If it's a new experience to you, identifying head lice can be frustrating especially if you don't have a clue what you're looking for! We hear all these scary stories about lice flying around, jumping about and crawling all over you.
But is any of this true? The key to treating any situation like this is to understand what it is you are dealing with.
This article is about sorting the facts from the fiction and to help you quickly and easily remedy your lice problems.
What does a lice look like and where do we find them? The simplest way to describe a louse is that it looks like a sesame seed.
It's brownish coloured and has six legs used for crawling that have tiny hooks on the end to help them cling to your hair.
They are usually found scuttling around on the scalp, but are often found on the hair itself.
The eggs that the female lays are commonly referred to as "nits" and she can lay as many as 60 in a single month! After about 7 days they hatch into the baby insects known as nymphs.
The nits are usually found stuck to the hair shaft approximately 3cm from the root of the hair.
They firmly cement themselves to the hair and they can be quite difficult to remove.
They are usually whitish and are about the size of a pin head.
How do we get them and how we can avoid it? Lice are not a flying insect and neither do they jump.
They are caught by having direct contact with an already infested person.
Head to head contact is the most likely cause of this.
Other ways of catching them are by sharing personal items such as hairbrushes, hats, scarves and personal stereo headphones.
To avoid passing head lice on to other people you should steer clear of sharing any items that could come into contact with your head or hair.
Obvious Signs If you notice one of your children unusually scratching their head more often than they would normally do, the chances are that lice are present.
The itching is not caused by the lice crawling around, but by the actual bites that create an allergic reaction on your scalp.
The obvious urge to itch is a good early indicator that it is indeed lice causing the problem and can help you deal with it swiftly.
Not all victims of these little parasites immediately exhibit these itchy symptoms and can end up with a full infestation within a just a few weeks without even knowing about it until it's too late.
Treatments and Control Treating the problem if detected early enough can be a reasonably easy task.
There are lots of shampoos and dedicated lice products available to remove these unwelcome little creepy crawlies.
The basic method would be to rinse the hair with the shampoo or solution.
Leave it in for a certain amount of time and then rinse it through with clean water.
These type of treatment work to a certain degree but all of them need to be followed by a thorough combing through the head and hair with a proper lice comb and repeated over a period of a few weeks.
To avoid any further infestations any bedding that the infected person has had contact with should be washed in a machine on the hottest available programme.
It's the actual heat that will kill the lice and not the process of soap and water.
Any items that can not be treated this way should be placed in a dryer on a high temperature to get the same results.
The process of head lice elimination is not an easy road to travel and it can take a little trial and error.
If you begin treatment having been armed with the right information you will have a far better chance of gaining positive results.
One final thought concerning over the counter and prescription treatments that you may be considering using.
Through years of over use, these products that contain pesticides and chemicals have become less effective as the lice have built up a resistance to many of them.
Safer natural home remedies have grown to be an excellent substitute and are definitely worth checking out before you delve into chemically based products which may be hiding potential future health risks to your children!