As you welcome in the New Year, are you welcoming unwanted head lice? As professionals in the Lice industry, we understand the struggle your family has with failing to remove head lice. As your children go back to school and surround themselves with friends, their chances of becoming subject to a head lice outbreak increase. At Lice Clinics of America, College Station, we treat hundreds of families throughout the year. Head lice infest families like a domino effect. Your child’s friend is infested with lice and then BAM; your child contracts head lice along with all the other kids in their class. Head lice are simply a contagion; getting head lice has nothing to do with cleanliness or hygiene. Head lice are acquired by contact with someone who has them or contact with something they used such as a comb, a brush, a hat or bedding they have slept on.

Nitpicking is a Must

Many children will get head lice several times throughout the year and mothers tirelessly battle to fight the head lice and their eggs. Some families will experience head lice for the first time. Whether it’s your first time or your tenth time, treating head lice is difficult. Lice eggs, called nits, are the biggest culprit. Nits are small, yellow or tan in color and attach to the hair follicles on the head. Nits are trickier than lice because they cannot be removed by brushing or shaking the head — they must be killed and removed. They latch to the hair, very close to the scalp and will not budge unless you nitpick.

Stay Away From Mayonaise

One of the first steps to lice removal is education. As a consumer, it’s important to know which head lice treatments work. There are several head lice treatment myths floating around the web. If the thought of putting mayonnaise in your child’s hair has crossed your mind, give us a call. You might read about killing lice with mayo on the internet, however mayonnaise is unnecessarily messy and has not been medically proven as a cure for head lice. If mayonnaise does kill lice, it certainly doesn’t kill their nits. If you use mayonnaise and it kills the lice, the eggs will hatch a few days later, bringing you back to square one. The nits must be combed out one by one with a lice comb.

Many parents are misled by the internet and apply mayonnaise to their child’s head with the hope that if they wrap the head with plastic and leave the mayo on overnight, the lice will be gone by morning. If you haven’t been convinced that mayonnaise doesn’t work, there have actually been reports of children suffocating from this method or receiving food poisoning from the mayonnaise. In essence, many home remedies are messy, dangerous and not guaranteed to work.

How Do We Do it?

Here’s another tricky fact about head lice removal: head lice have recently evolved into super lice and are now resistant to the pesticides used in many head lice treatments and shampoos.

So, how do we get rid of head lice? By using a newly-developed, FDA-cleared device called AirAllé that dehydrates and kills lice and their nits. The AirAllé uses controlled, heated air and is a comfortable process for children. After approximately 30 minutes of the AireAlle treatment, follow up with a topical treatment and combing, all within 90 minutes.

Repetitively treating head lice with no success might just bring you to tears. The only thing worse than going through the hassle of head lice is going through it twice.

At Lice Clinics of America, College Station, we focus on a guaranteed, one and done service that will keep your children lice-free and itch-free. If your family would like to make a New Year resolution to be lice-free, our head lice clinic will ensure your success. Best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.