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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!

We get lice, too!

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We deal with a lot of head lice in this job. Prevention is our best friend, and we head check each other constantly! Some of our favorite things to prevent lice are :

  • Our giant fluffy hats. Jennifer hand makes most of them so that all our hair is covered when we’re messing with people’s hair!
  • Lint rollers! We lint roll ourselves a LOT. Lice can’t hold to fabric very well, and this way we can be sure we don’t have lice on our clothes when we take our hats off.
  • Tight buns and braids. We keep our hair under the hats, but it’s easiest to prevent little strands from escaping if we have our hair pinned up.
  • Preventive spray! One of my coworkers does a little dance every day as she rains peppermint spray down over herself – and anyone standing nearby! It works though, she stays very lice free.
  • Head checks. We all have our paranoid moments. Usually, one of us will come in saying we itch and need a head check, and get teased about being paranoid during a good comb out. Then the next week, it’s that person’s turn to be scared!
  • Sometimes, we will Treatment Goop a client and send them home. It is important to us to stay lice free, and after a certain amount of bugs in a person’s hair, we will Treatment Goop a client and send them home to wash so they can come back without excess living bugs, and we can protect our employees. This is rare, but does occasionally happen.

 

Some of what we do is in our own lives. One of my coworkers came in with lice and thought she got it at work. When we checked her child to make sure he was lice free, he was much worse than mom! We do head checks on our families fairly often, just like we advise our clients to do. Head lice are a very easy thing to miss, unless you’re looking closely. Our college students tend to wear their hair up while on campus, and we all are a little wary of hugging people or sharing anything.

Because so many people have head lice, it is important to be careful where ever you are. As my coworker Sarah says, “Constant vigilance!”

 

 

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.

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.

Lice Prevention

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There are many old wives tales concerning lice prevention, but we have your best options! We work with lice every day, and have some tips and tricks to avoid catching it yourself.

Wear your hair up! It takes THREE SECONDS for a louse to crawl from someone’s head to yours. This means a hug, picking up a child, selfies, or even standing close to people on public transportation is enough to catch lice. Every loose hair is an opportunity to a louse. Buns and braids will keep your hair tight to your head and prevent flyaways. If you have crazy curly or frizzy hair like me, some gel, mousse, or hairspray will help eliminate those escaping fuzzies.

Pinterest or YouTube are your friends. You can learn to do many simple hairstyles in only a few minutes!

While they don’t have to be this elaborate, any type of tight braid will reduce your chances of getting lice.

 

Peppermint is your new signature scent. Lice avoid peppermint, so we use our Peppermint Spritz to keep them away. Simply spray this on your hair before you leave the house to encourage lice to find a different place to live. Tea Tree Oil has been talked about a lot, but it doesn’t work anymore. Maybe at one time it helped, but now it will only cost an arm and a leg and leave your hair soft for the lice to happily cavort around in.

Hair cuts are important! Everybody thinks they should cut their hair, but you don’t have to go that route. In fact, for women, hair should be at least shoulder length so you can pin it up appropriately. For men, a buzz cut is not enough. Lice can live in an eighth of an inch of hair! If you want to be lice free, you need to shave your head to the scalp and rock that Mr. Clean shiny head bald.

My personal favorite trick is simple: hoodies. I wear a jacket with a hood almost everywhere, so when I sit on an upholstered seat, I can flip the hood up to cover my hair. Lice can fall off heads and cling to fabric while they wait for an unsuspecting victim. Movies theaters, classrooms, and airplanes are my most feared seating right now. The hood over my hair gives me peace of mind that I am protecting myself.

 

I hope this has educated you on lice prevention! If you got itchy reading this, that’s normal. If you think you need a head check, please give us a call or email! We love telling people they’re lice free and sending them back into the sunshine. If you do have lice, we can get you lice free quickly and completely. Our goal is to get and keep our community lice free, and we are more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

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Do Lice Letters and No-Nit Policies Work?

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They are two of the most common questions among frustrated parents; why don’t schools send lice letters home, and why are students with lice allowed in school?  While some school districts in East Tennessee continue to send students home, as well as notify other parents, when lice infestations are discovered within the classroom, many area districts have changed their policies when it comes to head lice.  According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), students diagnosed with live head lice do not need to be sent home early from school, and both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) advocate that “no-nit” policies should be discontinued.  When a child gets head lice, parent frustration is understandable; dealing with head lice can be overwhelming.  But there are numerous reasons why no-nit policies and letters home ultimately make no difference when it comes to preventing head lice infestations.

In order to identify head lice infestations in school, all students would need to be screened on a regular basis, and most, if not all, schools simply do not have the staff or resources to dedicate to frequent screenings.  Routine screenings would be necessary because not all students with lice infestations are symptomatic.  1 in 20 children have head lice at any given time, and of those children only 40% experience the tell-tale itch, which is an allergic reaction to the saliva from head lice.  So while the school may identify some children with lice, it’s likely there are others in school with active infestations who show no obvious symptoms.

Early on in an infestation lice and eggs are often missed, especially when only a visual screening is conducted.  A female louse lays approximately 3-5 eggs per day, and eggs take another 7-10 days before hatching, so an infestation may not be obvious one week, but much easier to spot the following week.

Even if schools send letters home encouraging parents to check their children for head lice, many parents do not know what to look for or how to identify head lice.  Debris, dandruff, and hair product are often mistaken for lice eggs.  Actual viable lice eggs, which are grayish-brown and close to the scalp, are often missed upon visual inspection, and are difficult to see in darker hair.  Parents may miss lice infestations on their own child, and send them back into the school setting untreated.

Lice egg on hair shaft

So what are parents to do?  A parents best defense against head lice is to conduct routine screenings at home, because lice letter or not, there are always children in school with head lice.  Effective screenings require just a few simple tools.  Parents are encouraged to invest in a good lice comb, like the Terminator Comb carried by Knoxville Lice Clinic.  Parents should comb the hair behind the ears, at the nape of the neck, and at the crown. Start at the scalp and comb to the ends of the hair shaft looking for small grayish-brown eggs, or live lice.  For parents who want to be absolutely sure, Knoxville Lice Clinic provides screenings and instruction.  Lice doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and routine at-home screenings are one of a parent’s best defense against the continued spread of head lice. We also suggest wearing hair in buns or braids to give lice fewer chances to cross over, and avoiding selfies or sharing brushes, hats, and coats, as all can spread lice. Our Peppermint Spritz encourages lice to find another head to land on, and it is a good addition to your morning routine.

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