Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Advice When Dealing with Head Lice
When a child comes home with head lice, most parents are, sadly, unprepared and go into panic mode. They rush to the drug store or doctor’s office (or Internet) and do whatever they are told because they don’t know any better. For many, many parents, the result is weeks or months of frustration.
Why?
Well, for a number of reasons, the advice that parents are given about how to treat head lice is misguided at best, and harmful at worst. Here are some examples of what you shouldn’t do.
- Use home remedies. The Internet is crowded with people that will tell you to use mayonnaise, petroleum jelly, tea tree oil—even kerosene—on your child’s head overnight to suffocate lice. There are two problems with these ideas. First, they are medically unsound. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Pediatricians, and most other medical professionals advise against these practices. Secondly, they can be dangerous. Tea tree oil, for example, can be toxic, especially if it gets into a child’s mouth, according to the Mayo Clinic. Also, there have been reports of children suffocating on plastic used to wrap their hair while sleeping.
- Use over-the-counter pesticide products. The most popular drugstore lice products are increasingly ineffective, according to multiple scientific studies. After decades of overuse, head lice in the United States and many other countries have developed a genetic mutation that makes them resistant to the active ingredients in these products—pyrethroids (which is in fact an insecticide). Dubbed “super lice,” most lice don’t respond to over-the-counter treatments anymore. Also, these products—insecticides—have recently been linked to behavioral problems in children.
- Hire or become a nitpicker. Manual removal of lice and eggs is a safe method of lice removal. But treatment failures are common using this method. Live lice are relatively easy to see and remove. On the other hand, eggs, or nits, are very difficult to see and remove. If you don’t remove every egg, those left behind will hatch and you’ll have a fresh case of head lice. Nitpicking is subject to human error. It is also tedious, time-consuming, and often must be done regularly for a few weeks to be effective.
A New Approach
Fortunately for parents, there is a medical device that that makes all of these options unnecessary. It’s called the AirAllé device, and it is an FDA-cleared Class I medical device that is clinically proven to kill live lice and more than 99 percent of eggs in a single, 60-90-minute treatment. The AirAllé device uses carefully controlled warm air to dehydrate lice and eggs—there are no chemicals involved, and there is no nitpicking required.
The AirAllé medical device is available exclusively at Lice Clinics of America urgent care clinics. Clinics are staffed by trained certified technicians, and the treatment is guaranteed to be effective. With more than 150 clinics in the United States and more than 100 in 20 other countries around the world, Lice Clinics of America is the world’s largest and fastest-growing network of professional lice treatment centers in the world.
This is great news for parents that so often feel spun around by the advice they are given when dealing with head lice. The sense of urgency is understandable—who wants bugs on their child’s head? But the advice parents are given or that they find online often results in added frustration and futility. The AirAllé device is a medical solution to a medical problem. To learn more or find a clinic, visit www.liceclinicsofamerica.com.
