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What’s Effective, Visual Head Lice Checks or Combing?

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Recently, we’ve had customers ask why we don’t do visual head lice checks in addition to our comb-out checking. The reason? Visual checks can miss a lot of things. The nits and lice are the same color if your hair is dyed and  It can be hard to spot the few eggs/nits that are laid so close to the scalp.  This is especially true if you have a light infestation.

In fact, a 2001 study showed that, “The average time until detection of the first louse was 57.0 seconds with the comb as compared to 116.4 seconds by direct visual examination. Diagnosis of louse infestation using a louse comb is four times more efficient than direct visual examination and twice as fast.”

While visual head lice checks are still better than no check at all, a lice infestation would have to be fairly advanced in order for it to be easily seen with the naked eye. Many summer camps, school programs, or day cares will use pencils or chopsticks to  inspect the scalp. This is still good! Any check is better than no check at all.

However, we go right to combing to see what the comb finds. This is a better use of both our time and your time. It helps us find lice and nits twice as fast! Then we can get you lice free and back to your day.

We sell our Terminator brand professional combs, so you can use what we use on your children at home! We have a tutorial video on how to do thorough comb outs, and we have an instruction sheet posted as well. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call (865) 245-5353!

Back to School!

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It’s that time of year again! Lice are prevalent in schools across America, and it seems like Tennessee has been hit pretty hard lately. We have a few quick ways to prevent lice from spreading within your classrooms and schools.

  1. Keep long hair up. Lice don’t jump or fly, they travel from loose hair to loose hair. Buns and braids are the best way to keep lice from making the switch to your head. Keeping all the flyaways down is very important!
  2. No head to head contact. Even a bun won’t save you if you put your head on someone else’s head.
  3. Peppermint spray. Tea tree oil does not prevent head lice. A good preventive spray uses essential oil from the mint family, of which peppermint is the best.
  4. Vacuum or lint roll yourself and your furniture. Both vacuuming and lint rolling will get lice off of soft surfaces. For plastic or vinyl, use a Clorox wipe.
  5. Hugs, unfortunately, are a good way to spread head lice. Side hugs, high fives, and fist bumps are good alternatives! Selfies are also responsible for the rise of head lice in middle, high school, and college students. Be sure to warn your students about the dangers or touching heads.
  6. Sharing is not all that caring. Even sharing things like jackets can spread head lice, because many people have hair long enough to touch the fabric. Hoodies that get pulled on over the head will also spread lice.

When in doubt, contact your lice clinic for a head check. At only $25, we can give you peace of mind within 30 minutes.

If you have any questions, call or email us today!

Summer is here!

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Warm weather is finally here! Schools will be out, the pools are open, summer camps are looking at registration, and your vacation is being planned. Head lice don’t take the summer off, and neither should you. Here are a few tips for staying lice free this summer!

  1. Continue head checking your children! Check before and after events, like camps, family reunions, or vacations. Our head checks are $25, and we comb through the entire head. If you come in for a product purchase to get a comb, we will do a comb out demo to make sure you know what you are looking for!
  2. Bring your own pillow to sleepovers! Make sure your children don’t share brushes, hoodies, or pillows. Lice only7 need 3 seconds to transfer heads, and anything that goes from head to head can bring a bug with it.
  3. Keep your hair up! Tight buns and braids are the best ways to stay lice free. Peppermint preventive spray to finish off a hairstyle will help keep lice away from your head as well.
  4. Selfies are dangerous! By all means, take those photos, but keep your heads from touching when you do it.
  5. If you go swimming, don’t share towels! They can grab the fabric and get delivered to a new head as you dry off.

Because lice can hold their breath for 19 hours, swimming pools are safe. The little bugs just take a deep breath and hold on tight, they’re not interested in swimming to a new head.

Have fun this summer, and do it lice free!

Holiday Head Lice Checklist

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No one wants to deal with head lice, especially after a hectic and stressful holiday period!  Parents have enough on their plates with the travel, entertaining, shopping, and cleaning everything up after the New Year.  We put together this head lice checklist for preventing lice infestations after the holidays.

Unfortunately, the holidays can be a peak time for head lice, so it is important to be vigilant.  This is especially true if you traveled to spend time with other families or hosted other families in your home. Lice primarily spread through head-to-head contact, and children get lice more often than adults do because kids spend more time in close contact.

Whether you were the visitor or the visited, there are some steps you can take to ensure that you don’t send your child back to school with head lice.

  1. Get a professional lice screening. If there is a chance you or your children were exposed to head lice over the holidays, the best thing you can do for yourself and your peace of mind is get a professional head lice screening. We offer them for just $25, and if you do have head lice and choose to be treated at our clinic, that fee is waived. Head lice can be very difficult to diagnose, and false positives are very common. You do not want to get treated for head lice if you don’t have the bugs!
  1. Use preventative products. People tend to deal with head lice reactively—meaning we freak out when we find head lice in our children and try to get rid of the problem as fast as we can. That’s perfectly normal, but we now have products that can help to prevent head lice in the first place. Peppermint Spritz, Spearmint Conditioner (my personal favorite!), Peace Love Mint Preventive Headbands, Treatment Goop and Terminator Combs are available at our clinic or on our online store. Unlike most over-the-counter lice products, all Knoxville Lice Clinic products are safe and pesticide-free.

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How to Stay Lice Free in 2019 from Knoxville Lice Clinic

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For decades, the standard of care for head lice has focused on reactive treatment using pesticide-based products. “Head lice has been associated with poor hygiene or dirty homes and has had mortified parents treating the nuisance in secret, often to no avail,” said Jennifer Fribourg, owner of Knoxville Lice Clinic.

“That’s changing as the medical and educational communities have taken steps to bring head lice out of the darkness of fear and ignorance,” Jennifer Fribourg said. “Now we focus on education, prevention, and pesticide-free solutions when head lice are found.”

Indeed, the internet is full of homespun advice on how to treat head lice, urging parents to use everything from mayonnaise to kerosene to kill the bugs. Home remedies people recommend range from laughable to downright dangerous, and Knoxville Lice Clinic is bringing the latest science and medicine to the forefront of the battle against head lice.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that one in five children under 12 years old have head lice,” Jennifer Fribourg said, “and that it has nothing to do with cleanliness or hygiene. We can also tell you from experience that head lice don’t discriminate, and that people from all walks of life come to our clinic and leave lice-free.”

“We are also adamant about not using pesticide-based products that don’t work—products that can be worse than the condition they are trying to treat,” Jennifer said. “Studies published in medical journals have found that 98 percent of head lice in much of the world are now resistant to the pesticides used in traditional lice products, and these pesticides have been linked to behavioral and developmental problems in children.”

Preventive products include sprays, conditioners, and shampoos that can be used daily or weekly at bath time and act as a lice repellent. All of the products use essential oils and inert gels that contain no harmful chemicals.

To learn more or to schedule an appointment, email info@knoxvilleliceclinic.com, or call (865) 245-5353. 

Halloween and Head Lice

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It’s a spooky time of year! For most parents, the threat of head lice is the scariest thing around. School has been back in session for long enough that people are discovering lice, and the holiday season is right around the corner.

Halloween presents it’s own set of issues. How many of you took your kids (or yourself!) out to try on Halloween costumes? Those outfits, hats, and masks get put on many different people every day. When someone with lice pulls a costume over their head, they can knock a louse off their hair and onto the fabric where it lies in wait for the next unsuspecting customer to put it on and find a new home. Trying on masks and hats is the same. We all remember not to share hats until we see the latest Jack Skellington or unicorn bobble head hat at Wal-Mart. I’ve been tempted to put one on for a picture with a friend myself, and I know the dangers well.

There are a few ways to prevent lice this holiday season. One option is to visually check things before you put them on. Hats, wigs, masks (full face and masquerade), and hair accessories can hide a louse who will be more than happy to make your head their new home. As always, keep your hair in tight buns and braids, and use peppermint to discourage lice from picking your head to land on.

When you bring a costume home, try to keep it in a bag for 48 hours. Putting things in the freezer for 8 hours will also kill lice.

Have a happy and (not too terrifying) Halloween!

Who to Tell About Head Lice

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We have a lot of families in here who find out they have head lice and freeze. Who do they tell? How far back to do they need to go? What if it’s embarrassing?

The hard truth is that you need to share the information. Most people have head lice from 6-8 weeks before the population builds up enough to become noticeable, so you need to look at least two months back to see who to inform. This isn’t just for their benefit; if you don’t tell anybody, they can’t get checked, and there is a risk that they can give it back to you and you’ll have to do this whole thing over again.

Here is a general list of who you need to contact about having lice:

  • Family. If you saw your sister, or just babysat your nephews, or the kids spent the weekend at their grandparents, all those people have been exposed to lice.
  • Friends. Many of our clients are in school, and their friends’ parents need to know that their children have been exposed to lice. This is even more critical if they have sleepovers, or if they hug or share jackets or hats.
  • Significant others. If you have lice, odds are the person you hang out with a lot has lice, as well. Hugs, cuddles, and bed sharing are great ways to spread lice. For middle or high school students, borrowing a hoodie or jacket from someone you have a crush on is a great way to catch it, even with minimal personal contact.
  • Roommates, dorm mates, sorority sisters, or fraternity brothers. If you share a living space, there’s a great chance you accidentally shared lice.
  • Sports teams. Sometimes Little League teams share helmets. Most girls’ teams require ponytails, which can flip lice through the air from girl to girl during a game or cheerleading or dance routine. In addition, these teams foster tight friendships, so you can often inform their friend circle and their team with a few calls.
  • Child care. Day cares have lice the same way schools do, and so do after school programs. If you have a regular babysitter, nanny, or just a good friend or family member who watches your child, let them know as well.
  • Salons. Sometimes your hairdresser will miss seeing lice in your hair. Because they work so closely with hair, they have special regulations associated with head lice. It is a good policy to let them know if there’s a chance you had lice during your last visit.

The good news is, we can help. If you give us names and numbers, we will call schools, dance groups, coaches, after school programs, day cares, and hair dressers. We do it anonymously, saying only that we had a client come in (in Mrs. Smith’s class, in 9th grade, in the 7pm dance class on Wednesdays) who had lice. They are now lice free, but the client requested we inform the business that head lice were in their location.

The only way to keep our community lice free is if the entire community works together. Some schools cannot inform parents that head lice were found, so your best bet is to tell your friends. Moms have an amazing informal information network. Your school’s PTA can help make sure that people are doing monthly head checks and keeping their children clear, which will reduce the likelihood of your own children catching it again.

Don't feel bullied because of head lice

Bullied Because of Head Lice? We can fix it.

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October is National Bullying Prevention Month. A recent survey shows that many parents feel bullied because of head lice in the family.  Knoxville Lice Clinic wants to help take the pressure off parents struggling with the stress and embarrassment of head lice.

Parents are nervous about head lice because they think they will be shamed.  A OnePoll survey of 2,000 U.S. parents found that 52 percent of parents feel judged by other moms and dads when their child comes home with head lice.  There is a long-held and long-debunked idea that head lice are associated with poor hygiene.  The medical world has busted this myth, but the perception persists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, ‘Personal hygiene or cleanliness in the home or school has nothing to do with getting head lice.

Children get head lice from other children, plain and simple. The primary way lice spread is through head-to-head, hair-to-hair contact. Head-to-head contact with an already infested person is the most common way to get head lice.

One reason that parents dread head lice when lice enter their lives is that the bugs have become very difficult to treat. Traditional lice treatment products, when they work, require weeks of application and hours of tedious nitpicking. Unfortunately, those traditional products rarely work. Many parents try and fail to treat head lice with those products because head lice have become immune to the chemical pesticides in them. The most recent study in the Journal of Medical Entomology found that “super lice” comprise 98 percent of head lice in most U.S. states.  Also, the pesticides used in lice products have been linked to developmental and behavioral problems in children.

The Good News

The good news is that Knoxville Lice Clinic can help!

Lice don’t cause or carry diseases, so in the vast majority of cases, they are not a health concern.  You can now be done with head lice in about an hour and a half. A simple problem has finally met a simple solution—no more feeling bullied because of head lice!

To learn more or to schedule an appointment, email info@knoxvilleliceclinic.com , or call (865) 245-5353.

House Cleaning for Head Lice

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Cleaning your house is vital to getting head lice out of your life. With so much misinformation on the internet, I wanted to give you a list of what to clean and how to do it, so you can move right on with your lice-free life.

  • Wash all bedding, towels, and clothing used by infested family members in the past 48 hours. Use hot water or high heat settings.
  • Things that can’t be washed can still be put in the dryer for 45 minutes on high.
  • If it can’t go in the dryer, bag it up for 48 hours. Lice need to feed every 3 hours, and will starve to death in 48 hours.
  • Hair things like brushes, combs, hair ties, hair bows, hats, or helmets, can go in the freezer for 8 hours.
  • Vacuum or use a lint roller on everything fabric. Vacuum the floors, lint roll or vacuum the couches/recliners.
  • Remember to vacuum or lint roll your car!
  • Smooth surface things can be wiped down with Clorox wipes.

Lice don’t burrow, so you only need to clean the surface of things. You don’t have to throw anything out.

Don’t use bug sprays or bug bombs. Lice are immune to the pesticides, so it needlessly covers your house in poison without actually killing the lice.

Having lice is stressful. Getting rid of it doesn’t have to be. With these easy tips, you can get your house clean in a few hours, and have your life back faster.

Head Lice Prevention Month

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September is Head Lice Prevention month, a good time to call attention to the facts of head lice as children go back to school—typically a peak period for the head-loving bugs. Once children start playing, hugging, and taking selfies with friends, and, if someone in the group has head lice, the bugs will spread. 

Parents often panic when they get the call from school that their child, or a child in class has head lice. The first thing we tell them is they didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did their child other than maybe hug or touch hair with someone who has head lice. The true facts about head lice can help diffuse parents fear and stress.

To help parents be informed and prepared, you can review the basics of head lice infestations, prevention, and treatment.

  1. Head lice have nothing to do with economic status or the cleanliness of the home. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of School Nurses are very clear on this.
  1. Head Lice don’t represent a health threat. They don’t carry or cause any diseases or illness other than itching. Again, health professionals are very clear on this. Lice are simply a nuisance.
  1. 98% of the time head lice only spread through head-to-head, contact. They cannot jump or fly. They can only live on a human scalp, and they cannot live anywhere else since they dehydrate and quickly become too weak to move. As a matter of fact, head lice do not want to leave the scalp at all; since they feed on human blood up to 6 times per day. That may be disgusting, but it’s true. Lice don’t want to be on your sofa, on stuffed animals or the carpet. The good news is, you don’t need to treat your home with lice-killing products. They are ineffective, pesticide-based and can be toxic. Simply wash any bedding, towels and clothing the child with head lice has had contact with in the last 48 hours, lint roll upholstered surfaces, and freeze brushes and hair accessories for 8 hours.
  1. Help prevent head lice by educating your child to avoid hair-to-hair and head-to-head contact. You can also prevent lice by keeping her hair pulled back in a braid, tight bun or short ponytail.
  1. Traditional pesticide-based lice products are no longer working! The most recent study, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology in 2016, found that 98 percent of head lice in 48 states are now immune to the pesticides used in traditional lice products. The most popular drugstore products are still pesticide-based.
  1. Head lice products do NOT kill all the lice eggs (sometimes called nits), and so, the 10-day process requires repeated applications and tedious nitpicking to get all the eggs out. Common reasons for at-home treatment failure is using the popular pesticide-based products or parents missing just a few tiny nits, which hatch, and the lice return.
  1. Traditional lice products often use pesticides, and most parents don’t realize that. Even if those products still worked, would parents really want to douse their child’s head in pesticides when there are safer, faster, more effective alternatives available? Not only are pesticides no longer effective, repeated use has been shown to cause behavioral issues.
  2. At Knoxville Lice Clinic, our professionals quickly and easily get rid of head lice.  The Headwinds Heat Treatment gets rid of lice in a single treatment. That’s right, one treatment, one hour and you are lice free! Parents love this ‘one and done’ option and are so relieved to have lice out of their life so quickly.  Our Saline Comb Outs take only 2 visits — generally an hour at the first visit and 30 minutes at the follow up.

“Prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Benjamin Franklin

Knowing the facts can go a long way toward reducing stress and anxiety about head lice.

Knoxville Lice Clinic is the exclusive provider of lice treatment using the Headwinds heat treatment device. It’s fast, non-toxic, and pesticide free. Our professional, certified head lice technicians are friendly and knowledgeable and will relieve all the stress and anxiety head lice may cause you and your family. Knoxville Lice Clinic also offers pesticide-free and effective do-it-yourself lice treatment solutions, along with lice prevention products.

Have a lice-free school year!