Everett schools let kids with head lice stay………..

[bsmomma]

This is horrible and idiotic! This is going to start so many other issues….. Maybe they need to see the ingredients in the RID products and be told that the stuff most likely won’t work because the Lice have built up a strong immunity to the pesticides that these kids are going to be unnecessarily exposed to! I’m thinking staying home for a day or 2 with take home work is a much better solution! What about the kids family’s who can’t afford to buy all the products or a more expensive safer program?! Are they going to pay for it? These kids are going to pass it along to there parents, who will take it to work with them, etc….. Time to bust out the Fairy Tales Rosemary Repel and start using it religiously!

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[GAnative]

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!

I battled head lice for 6 weeks when I my daughter was 3 years old and in daycare. I had to stay home from work every other day because even though I had sprayed, washed and disinfected everyone and everything in my house as soon as I sent her back to daycare she came home with them again because they weren’t doing anything about it.

Everyday night she would fall asleep on the bathroom floor crying as I was picking nits from her hair.

After 6 weeks of trying to get the daycare center, the health dept, the board of education (they taught Kindergarten there) to do something about it I had enough and switched daycares and went years without another incident.

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[GAnative]

Now my head is itching just thinking about this…YUCK!

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[bsmomma]

My head’s itchy too! But trust me, it’s NOT lice, I had my husband check! hahaha! My daughter got it when she was 2! I think it traumatized me more than my daughter. I don’t deal well with any little crawly things. Till this day if I see anything in her hair, I immediately grab her head and investigate! Drivers her crazy! BUT I don’t want to go through that again…….EVER!

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[Dr.Moxie]

Hey, just a quick heads up – the American Academy of Pediatrics just released new clinical guidelines when it comes to lice (http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;126/2/392), and one of the strong recommendations it makes is that “No healthy child should be excluded from or allowed to miss school time because of head lice. No-nit policies for return to school should be abandoned.”

The guidelines also mention that “International guidelines established in 2007 for the effective control of head lice infestations stated that no-nit policies are unjust and should be discontinued, because they are based on misinformation rather than objective science.”

I mainly bring this up because I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on head lice recently for a project I’m working on – preparing detailed handouts with information about OTC and alternative head lice treatments for pharmacists and parents. The hard truth right now is that the best treatment for lice is a combination of manual nit removal and 1% permethrin (Nix) or a product containing pyrethrins (RID). Alternative treatments or home remedies like tea tree oil, mayonnaise or vaseline don’t have any data supporting their efficacy and can cause scalp irritation.

If you want more reading information, here are a couple of good websites:

http://identify.us.com/head-lice/

http://www.powerpak.com/index.asp?show=lesson&page=courses/106888/lesson.htm&lsn_id=106888

http://dritchy.com/parents

The NPA (National Pediculosis Association, http://www.headlice.org) has a pretty zealous “no-nit” policy and is very anti-pesticide use. I know that their hearts are in the right place and I encourage parents to use as few pesticidal products as possible (i.e. ONLY treat a child with a confirmed case of lice – one where adult, live lice are actually seen), but I don’t think that it’s necessary to bash all pesticide products and to stigmatize children (and their parents) who contract head lice by keeping them home. In addition, relying solely on the mechanical removal of head lice is not 100% effective to remove all nits and can often increase the duration of an infestation and increase the risk that lice are spread to other kids or their families.

Just my $0.02! I know that lice can be a pretty emotional topic, but I wanted to throw in some clinical recommendations.

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[bsmomma]

When some Lice moved in to my 2 year old (at the time)daughters hair I used Rid and possibly NIX?? We had to do 3 rounds of it within 2 weeks! They were not leaving without a fight. Before the 3rd try, I did ALOT of research. I don’t work for them or am I affiliated in any way, but I came across a company called “Fairy Tales” They have a lice/nit removal system, “Lice Good-Bye”. with an amazing “Terminator” comb! There’s some yeast (I think) that disolves the “glue” from the nits making is soooooooo easy to remove them! Then you use there “Rosemary Repel” line to prevent future residents. I stand by it 100%. I introduced it to a family member who had 6 kids in school and it was a constant battle in there house. It’s not anymore. The Fairy Tales website has a lot of good info on there as well. I know RID and NIX will work for some but when I found out there was Pesticides in there I didn’t want to expose my 2yro to anymore if it.

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[Dr.Moxie]

Part of the new AAP recommendations include that products like RID and Nix should be used 3 times (instead of twice as previously suggested) – every 9 days in order to get the lice at all stages of their life cycle. So 3 rounds would be normal.

The Fairy Tales products you recommended are interesting – the comb looks like it would do a good job, and botanical repellants are the only ones that seem to show any promise at this time (although overall it’s also recommended not to use any treatment prophylactically or as a repellant).

As to whether the Lice Good-Bye dissolved the glue from the nits, probably not – lice are smart and have engineered their glue to closely resemble that of the hair shaft itself, so anything that would dissolve the glue would dissolve hair, too. Instead, it’s likely that the product smoothed the hair shaft and made it easier for you to comb the nit out yourself. (See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15965432 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20377732 for more info).

Again, I think it’s great that you found a product that worked for you, and I don’t discount it at all. It’s just also true that there may be more effective treatments out there (however they do carry additional risks). I know that I personally refuse to recommend most of the pesticide products to parents, even though they are considered safe by most people.

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[Garden_nymph]

Welcome Dr. Moxie. When lice was plaguing my child’s school a few years ago, LiceX was a brand that was highly recommended.

http://discovertotalhealth.com/licerx/index.htm

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