womb or in early life. In scientific circles this is far from proof but it did indicate that much more work needs to be done to understand the possible link.
Unfortunately this study had to rely on the families of over 280 children already struggling with a frightening disease to co-operate with them. To conduct further studies researchers must go through this again many times. That is an awful lot of children suffering before any clear conclusion is made.
What is immediately clear is that, in almost every case, the pesticide exposure to the children was the result of choices made by their parents. Household and garden problems in France don’t involve any life threatening insects or parasites and therefore aren’t so urgent or important that possibly life threatening chemicals must be used. Exposure to pesticides in the home is largely a matter of choice.
In the case of head lice there is no major health threat if children get this condition and certainly nothing to warrant voluntary exposure to pesticides such as pyrethroid, organophosphate or organochlorides. A simple removal program conducted by the parents would eliminate this possible pesticide exposure risk entirely.
As further work continues in this area the risk posed by pesticides in the home will become much clearer but in the mean time simple risk reduction should be the parent’s watchword.
The complete article should be read by anyone concerned by the issues raised in this brief overview.
Household exposure to pesticides and risk of childhood acute leukaemia. F Menegaux, et al. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2006;63:131-134. © 2006 by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
This is one of our most common struggles:
How do you overcome bad advice? In this instance the
advice that head lice are present and spread via the
environment.
Here is the question-
Dear Sirs,
I signed up for your email letter series. I have not yet
purchased the product…I have questions. You say that
cleaning and laundering everything is a waste of time.
That these head lice are just that, “Head Lice”.
But please explain to me then, how they can go through
a classroom at school at such an alarming rate?
My grand daughter has been suffering almost since school
started with head lice. I think mostly it is due to the
fact that her mother is not consistent in combing through
the hair, and perhaps with the cleaning too.
So when I read your letter I was stunned.
I do think the primary function in getting rid of them is
the combing…however, I don’t see if they are so hard to
get off the head, how they can go from kid to kid so easy.
I sure would appreciate your help, thank you.
Sincerely, R*********
And here is our reply
Hi R*********
Thank you for your message,
I am glad to see that you are working your way through
the evidence and making up your own mind.
Let me offer you an example
Extract from the Korea Times today.
” Removing the nits from the hair is not sufficient. Mom
also must wash (in hot water) your sister’s bed linens,
towels, clothing, hats, brushes, combs, scarves, coats,
toys, upholstered furniture and anything else she comes
into contact with. Things that cannot be washed should
be vacuumed and/or sealed in plastic bags for two weeks.”
The Concord Journal
“Even after treatment, parents should continue to check
their kids twice a day to make sure all the nits are gone,
Richards said. She also recommends that parents wash all
bedding and clothing and vacuum around the house and in
the car.
Health24.com
“To eliminate all lice and successfully prevent re infection,
wash all clothing, towels and bed linen in hot, soapy water,
and dry them in a hot dryer. You can also disinfect bedding
and other items such as hats and clothing by placing them in
a sealed plastic bag for 14 days. The nits will hatch in about
a week and die of starvation. Brushes and combs can be
disinfected by soaking them in hot, soapy water for 10 minutes.”
It is just cookie cutter journalism, they read it in one persons
paper them cut, copy-paste.
Never, ever do they cite their source for such “advice”
If you go to the correct journals via Medline or Google Scholar
and search for evidence in the professional literature for lice
in the environment you will find no evidence whatever that head
lice are present.
Try reading Richard Speare from James Cook University
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/phtm/PHTM/hlice/environ1.htm
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/phtm/PHTM/hlice/papers/counahan-2004.pdf
and the all time kicker
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/phtm/PHTM/hlice/speare-2002.pdf
Head lice are head lice not house lice.
If you really want to know how they spread so easily just
watch a class of children for a day and count the number of
times they come into intimate contact with each other.
It is so common we fail to see it!
In 7 years of supplying NITMIX I have never ever had a parent
say ” Boy, all that cleaning really did the trick!”
No, it never happens.
If you want to get rid of head lice, take head lice off
children’s heads. Anyone who tries to make it more
complicated than that is quite frankly talking rubbish.
Hope that helps
Regards
John Owen
CEO NITMIX Ltd
Here’s a common question we get asked, ” I want to know if black American or bi-racial children get head lice? I have been told that they can’t.”
Here is our answer as best we understand it.
Yes and no!
Head lice have to be highly adapted to their environment if they are going to thrive.
This means they have to be able to scoot around easily in human hair.
The shape of hair strands differ between different racial groups and this effects head lice.
Africans living in Africa get head lice that are highly adapted to living in hair with strands that are oval in cross section. The differences are small but they are significant.
Caucasians have round hair strands and have head lice that are adapted to this shape.
In North America most head lice seem to come from the Caucasian strain and thrive in children with round hair strands, that is mainly Caucasian and Hispanic children.
There are some cases of head lice in African American children but the pool of these head lice seems to be very much smaller and so the incidence of head lice is much lower.
We get plenty of reports of bi-racial children getting head lice so we have to assume that their hair is suitable for at least one, maybe both strains of head lice to prosper.
That is how we understand the situation from 7 years of observing head lice.
All too frequently we get messages saying that children
don’t want to go to school because they have been teased
about having head lice, even that the school staff have
made children feel bad about this very common condition.
We do our best to help solve the head lice problem quickly
and permanently however we realise that we are not experts
in child behaviour and that this anxiety about head lice may
be something that needs expert help.
A friend of ours thankfully specialises in helping children
with this sort of problem and opened out eyes as to the vast
number of reason why children sometimes just don’t want to
go to school. He has kindly provided us with this article on
the subject
School Refusal, by Dr. Noel Swanson
A reader writes:
“How do I get my nine-year-old daughter to school? She seems
to have tummy aches or headaches constantly, and misses
several days of school each week. Any suggestion that she
must go and she screams and cries and seems to be genuinely
afraid of going to school. What can we do?”
Situations like this require a firm hand. Do not be tempted
to wait and hope that she will eventually go to school by
herself. If left too long, she may never go back (seriously,
it can happen!).
At the same time, recognise that her anxiety and distress
are genuine. Getting angry at her will not work.
Try to work out if her fear is about going to school (school
phobia), leaving you or home (separation anxiety), or going
into crowded public places (agoraphobia).
If it might be the first, check if she is being bullied,
teased, embarrassed, or abused at, or on the way to, school.
Work closely with the teachers to identify and deal with any
problematic situations.
Take her to the doctor for a complete physical examination.
Tell the doctor the whole story and ask him to rule out any
serious illnesses.
Once the doctor has done this, believe him! Do not chase
after ever more expensive tests. From this point onwards
your assumption is that the child is well and so should be
in school. Give her firm and confident reassurance that both
she and you will be fine when she is there. If she complains
again of being unwell you then have two options:
The first is that you insist that she go to school unless
there is clear, measurable, evidence that she is sick, for
example having a temperature, obvious diarrhoea and
vomiting, etc. Just “feeling unwell” is not enough to miss
school, after all, many adults have to go to work with
headaches or other symptoms.
The second option is to “believe” her. Since she says she is
too unwell to go to school, then clearly she is too unwell
to be up and about the house. If she is sick then she is
sick, and so she goes to bed: lights off, curtains closed,
no TV, no special snacks. Ignore her and go about your
normal daily routine. Make sure that the option of staying
home is boring. If she is not sleeping then, ideally she
should be doing some school work. Certainly there should be
no friends or visitors to entertain her.
Along with this, set up clear incentives (rewards,
privileges) for getting to school.
You must be tough and firm, but also calm, about all of
this. Be clear that you expect her to be at school, but do
not get into a fight with her about it. The goal is for her
to want to get back as quickly as possible. Once there, and
she discovers that nothing does happen to her or to you
while at school, the symptoms of depression and anxiety
should rapidly resolve.
If none of this works, or if you are concerned about a
serious depression or anxiety disorder, seek professional
help through your family doctor.
But please, don’t just hope it will go away on its own. You
need to take some decisive action.
Dr. Noel Swanson, Consultant Child Psychiatrist and author
of “The GOOD CHILD Guide”, specializes in children’s
behavioural difficulties and writes a free newsletter for
parents. He can be contacted through his website:
Good-child-guide.com
Parents looking for good head lice advice often become
confused and dis-heartened by conflicting adice on head
lice. Here is a typical example from a our correspondence
files.
—– Original Message —–
To: “NITMIX”
From: “Kim *****”
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 8:31 PM
I am getting more and more confused with the conflictin
“reports” I am reading from internet websites and their
“cures” for head lice.
I found live and I mean “live” large lice on my daughters
long haired stuffed toy cat after 48hours of being sealed
in an airtight plastic bag after being left in the sun
(30C plus). IF they can survive this then why can they not
survive inside the house in normal temperatures and living
conditions.
I have however taken to your advice that the only way to
remove these crtitters is to remove them manually and I
am now sure that there is more than one way to “skin a cat”.
These are good questions and they need a clear answer,
here goes!
The sealing in an air tight bag thing is nonsense.
Lice aspirate very slowly. They are less than one tenth
of one cubic millimetre in volume and only a small part
of that are ” Lungs” so a bag full of air would last them
weeks !! A louse will not suffocate in a bag.
Lice can also suspend their breathing for several hours so,
so called, smothering techniques don’t work very well either.
Lice live happily on humans in every part of the planet.
Normal temperatures range from minus 10 degrees Celsius to
over 40 degrees Celsius in different parts of the world and
lice are fine. 30 Degrees is nothing to a louse.
Head lice die when off their humans hosts because they run
out of fluids, that die of dehydration long before they run
out of food or energy. In very dry conditions a louse that
had not fed before it left the body would die relatively
quickly, probably a few hours.
A well fed louse in relatively humid air could last for a
couple of days. It all depends on the conditions.
If you can get off the hook that you need to kill lice you
will save yourself a lot of heartache. JUST TAKING THEM OFF
is fine. You don’t need to kill them which is a tough thing
to do.
Sound to me like you are on the right track and asking the
right questions.
Good luck
John Owen