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Lice Lifters Of Montgomery County - Not All Lice Treatments Are Created Equal

Not All Lice Treatments Are Created Equal

Before we get into the various lice treatment methodologies available in the Philadelphia area, let’s discuss the problem of head lice. These parasitic insects live off the blood under the human scalp. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are about six million to 12 million reported lice infestations every year. These infestations typically affect children between the ages of three and 12. Recently, however, they do seem to be infesting teenagers and adults as well.

They can’t jump or fly, so they need to crawl from one person to another. For this reason, any head-to-head contact between children has the potential to spread lice. Also, they can reach another child’s scalp through the sharing of brushes, combs or hats belonging to an infested person.

Head lice can stigmatize those children infested with them as well as their parents. No parent wants to get that letter from their school nurse saying that their kid has lice. Lice can cause itching, redness and swelling, and your children scratching the itches can cause open sores to form. Also, most schools will not allow kids back into the school until their lice and nits, which are their eggs, are eliminated. This makes ridding your child of them a top priority so that you’re not having to stay home from work to take care of them.

In this article, we’ll inform you about various treatments that claim to solve this problem. It’s important to also know the most effective remedy available so that you can have peace of mind and your children can live comfortably.

The Multitude of Head Lice “Treatments”

Treatments for head lice seem to fall into the four general categories of home remedies, over-the-counter treatments, prescription medications and professional lice removal services. We’ll go over the most common varieties of these and discuss their advantages and shortcomings.

Over-the-Counter Treatments

These typically comprise a variety of lice shampoos on the market, such as Nix and Rid. These contain pesticides in their ingredients that are claimed to kill head lice. There are a number of problems with these types of products.

  • Your children may have an unhealthy reaction to them. The pesticides in these products are toxins. That’s how they are able to claim that they kill lice. It’s possible your child could have an allergic or other negative reaction to them.
  • They depend on successful self-application. As with any store-bought product, the success or failure of this treatment depends on you applying it correctly. You have to be careful to follow the instructions to the letter.
  • Head lice are becoming increasingly resistant to them. A study at UMass Amherst indicates that the pesticides used in these over-the-counter lice shampoos have been used so long that lice are becoming resistant to them. The study finds that 50 to 98 percent of the lice remain after being exposed to the pesticides in these products.

Prescription Head Lice Remedies

Because so many head lice are resistant to the above over-the-counter treatments, many parents take the next logical step and move up to prescription-strength medications. Ivermectin is one commonly prescribed medication for this problem. These medications, however, have issues of their own.

Ivermectin comes in both an oral form and a lotion. The main issue with both types is that they don’t kill the nits. They can also be fairly expensive, and like most prescription medications, they come with a slew of side effects on their warning label. Side effects of the oral form include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension, allergic reactions, dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death.

With the topical lotion form of Ivermectin, you don’t get enough to treat the whole head at once. Also, since it doesn’t kill the nits, you have to do repeated treatments to kill any newly-hatched lice. Even after all this money and effort, the product is not guaranteed to be effective. Additionally, the lotion can cause serious side effects, such as trouble breathing and swelling of your tongue or throat.

Home Remedies

Many parents attempt to solve the problem of head lice on their own with a trip to Google rather than a trip to the drug store for over-the-counter or prescription products. If you search for “head lice home remedies,” you will certainly find many. These usually center around the approaches of smothering the lice or using temperature to try to kill them.

The Smothering Approach

This is accomplished by applying mayonnaise, olive oil, coconut oil, tea tree oil or petroleum jelly to the hair and scalp. The problem with such an approach is that lice can go for about four to eight hours without breathing. For this reason, some who advocate this remedy suggest you leave the mayonnaise or oil on your child’s head overnight by covering their hair with a plastic cap or bag.

The above approach, however, was found to be ineffective in a 2018 study. In this study, lice were subjected to suffocation and were submerged in water. The results were that all of the lice survived being in a sealed container without oxygen for eight hours, and they survived after six hours of being submerged in water. If this failed under laboratory conditions, you can imagine how unworkable it would be in real life.

Additionally, such home remedies can be dangerous. If the plastic bag slips down over their face, it can cause suffocation. Also, imagine the discomfort of having to sleep all night with a head full of mayonnaise or oil.

Hot Air Treatment

This is the treatment that claims high temperature alone can eradicate the problem of head lice. Basically, it centers around the belief that the lice and their nits can be dehydrated through exposure to hot air blown on the scalp.

First of all, the air needs to be pretty hot to have any hope of achieving the desired effect. A 120-degree steady stream of air applied to the scalp is fairly uncomfortable to most children and adults. Also, there’s no evidence that all of the nits are thoroughly dehydrated and killed by this approach. If you miss even a couple of nits, the problem can start all over again.

Seek Professional Help With Lice Lifters

The problem with all of these treatment options above is that they are not comprehensive enough. You have to kill all of the lice, but any successful treatment also has to kill or remove all of the nits. If this second step isn’t successfully accomplished, these nits will simply hatch into new lice, and the itching and aggravation starts all over again.

Professional Bucks County Lice Removal

When you need Philadelphia lice removal, Lice Lifters Of Montgomery County has you covered. Our family-friendly lice salon specializes in lice removal. We also do it with 100 percent safe, all-natural, non-toxic products. This means you don’t have to worry about your child having any adverse reactions to toxic ingredients.

A Process That’s Guaranteed to Get the Job Done Right

When you need a Montgomery County lice removal service, you can be sure we’ll achieve the desired result. Since lice removal is all we do, we’d have gone out of business years ago if we didn’t successfully handle this problem for families just like yours. Whether you need Bucks County lice removal or Philadelphia lice removal, we follow the same time-tested process.

We spread our all-natural, plant-based mousse throughout your infested child’s hair and scalp. This helps to loosen the glue-like substance that enables the nits to adhere to the base of hair follicles.

One of our certified lice technicians then uses a micro-grooved nit comb to remove the nits. They meticulously run it through your child’s hair while checking to ensure they have removed all of them.

The next step in our Montgomery County lice removal process is to saturate their hair and scalp with our Lice Lifters Treatment Solution. This solution kills any bugs that may have thought they hid during the combing process.

We then give you tips and advice for what to do at home to make sure the problem does not recur. This includes making our cutting-edge products available for purchase if you wish to do a follow-up treatment at home.

Don’t Let Your Family Suffer From Head Lice

If any of your kids have head lice, they are experiencing discomfort. Also, you want to treat any lice infestation before they spread them to others. For Bucks County lice removal or Philadelphia lice removal, please bring any affected family members to Lice Lifters Of Montgomery County.

The first step we’ll undertake is to do a close inspection of their scalp to ensure lice are the problem. If they are present, our safe and natural treatment process will eradicate them in a single visit to our Montgomery County lice removal salon. Our treatment is affordable, however, we know times are tough for some. This is why we also offer a payment plan to make it easier for you. Please call as soon as possible, and we’ll schedule an appointment at a time and date of your convenience.

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