One of mankind's oldest pests
Nothing gets your motor running at the top of the morning like an 8 a.m. call from a friend saying, “I think your daughter has head lice.”
That would be our friend Becky who had hosted daughter, 9, for a sleepover. She noticed head scratching and, since she had gone through an “all-consuming” infestation with her own daughter a year ago–resulting in her publishing a couple of articles on the subject in parenting magazines–she was immediately suspicious.
When I arrived to fetch daughter, Becky handed me a plastic bag with a hair strand she suspected had a “nit,” or louse egg sack, attached. She urged me to report immediately to the pediatrician. “Don’t even bother to make an appointment.” She declined to describe her own treatment method. It sounded urgent.
Head lice are right up there with venereal disease on the social stigma scale. But we quickly learned that some of our best friends have had their own bouts with lice. Even the pediatrician’s kids had done battle with these pesky creatures. Turns out lice are one of man’s oldest parasites. So of course there is now a website devoted to them, courtesy of the National Pediculosis Association.
Head lice are extremely tiny, about the size of a comma. Absent the head scratching, you wouldn’t know they are there. But after an exam of daughter’s scalp revealed “too many lice to count,” the pediatrician counseled us to take no prisoners. She recommended what she called “the A-bomb” treatment, meaning a potent insecticide called malathion. You may remember a devastating fruit fly epidemic in Californinia in the ’80s. Malathion is what they used on the fruit flies.
So if malathion is a preferred method of getting rid of head lice, and head lice are such a common problem, why is it so hard to find a pharmacy that carries it? The search involved a good part of my afternoon. Meanwhile, however, mom was busy on the internet looking for an alternate treatment. “Do I really want that stuff on my kid’s head?” was her reasoning.
And that’s how we arrived at Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser.
Cetaphil is a non-soapy cleanser for people with sensitive skin. A California dermatologist named Dale Pearlman has come up with something he calls the “Nuvo treatment” for head lice that calls for saturating the scalp and hair with Cetaphil to suffocate the lice rather than poison them.
I don’t need to explain every step because Pearlman does it here. E-how also gives instructions. In short, after a very liberal application of Cetaphil, you comb out the lice and nits using a very fine comb. We used a special, steel-toothed de-lousing comb that our pediatrician gave us. Dry the hair with a hair dryer and do not rinse for at least eight hours. Repeat the process every seven days until there are no more lice.
In the meantime, we’ve washed all the bed linens and run the stuffed toys through the dryer. Daughter reports less head itching. Hopefully, and thanks to our alert friend Becky, we’ve caught the infestation before it could become all-consuming.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
hmmmm makes my head itch just thinking about lice. Had them… more than once. We lived overseas – no cool head lice toxic shampoo. So we used… oil – covered our heads with cooking oils and pulled on bags over them to heat the oil up. Also, suffocates the lice. Takes dish soap to cut the grease and wash it out – but it worked. We have family photo of my parents with their oily heads and bags on head laughing – but it worked!! hopefully the Cetaphyl works.
W, vegetable oil and even mayonnaise are traditional treatments for head lice. But then gettind rid of the oil or mayo becomes a second project. The Cetaphil is definitely less of a hassle.
4 children meant nightmare quantities of lice if we didn’t concentrate, as they infected each other. Over the years, we tried everything. Malathion definitely at the bottom of my list. Up at the top? LOADS of conditioner, a nit comb, and lots of time. That’s what the Romans did too, there are nit combs on display wherever there are Roman baths. And it gives time for chatting, which is always a bonus. When you’re done, a little lavendar essential oil keeps them at bay for a while
Good luck!
Joanna
I second the conditioner treatment advice. It’s what the doctors in Australia recommend and what my granddaughter has had. Bound to be a lot cheaper than some specialised thing which is probably just conditioner with a fancy name anyway.