Head Lice Home Remedies and Tips

Head lice are nasty little bugs - horribly contagious, hard to get rid of, and expensive to treat. Sometimes a head lice outbreak takes five or more treatments per person in your household. Here are some home remedies and tips for dealing with head lice.

Use Mayonnaise to Smother Head Lice

You don't need chemicals to kill head lice. Lice can't breathe and will suffocate when a heavy substance is applied to the hair - like mayonnaise.

Apply mayonnaise to dry hair and coat until every strand of hair is wet. Be liberal and make sure your hair is completely saturated with mayonnaise. Then wrap your hair with a shower cap, shopping bag, or something similar to make it as air tight as you can.

Leave the mayonnaise on your hair for two to three hours. Make sure all those darn head lice are dead. Divide your hair into sections and use a lice comb or a flea comb to carefully comb through each part. Wipe the comb on a paper towel each time you take a stroke - you don't want to redeposit the lice into your hair! Then rinse out the mayonnaise and shampoo normally.

Use Vinegar to Get Rid of Nits and Eggs

Nits and eggs are basically the same thing, except nit refers to an egg that's already been hatched. Adult lice can lay up several eggs per day. Those eggs adhere themselves to the hair shaft with a glue-like substance, making them extremely difficult to comb out.

Once you get rid of all the live head lice, you need to do the same with eggs, or you'll have to start from scratch again. Vinegar naturally loosens the glue that holds the head lice egg to the hair shaft, making them so much easier to comb out.

Much like the mayonnaise, completely soak your hair with vinegar, wrap with a plastic shopping bag or shower cap, and let the vinegar set for about three hours.

Use a lice or flea comb and once again, carefully comb out each section of your hair. Rinse the comb after every swipe through your hair, and keep combing until you no longer see any eggs or nits on the comb. Then rinse out the vinegar and shampoo normally.

Tips to Prevent Head Lice Re-infestation

Head lice do not like the smell of tea tree oil, zinc, or coconut. So to prevent re-infestation of head lice, switch to a shampoo like Denorex, use Suave's coconut conditioner, and consider taking a zinc supplement.

Lysol can kill head lice on bedding, furniture and car seats just as well (if not better than) as the special lice killing sprays. Just make sure you color test the Lysol spray before using it on fabrics.

Everyone knows to wash all the bedding in hot water, throw pillows in the dryer, bag up stuffed animals for two weeks, and vacuum mattresses and carpets thoroughly, but did you know head lice eggs can live under the fingernails? Kids who have head lice are constantly scratching and then redepositing those scratched-off eggs onto everything they touch. Keep those fingernails trimmed!

Why Choose Head Lice Home Remedies?

With so many lice killing products on the market, why would one choose to go with a home remedy? My personal reasons were cost and efficiency.

RID Lice Killing Shampoo is $19.99 for an 8-ounce bottle, which may treat one person one time. Nix Complete Lice Treatment System is also $19.99 for one person. LiceMD is a bit cheaper at $13.99, but if you have four people in your household who all need to be treated, that's still almost $56 each time. If it takes five treatments to get rid of all the head lice, that's $280 you're going to spend. Plus the store brands are just not that effective.

Sources:

"Head Lice Facts", HeadLiceDetails.com

"Home Remedies for Lice", MyHomeRemedies.com