It’s not something out of the ordinary to catch lice at school. Kids like to play, run and be together, which creates a great environment to catch lice. When my siblings were younger my brother came home with lice and soon the whole family had lice. That’s how quickly it can spread and back then it only took lice shampoo and the combing our hair to remove the little critters from our heads, but now there’s a strain of mutant lice that is making things a little more complicated.
These mutant lice are resistant to common treatments or shampoos found over the counter. According to Kyong Sup Yoon, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Souther Illinois University, his team collected lice samples from across 30 states in the U.S. They discovered that 104 out of 109 lice populations had high levels of gene mutations, which makes them resistant to pyrethroids.
Pyrethroids are insecticides that include permethrin, the active ingredient in head lice treatments found in drug stores. This poses a big problem because there’s a good chance these treatments won’t work.
This is bound to happen because just like any other living organism, when a product is widely available and even overused, it creates a drug resistance. This creates a problem for those that are embarrassed by the situation because you may have to go to your doctor and get a lice treatment with permethrin, which is only given with a prescription.
There are still at home remedies that you can try that are both inexpensive and non-toxic, such as:
Olive oil: Apply olive oil to your hair under a shower cap. With this treatment, you can suffocate the lice and kill them when the oil covers them. You are creating a suffocating environment since lice can’t survive without breathing for hours.
Petroleum jelly or gel: Chances are you have petroleum jelly or styling gel in your bathroom. These thick products can suffocate their breathing holes and kill the lice.
Heat: You can triple your chances of getting rid of lice if you first rinse your hair with hot water, then wash your hair with head lice shampoo and blow dry your hair. Lice do not like heat.
Vinegar: You should always have vinegar handy in your kitchen. It’s not only good for cooking but also to disinfect and to kill lice. You can dilute the vinegar with water and apply it on your hair. It’s said that vinegar dissolves the sticky glue that the female louse use to attach eggs to hair.
One of the best things to do is simply talk to your children about hygiene. Tell them to avoid head-to-head contact because that’s the easiest way to catch lice. Also, you can help by keeping long hair in a ponytail or braid and tell them to never share brushes or combs with strangers. You can even add essential oils, like tea tree oil to your combs and brushes to keep the bugs away.