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what parents need to understand about head lice

What Parents Need to Understand About Head Lice

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If you are a parent of young children, it is all too familiar to hear that lice are spreading amongst your child’s classroom. Although lice are pests, there are misconceptions about how they spread. They can absolutely spread from person to person, but they do not spread the way you think they would. Before panicking, consider these facts about lice and why you should not be afraid for your child:

1. Lice Do Not Spread Easily

Although they multiply fast once they lay eggs, once they get knocked off of a human scalp, they die within 24 hours.

2. Lice Do Not Jump From Scalp to Scalp That Easily

Despite the invasive nature of lice, they do not jump at all. They are crawlers and can only be transmitted through direct contacts, such as during playtime, when kids experience head-to-head contact with each other.

3. Do Not Prevent Your Children from Going to School Despite Lice Infestations

Pediatricians suggest that lice are not easily spread through classrooms, so preventing your children from attending school is not necessary. The school’s administration should be responsible for handling the case in the event of an outbreak, so it is completely fine to continue sending your child to school as long as he or she refrains from having head-to-head contact with other students.

4. Lice Are a Problem That Transcends Socioeconomic Classes

Despite the social stigma that getting lice reflects the cleanliness or living conditions of a family, this notion is untrue. Anyone can get lice, which is why excluding children from their school environment perpetuates the age-old beliefs.

5. Lice are Easily Diagnosed

When peeking around your child’s scalp or head, you may notice the presence of live insects. Use a fine comb to check hair, as well as the areas behind the ear and at the base of the neck. If there is a lice infestation, you will find both bugs and their eggs.

Eggs are easily confused for dandruff, hair products, glitter, and dried up shampoo, so be sure to check if the objects are stuck strongly to hairs. If these are indeed eggs and lice, the following point is how to get rid of lice.

6. Catch and Treat Infestations Early

When a family member is diagnosed with lice, it is best to run through all people in the house for head checks, and get treated as a family to avoid further infestation. The best way to go about it is to have professional lice treatment.

7. A Cleaning Spree is Not Always Needed After a Lice Outbreak

Since lice only live around 24 hours off of a scalp, a simple change of sheets, pillowcases, and washing clothes is a good enough precaution to take after lice have been treated. If the item affected cannot be washed easily, place it in a plastic bag for two whole days to ensure that the louse has died out.

Lice Removal Services in Jacksonville, Orlando, and Savannah

Lice infestations are not as menacing as people have made it out to be. They are easily treated if you let the professionals handle them. At Fresh Heads Lice Removal, we offer top-quality lice removal services in Jacksonville, Orlando, FL, and Savannah, GA. If you or a family member is suffering from an infestation, contact us now!

Schools Without Lice.

Schools Without Lice

Our mission at Fresh Heads is to get rid of lice in schools across the country. That’s why we’ve partnered with the Lice Clinics of America to create the Schools Without Lice program. Through this program, we’re able to provide teachers and nurses with free head lice screenings, resources, and treatments. Together, we can have schools without lice!

Eggs hatch into nymphs after 7-10 days, another 10 days after that, those nymphs have grown into adults.

How to Calculate How Long You Have Had Lice

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The news has broken, and your kid has lice. We know the drill. Panic immediately sets in while a million questions run through your head at the same time. You’re thinking how long could you’ve had lice? How did this happen? How do I get rid of lice and fast ? We’re tackling the first question among many—how to calculate how long you have head lice.

Lice Life Cycle

To be able to calculate how long you’ve had lice, we’ll need to understand the lice life cycle.

  • Once the lice have spread to the person’s head, the female louse will start to lay their nits or eggs; an infestation has begun.
  • The first nymphs, or baby lice, will appear 7-10 days later.
  • Nymphs will continue to eat and grow over the next 7-10 days.
  • Before becoming adults, nymphs will molt their exoskeleton three times in order to mate. You can think of this as the louse teenager stage, based on the various molting phases the louse might be.
  • During the third and final molt, the gender is determined based on what is needed for a growing colony and are now officially adults.
  • Once genders are determined, the females will mate, and the life cycle begins again.

It is important to note, after the first successful lice generation, the females mate only one time and lay nits for the remainder of her lifespan. The louse lifespan is usually between 30-33 days, and females can lay up to 10 nits (eggs) a day.

Calculating How Long You Have Had Lice

Now that we’ve learned all the fun details on the life of lice let’s get down to the bottom of how long you’ve had lice. Lice infestation is typically noticed in 30 days after the nymphs have become adults and begin to mate. Female lice are larger than male lice, which means they can be easier to spot in someone’s hair. When you examine the scalp of a person with lice, you will be able to see lice at the various stages in their life: nits, casings (shell after hatching), nymphs, teens, and the adults. By understanding the life cycle of lice, if there are more nits than adults on the head, we can assume you’ve had lice for longer than 30 days. This means there has been longer than one louse life cycle on the head because the adult lice were able to lay and hatch their nits.

Nit on a Strand of Hair

Nit on a strand of hair.

Hatched Louse Casing

Hatched louse casing.

Nits and Lice in Hair

Lice and nits in hair.

 

For a more technical calculation of how long you’ve had lice, we can measure how far from the scalp the eggs (nits) are. Female lice lay their eggs as close to the scalp as possible, and hair grows about 1 cm per month. For example, if you find nits in your hair and they are measured 2 cm from the scalp, we can calculate you’ve had lice for two months.

Head Lice Treatment in Jacksonville, Orlando, and Savannah

It’s time to cut the lice life cycle short and get rid of them once and for all. Picking the nits, casings, and louse out of the hair yourself will be time-consuming, back-breaking, and eye-straining. It can be easy to miss those one or two nits, and you’ll be left with a breakout yet again. Even those over-the-counter lice treatment products are filled with chemicals and toxins not safe for anyone’s yet. Sometimes they don’t even kill the nits. The safest and most effective lice treatment on the market is our AirAllé device here at Fresh Heads Lice Removal. Our revolutionary device uses only warm air to kill all nits and adult lice in under an hour. Schedule your appointment to be lice free today.

 

Schools Without Lice.

Schools Without Lice

Our mission at Fresh Heads Lice Removal is to get rid of lice in schools across the United States. We’ve partnered with Lice Clinics of America to create the Schools Without Lice program that gives teaches and nurses free screenings, resources, and treatments. Together, we can have schools without lice!