Related Articles

The head louse is a bug without wings which dwells in people's hair and lives only on our blood. They have infested us for many centuries. The majority of us have personally known how annoying it is to have them on our heads for some period of time, usually in our youth since that is the time when one is most likely to be stricken. Each year, 6,000,000 to 12,000,000 people in the United States must cope with the problem of head lice or body lice.

The diagnosis of head lice is relatively straight forward. You can look for lice bites or the presence of shiny white eggs in the hair, but the best way to determine if somebody has head lice is to comb their hair thoroughly with a lice comb and then examine the comb afterwards for the presence of lice.

If you are worried about head lice in your child please check their heads on a regular basis. That is the best way to prevent the problem. Schools in the United States generally have a policy that states that a child with head lice must remain at home until the problem has been cleared up.

This can stop lice from being passed between children, yet frequently lice are not discovered until they have been transmitted from one child to another. It is therefore very important to inspect your child's hair on a regular basis, particularly if they are aged between four and twelve.

If your child is doing a lot of head and scalp scratching, it might be a sign of head lice. If your child does have lice, you'll have to clean all bed clothes and towels frequently. Don't send your child back to school until you're sure all the nits are gone because lice are easily transferred to others. Keeping your child's hair in a shorter style makes it easier to check the scalp and may help prevent the problem.

Luckily there are several viable options for treating lice in children and adults. There are silicone-based lotions and herbal lotions. The application of heat will also work. While any of these methods will work, they are not one hundred percent successful on the first application of treatment. That is why following the full course of treatment is very important in order to prevent relapses.

Between six and twelve million people in the U.S. alone struggle with infestations of head lice and body lice each year. Lice date back to ancient times, and they have lived as parasites on our bodies and scalps ever since. An adult louse has no wings, so when he finds a head to live on, he's there to stay. His only food is human blood. Living on the scalp means he always has a ready food source. It's a rare person who has never had to deal with lice with children being the most susceptible to infestations.