Home Remedies for Head Lice and Nits | What Exactly are Lice? | Different Types of Body Parasites | What is the Main Cause of Head Lice? | Tips to Avoid Lice Spreading | Topics Related to Head Lice Home Remedies
What Exactly are Lice?
Lice is also known as Phthiraptera (Scientific Binomial Name), Head Lice / Louse (Common English), (Unani), Joon Aur Leekh / Joon Ka Anda (Hindi / Urdu), Penkal / Pen / Penkal / Pen ponravarrin muttai (Tamil), Uva Leekha (Marathi), (Sanskrit), Ukuna / Ttakana / Uddansa (Bengali), Penu (Telugu), Paropajivigalu (Kannada), Pen (Malayalam), Shizi (Mandarin / Traditional Chinese / Simplified Chinese), Piojos (Spanish), Piolhos (Portuguese), Vosh (Russian), Pseires (Greek), Qamal (Arabic), Shirami (Japanese), (Latin), Luizen (Dutch), Pidocchi (Italian), Voshi (Ukrainian), Lapetada (Punjabi), Lause (German), Kutu (Javanese), Kutu (Malay / Indonesian), Chay (Vietnamese), Iga (Korean), Les Poux (French), (Turkish), Ju (Gujarati), Jumra (Nepali). Lice is a small, wingless, parasitic insect that lives on the skin of mammals and birds. They are burrowing into skin and causing itching. Scabies can live in the seams of clothing, migrating to the body for their twice daily feedings.
Different Types of Body Parasites
Lice, crabs, and scabies are 3 parasites can make those infected with them very uncomfortable. Head lice are prolific, and females lay between 50 and 300 nits in their life cycle. Nine days later, the eggs hatch. Nits are tiny yellow ovals that attach themselves firmly to the hair shaft and survive by biting and sucking blood. They can live up to two days without a host. Pubic lice are known as crabs and are generally transmitted by sexual contact. They are hard to see but look like tiny black or rust colored spots clinging to the base of pubic hair. Using a magnifying glass can help them be more visible. Treat pubic lice in the same manner as head lice. Scabies also known as body lice. Lice infest the body, especially in areas of the wrists, finger webs, hands, elbows, underarms, waist, feet, scrotum, and nipples.
What is the Main Cause of Head Lice?
Something is definitely moving in your hair, and the itching is driving you buggy. And that’s precisely the problem. Your tresses are now a cozy domicile for the common head louse, otherwise known as Pediculus humanus capitis. Just one sixteenth of an inch long, these wingless insects live close to the scalp, laying their eggs (nits) and feeding on your blood. When lice appear in school age children, word usually gets around quickly. And parents are warned to be on the lookout. Lice spread via contact with contaminated hair, hairbrushes, combs, clothing, or bedding. Parasites are more likely to invade those in poor health. So a lifelong practice of good hygiene and sound nutrition is wise. Strengthen your energy shield! If you do get infected, here’s how to stop the itch.
Best Natural Home Remedies for Head Lice and Nits
Once lice are in the hair, even a burr cut won’t help. You need to get rid of the louse eggs that are attached to the hair shafts about one-quarter of an inch from the scalp. Start by using a delousing shampoo and choose one that contains permethrin, not lindane. Lindane is a chemical cousin of the pesticide DDT and has been linked to nervous system problems (including convulsions) and brain cancer. Once you’ve found a killer shampoo, the remaining challenge is to use it effectively and become very nit picky about preventing contamination. Otherwise, your whole household could get lousy.
- Home Made Shampoo for Lice: To make a natural lice shampoo out of herbs, add 5 drops each of essential oils of tea tree, rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus to a base of 5 teaspoons (28 ml) of pure olive oil. Add a small amount of regular shampoo to the mixture and put this all over the hair to the ends. Leave on an hour under a shower cap to prevent drips. Rinse and shampoo the hair.
- Easy Home Remedy: Saturate the hair and scalp with mayonnaise, then put on a shower cap. The next morning, lice should be dead. Unfortunately, you can’t smother the louse eggs, you will still have to remove them by hand.
- Herb That Works: Blend 12 cloves of garlic in 1 pint (475 ml) of water and work the solution into the hair and scalp. Cover the head with a plastic shower cap, leave on one hour, and then wash your hair. Repeat treatments again in 10 days. After shampooing, rinse the hair and scalp with vinegar. This loosens the glue that holds the nits onto the hair shafts. Rinse with hot water, but not so hot that it burns.
- Delousing Shampoo: Use a delousing shampoo, and leave it in your hair for ten minutes. That’s a long time to spend in the shower, so you may prefer to do your shampooing in the bathtub, where you can read or listen to music while the shampoo does its job. After you rinse out the shampoo, rinse it again using 50% water and 50% white kitchen vinegar. The vinegar helps dissolve the bodies of dead nits. Rub it in vigorously, then rinse your hair a few times to dispel the odor.
- Get Rid of Lice and Scabies: Aniseed oil can be the base for an ointment to help control lice. The oil is also useful direct application in the control of lice. The oil of star anise is best antiseptic, but it is also reportedly useful against scabies, lice and bedbugs. Just dab it on the affected areas.
- Petroleum jelly can have a stifling influence on roaming lice. Apply a thick layer of petroleum jelly to the scalp, then cover with a shower cap. Leave it on overnight. In the morning, use baby oil or mineral oil to remove the petroleum jelly and the lice along with it. Repeat several nights in a row.
- Nits Control In Kids: Use undiluted tea tree oil on a comb or add to shampoos to treat head lice and nits in children. Add 10 drops of tea tree oil to 1 tablespoon of shampoo.
- Mix a 1/2 cup vinegar with a 1/2 cup olive oil. About an hour before you take your bath or shower, apply this mixture to your hair, working it in close to the scalp. Put a shower cap over your hair. After an hour, remove the cap and take your shower, washing your hair with regular shampoo.
- Body Lice and Scabies: Neem oil is useful to treat head lice. Neem leaves and seed oil contain compounds that appear to be active against many insect pests. For lice on whole body try Neem and turmeric paste. Turmeric has a long history in Asian folklore as a vermin killer, and it’s especially good at fighting scabies, which are parasitic mites. To prepare this paste, pulverize together 4 parts fresh neem leaves and 1 part turmeric root. Rub this paste all over body and allow it to dry. Repeat until no longer felt or see lice. It may take 3 to 15 days for complete cure. Be careful while using turmeric as it can stain cloths and no detergent can wash it off.
- Kill Lice and Soothe Itching: Essential oils can kill lice and help soothe the itching. There are many different recipes. One effective combination is 20 drops tea tree oil, 10 drops rosemary oil, and 15 drops each of lemon (or thyme) and lavender oil mixed into 4 tablespoons vegetable oil. Rub the mixture into your dry hair, cover your head with a plastic shower cap, then wrap that with a towel. After an hour, unwrap your head, shampoo well, and rinse.
- Herbal Treatment with Sweetflag: Sweetflag (Acorus calamus) is the American species of this plant, which grows in temperate regions around the world, has proven lice killing properties. Pound this aromatic root is into a powder. Either make a poultice or rub directly onto the affected areas.
- Old Folk Medication: Before effective louse killing shampoos came on the market, some said that the best way to kill lice was to rinse the hair with paint thinner or kerosene. These methods were probably effective at killing lice when nothing else was available, but there are far safer options today.
Tips to Avoid Lice Spreading
Other that head lice home remedies, here are few tips to avoid lice spreading.
- When someone in the family has lice, keep all combs and brushes separate. Make sure no one comes into contact with hats, scarves, hair ribbons, etc., that is worn by the affected person.
- After treating the lice, wash clothing, bedding and other washables that have been used by the affected person in hot, sudsy water. Seal non washable items in plastic bags for a week or three days in the refrigerator.
- After a coat has been worn by someone who has lice, put it in the dryer to make certain all lice and eggs are killed.