If you find a few lice or maybe a dozen running rampant in your child’s hair, don’t panic. Dealing with head lice is, understandably, an unpleasant situation. But there are a number of products available to help banish lice as easily as possible.
Before we look at treatment steps, it’s important to understand the life cycle of head lice, which can last for up to 35 days. Starting off as an egg (nit) and then hatching into a nymph, or a young louse, nymphs then mature into adult lice1. And as long as there’s a source of food, the adult louse will continue feed – usually every three to six hours – or it will dehydrate and die2.
The adult louse can live on a human scalp for about five weeks. During that lifetime, the female can lay up to 120 eggs. Although that might seem distressing, head lice are actually harmless – and yet they must be treated.
When treating head lice, one treatment is usually not enough as many of the lice may still be in their eggs when the first treatment is carried out. Treatment should be repeated a second and third time to help ensure all head lice are targeted. The key to treatment of a head lice infestation is to break their life cycle!