Common Misconceptions About The Treatment of Lice
There are several misconceptions when it comes to the treatment of lice and lice in general. As soon as you realize that you have lice in your home, you need to take the necessary precautions and treat the problem correctly. If you don’t follow the proper procedures, you will be in for a long battle.
There are many myths that exist about the nature of head lice and how people are affected by them. No, they don’t transmit communicable diseases, and they can’t jump or fly like many people think. It’s kind of hard to fly when you don’t have wings, but they do crawl. That being said… They are still easily transmitted from one person to another. Any sort of direct contact with an infected person can lead to them being transmitted to another individual. You don’t even have to have direct contact with the infected person. All you have to do is come in contact with their combs, bedding, clothes, towels and so on. Head lice must have a host for survival since they need the warmth and they feed on the blood that they draw from the scalp. This means they typically only live for about 24 hours without a host, but with a host they can live up to 30 days. Another common misconception is that people with short hair are nearly immune and they don’t discriminate between age, race, sex or personal hygiene. The good news is they live solely on humans, so you don’t have to worry about catching them from Fido.
One thing you must be aware of when treating head lice is what has the infected person come in contact with. As soon as the infected person’s hair is treated, you need to tackle everything that the person has come in contact with. Anything that can be washed needs to be washed using hot water. Lice don’t care for that very much because temperatures above 125 degrees are lethal to them. You can accomplish the same result by putting items in the dryer for 20 minutes that you don’t want to get wet. You may not want to put your curling iron in the dryer, so what you can do with it is put in an air tight bag for two weeks. I know that’s a long time without your curling iron, but I never said this battle was going to be easy. Combs and brushes can be treated by heating them in a pot of water on the stove at 125 degrees for 10 minutes or by soaking them in a phenol solution such as Lysol for an hour. You should also thoroughly vacuum the infected person’s mattress, car interior, carpet and upholstery. It’s also recommended that the infected home is fumigated.
As long as you treat lice the proper way, you should have no problem getting rid of them and going on with your normal daily activities.
