Weeding through all the Fake news on Lice!
If you think the hardest part of treating head lice is picking bugs out of hair, you would be missing the biggest challenge of my job which is literally convincing people of two things: 1. You DO NOT have to freeze, bag, spray, throw away, or burn any household items to rid your family of lice. 2. No Spritzer, spray, shampoo or tea tree oil potion will repel lice.
Ok people, listen up! This is not me, the Dublin Lice Nanny declaring these things. These are scientific facts from leading scientists with pretty impressive letters after their names -think “M.D. and PhD”. There is a leading scientist at Harvard, who is THE guru of lice. He studies them in his lab and has years of experience giving very credible advice on how to treat lice. Dr. Pollack is crystal clear that lice are 99% transmitted through head to head contact. In fact, scientists like him have tried over and over and over to actually transmit lice any other way-through sharing brushes, throwing healthy lice onto classroom floors, etc., and they have been unable to find any compelling reason that house cleaning has ANYTHING to do with successful lice treatment. The reason is simple (and very reassuring)…, Lice cannot live off your head for very long without going into shock. They are super sensitive to temperature changes and are nice and balmy living under all your hair up against your hot head. When they are removed, if they don’t find another head to feed off of STAT, they start dying. This is GREAT news, people. NO CLEANING is necessary. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well let me tell you this, I have treated thousands of people over the years. My daughter who is 8 is with me during most of these treatments. She is playing with kids in our treatment center daily with heads full of live lice. Guess how many times she has had it? ZERO! She simply doesn’t touch heads with them. But, if lice could live in carpet, coats, on chairs, etc, she would have it. Like Chronically.
Ok, let’s talk about the sprays, shampoos and spritzers that you see everywhere claiming to repel lice. Let me make this easy on you-SAVE YOUR MONEY. These have been studied and have shown NO EFFICACY. I get people in my treatment center weekly that are baffled, “How in the world can we have lice? We faithfully use lice repelling shampoo, sprays, etc!” It’s because they simply don’t work. Like, at all. The scientists who studied them found you would literally have to dip your hair in straight tea tree oil for it to have any lasting effect on lice. The scent is simply to quick to evaporate. Other less scrupulous treatment centers would have you believe otherwise, since they can literally double their profit margins by putting something akin to lemonade in a bottle, slapping a label on it, and selling it to you for $$$ to spray all over your house. I could do this too, but I don’t. It’s bad Karma.
So to recap- The chances of you obtaining lice from theater seats, carpet, school buses, brushes, hats, etc. are about as likely as you being struck by lighting AND skip the repellent sprays-they don’t work.
As always, feel free to call our FREE Lice Advice Hotline at 614 526 9194. ents),
