We occasionaly get questions about how to treat head lice. Last time we wrote on this subject we talked about shampoos and conditioners that are hard on lice but don’t hurt your hair. But the lastest lice killing technology doesn’t involve hair care products at all – it uses a big blow dryer that looks like a vacuum cleaner. At least that’s what it looks like to us.
The Lousebuster was invented by Dale Clayton after he observed that birds in Salt Lake City had fewer lice than birds in England. He theorized that the drier air in Salt Lake killed the lice and so he created a device that blows dry air over lice and their nits, sucking the life out of them.
In one study conducted on infested children in the Salt Lake area, the device killed 80 percent of hatched lice and a whopping 98 percent of the eggs. Dale’s device could save parents a lot of time and hassle because kids can be treated right at school!
Way to go Dale, the Beauty Brains applaud your scientific powers of observation!
Thanks to Steve over at Strangenewproducts.com for tipping us off to this CNN Health story.
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The 3 times that I had head lice as a child, using the specific medication got rid of them without any special methods. After the 3rd time, someone told my mother that if I rinsed my hair with apple cider vinegar once a week, lice wouldn’t want to infest my head, and it worked. There were several more head lice infestations in my school, where all the kids got them, and they didn’t ever get near my head again. I only stopped doing the weekly apple cider vinegar rinse when I got to high school.
You wash your hair normally, shampoo, condition. Then you douse your whole head with apple cider vinegar, wait 1 minute, and then rinse it off with water.
Jan, thanks for the information. But just remember, with any ailment there are 3 things that can happen if you do nothing.
1. It gets worse.
2. It stays the same.
3. It gets better.
The same 3 things can happen if you try a treatment like apple cider vinegar wash. Proving that the vinegar wash had any benefit is the stuff of science experiments. And I’m aware of no scientific experiment that would show this has any benefit.
But I’ll keep looking. thanks
Left Brain, the theory is not the apple cider vinegar gets rid of head lice – I used conventional products for that. The theory is that it leaves a residual smell on your scalp that discourages head lice from picking your scalp to live in. And it might have been coincidence, but in all other infestations where every single one of my classmates had head lice, I never got them again.
Thanks for the clarification Jan. I remain skeptical that the apple cider vinegar helps much but it certainly won’t hurt and if it worked for you, perhaps it will work for someone else.
The best way to avoid lice infestation however, is to avoid all head-to-head contact with another human. The primary way that lice spreads is when your head touches someone’s head who is infested. Lice cannot live for very long if they are not on someone’s hair/scalp.