WHAT ARE HEAD LICE?
Lice are tiny, parasitic insects that feed off the blood just under your scalp. Anyone can become infested with them, but it’s typically children who do. About 6 to 12 million children a year in the United States become infested with head lice, but there’s really no reliable data about the numbers of people in general with this problem.
WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?
Lice come in the growth stages of nit, nymph and louse. Nits are their eggs. As soon as they hatch, they are referred to as nymphs. After 9 to 12 days, a nymph will become a fully grown louse. Their nits are hard to spot because they’re very tiny dots that can be yellow, brown or tan in color but are always attached to the base of hair follicles. In both the nymph and louse growth stages, they are tan or grayish white in color. They have six legs that are excellent for grasping human hair follicles, and head lice are not found on or spread by your pets or other animals.
HOW TO PREVENT A HEAD LICE INFESTATION
A louse does not have wings, so the only way it can get from one child’s head to your child’s head is to crawl. The most common way lice are spread is through direct head-to-head contact with an infested child. Another way to catch lice is through the sharing of infested hats, helmets, scarves or other clothing or headgear.
The first thing to tell your children is not to press their head together with any friend’s or playmate’s head. This should be a general rule because they won’t necessarily know if another child is infested or not. Also, tell them not to share any headgear, and make sure you provide them with their own helmet or hat for any after-school sports they may play.
EFFECTIVE LICE TREATMENT IF PREVENTION FAILS
If you believe any of your loved ones have head lice, you should seek out professional lice removal immediately. Such a head lice removal process should kill them as nits and in the nymph and louse stages of their development.
As a parent, you should know about our professional head lice removal service at Lice Lifters. Our certified lice removal technicians will confirm their presence with a head check and then do a comb-out utilizing a specialized comb for this procedure. We then apply a safe, non-toxic, all-natural killing agent that’s 99.9 percent effective at killing lice. Our lice treatment will also get your loved ones lice free in a single visit, so they’ll be back to enjoying fall sports with their friends and family and eagerly awaiting the coming of the holiday season without a red, itchy, irritated scalp.
