Why Home Remedies for Lice Removal Don’t Work

Some parents don’t immediately seek help from professional lice removal services when their kids get lice. Instead, they try to treat it themselves with home remedies. This often leads to disaster—since these treatments are ineffective, the lice continue to spread and the infestation worsens. So, before you spend the next couple of hours rummaging through kitchen and bathroom cabinets for home remedies for lice, read through our reasons why they won’t work, and find out what to do instead.

Top Home-Remedies for Head Lice (and Why They Don’t Work!)

Here they are—the top-touted home remedies for head lice, and why they won’t work for removing lice or lice eggs from your child’s head:

1. The Olive Oil Remedy

With this method, olive oil is supposed to be applied to the hair and left for 6-8 hours to “stifle” the lice. In order to contain the mess of having a sticky, smelly substance in their child’s hair, many parents will try to wrap their child’s head with plastic wrap. Not only does this method submit your child to having to endure the stickiness and smell for hours on end, it also puts them in danger of suffocation. This treatment is also not meant to be a one-time thing—instead, you are supposed to repeat the process as necessary until you don’t see any more lice. What the proponents of this method don’t tell you is that, unlike professional lice treatment, olive oil doesn’t kill lice, or lice eggs. Therefore, the lice will persist, and you will have to keep repeating the treatment. Add in the cost of olive oil, and all you have is a treatment plan to drain your wallet.

2. Mayonnaise Treatment

Similar to the olive oil treatment, mayonnaise is supposed to be applied to your child’s head and left for hours to suffocate the lice. Just like with olive oil, this subjects your child to enduring the terrible smell and discomfort, and puts them in danger of suffocation. The mayonnaise does not harm the adult lice or lice eggs, which means that at the end of this long and torturous journey (for you and your child), your child will still have lice.

3. OTC Lice Shampoo

When they emerged onto the market, OTC or over the counter shampoos were touted as the ideal solution for getting rid of head lice. However, over the years, the repeated use of these pesticide-containing shampoos have served to bolster the pest’s immunity to it by helping them develop resistance. Ever heard of super lice? So, just like olive oil or mayonnaise, OTC shampoos are not effective against the super lice of today. Aside from that, there are concerns about the safety of the ingredients in these products, such as the neurotoxin, which has risks when overused.

4. Cutting Off All Hair

This home remedy might seem like it would do the trick—however, did you know that female lice place their eggs on the hair shaft as close to the scalp as possible for warmth? Suddenly that ¼ inch buzz-cut is now down to shaving your child’s head bald. The reality is that you would never be able to get a close enough buzz cut with clippers to eliminate lice. Once you factor this in (plus the trauma of doing this to your child), suddenly head-shaving really seems like a bad idea.

Professional Lice Removal is the Way to Go

Thankfully, your child doesn’t need to endure the discomfort of any of these treatments, and you can save yourself the time and effort of trying to treat lice with home remedies that don’t work. Just let the experts at Fresh Heads Lice Removal handle it!

Our signature AirAllé dehydrates and kills lice and eggs in one treatment, meaning our professional service will have those itchy pests out of your child’s hair for good. It’s an all-natural lice treatment that guarantees that everything will be gone in just over an hour! Get professional lice removal in Jacksonville, Orlando, and Savannah. Book your appointment with Fresh Heads Lice Removal today!

Schools Without Lice

At Fresh Heads Lice Removal, we want to get rid of lice in schools across the country. So, we’ve partnered with the Lice Clinics of America to create a program called Schools Without Lice. Through this program, we give teachers and nurses free head lice screenings, resources, and treatments. Together, we can have schools without lice!