An Auntie’s Guide to Breaking the Head Lice Life Cycle

Well it’s that time of year again, where the nieces and nephews start out bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to head off back to school. Unfortunately, along with the excitement, comes the possibility of a head lice infestation.

Here is a favourite Auntie’s guide to breaking the head lice life cycle, so should the wee nasties embark on a full scale war at your child’s school, you have your own battle plan drawn up.

First and foremost, in order to prevent head lice, you must first understand the habits and the life cycle of the wee nasties.

Studies have shown that head lice are almost certain to only be spread through head to head contact alone. Start your prevention mission by having a quiet word to your wee darlings before they head out the door. Let them know it’s not ok to share Susie’s scrunchie, or to try on Jim’s new hat.

Try keeping girl’s hair up and out of the way so head lice can’t swing across on a stray hair with those powerful front legs, and try to mix a little tea tree oil in with some gel for the boys. This makes it hard for the wee nasties to move around and lay their eggs.

Another false impression is head lice can be caught from pets or animals. Head lice are a human parasite and very rarely leave the head, as this spells almost certain death for them. As long as your children know to try to avoid head to head contact, this is a good start.

Preparation is key, and prevention is by far the best cure. Hopefully, you can avoid them completely this year.

Pesticide preparations are out of the question in our home, as should they be in yours. If you are unfortunate enough to pick up an infestation , please, don’t use chemicals on your children. The head lice are more or less resistant to 80% of the pesticide based preparations we are advised to use on the highly permeable scalps of our precious children anyway.

Our children on the other hand, are not.

The best way to get rid of them, is to find a natural head lice cure, and break the head lice life cycle.

The first 6-8 days of a head louse’s life is spent as an egg. The mother will attach it close to the scalp where it is warmest, with very, very strong glue.

For the first 7-10 days of its life, the immature lice (also known as nymphs), shed their skin three times. They cannot lay any eggs in this time.

The adult head louse lives for around 30 days, with the female louse laying around 88 eggs in this time.

So, in order to break the head lice life cycle, it is important to time it just right, so the live lice don’t have a chance to lay more eggs.

1). Go ahead and use your natural remedy on your child and kill all the live lice on the head. If the first nit hatches immediately after you have killed all the lice, you have seven days until that head louse can start to lay eggs.

2). So, one week later treat again. This will kill all the nymphs that have hatched, before they are able to lay more eggs.

3). One week later, just to make sure no stray lice have laid any eggs and they have hatched, treat one more time, just to be sure. By now the head lice life cycle is completely broken and you should have no more problems with them.

So as you can see, to break the head lice life cycle without killing the eggs (as most products don’t), you need to treat once a week for three weeks. I feel that chemical products are simply out of the question for this method, yet to kill all the lice and get rid of them completely, this is the only way you can do it.

Be sure to find yourself a natural head lice cure, and say goodbye to the nasties forever.