5yr old coming home with nits??

[Sunbird73]

There is a commonly used, and very effective, one time treatment but it is a veterinary product so I won't say it here...used to have hoards of people coming into the clinic for it to use on their kids. :roll:

yes but there haven't been sufficient studies to show whether it may cause liver damage/cancer etc when the kids grow up years later (this chemical has only been in use for less than 15 yrs or so). It has been classified as a possible carcinogen with links to thyroid cancer in humans, but there really has been very few studies on its effects over a persons lifetime. In third world countries where it is used on crops there have been cases of acute toxicity (tho I imagine the dose would be huge).

I also think that human skin and dog/cat skin have different anatomy in terms of the thickness of the dermis and the vascularisation - it makes sense to me to think that you cannot equate safety in dogs skin to be the same as human skin as potentially we may absorb more into our bloodstream than would get into dogs.

There is a really good reason why this product is not and will not ever be approved for use on humans. Dont do it, it is not worth it for an infestation that doesn't affect kids health (tho very annoying!)

I put it on my dog, but as much as nits give me the heebie jeebies I would absolutely never put it on my kids. Dogs have a lifespan of 10-18yrs tops, I am hoping my kids will live to 80+....

With my daughter I used the good shampoo (not the expensive spray - it sucked and did not kill them). I used it again a week later, and nit combed obsessively.

I think the biggest problem is reinfestation - there are repellent sprays you can try, but I just french plaited my daughters hair, and was lucky enough that other parents were diligent with their treatment.

[Sunbird73]

Just to be clear, it is the Frontline spray that is usually recommended, NOT the spot treatment.

I do hope that its not any professional that is doing the recommending

[Ira]

I have to wonder...I only had them once when I was a kid, but it sounds like most kids here are constantly being reinfested with them. Is that because they're more common everywhere than when I was a kid? Or is it just that NZ children are more gross and parasite infested :lol: than Alaskan kids?

[phoenix44]

Its cause some kids don't bathe everyday. We had to have 2 baths / showers a day as kids.

Didn't get lice. Kids with lice weren't allowed to come to school and infect everyone else.

Shave the kid bald?

[Stella]

I thoroughly agree, Sunbird73. Furthermore fleas etc are not lice. Just because something is an invertebrate doesn't mean that something that kills one will kill all. Also even if the flea stuff kills headlice now, in a couple of years they will develop resistance.

Ira, some kids seem less affected by them. Might be some kind of genetic fluke or behavioural stuff, like having short hair, not playing closely with other children, not having a bad source population to catch them off.

And of course now the evolved pesticide resistance is so high in them that they are harder to get rid of, so some families simply give up and accept them as a fact of life for childhood. Some do what phoenix says: just shave the kids. No.2's for girls too.

Maybe you just didn't have many friends to catch them off? :lol:

[Sunbird73]

Kids with lice weren't allowed to come to school and infect everyone else.

This is true - when we were kids we had nit checks at school and if they found any they sent that kid home. They are not allowed to do them anymore (invasion of privacy?) and the nit treatment is left up to the families.

My niece got them repeatedly because her neighbours mum did not believe in/want to pay for chemicals that worked. So the neighbours kid never got any treatment and consequently my niece had them repeatedly for months and months until the neighbour moved away. And there are a lot of parents that don't have the money to pay for nit treatments and so just comb out "most of them" and the cycle continues...

.

Maybe you just didn't have many friends to catch them off? :lol:

:lol: good nit prevention being nigel no-mates

[Caryl]

Perhaps it is too cold in Alaska for nits 8)

I don't remember anyone having nits when I was at school and have never had them myself. My kids never got nits when they were at school but I can remember a couple of outbreaks. I suspect the "not allowed to check as it invades privacy" might have something to do with a rise in numbers :-?

[Adrienne]

My children never ever had nits until we moved to Auckland. It must have been too cold in the south island for them to survive. Once we came up here we had a couple of years with dealing with them.

[Ira]

I think it's unlikely that weather has a significant effect on them given that they live on nice warm heads and not in the environment.

[Caryl]

But the nice warm heads go out into the cold environment

[supasi]

I think it's unlikely that weather has a significant effect on them given that they live on nice warm heads and not in the environment.

Nice warm heads are created in nice cold environments by wearing a woollen hat. Thus protecting the hair from infection. Just my theory. Go on prove it wrong :lol:

[Ira]

Nice warm heads are created in nice cold environments by wearing a woollen hat. Thus protecting the hair from infection. Just my theory. Go on prove it wrong :lol:

Created by wearing a woolen hat thus creating another way to transfer them from one person to another.

[Stella]

Temperature does affect lice. In hot countries the nits (eggs) are laid much further from the scalp, but in cold countries they are laid close to the scalp to keep them warm.

Thus in a hot country if you have sufficiently short hair you may avoid them because there is no suitable habitat for the eggs.

Bodylice are a subspecies of headlice, and appears to have diverged when we lost our hair and started wearing clothing. (?70-100,000 years ago?). They live in clothing and move to the body to feed.

Bodylice diverged from chimp lice when we did (7mya). Bodylice are controlled simply through improving hygiene and more regular clothes washing. Pesticides are not required therefore resistance has not developed.

Public lice diverged from gorilla lice 2mya. We still had body hair then and they strongly doubt that it was an STI. Pubic lice also live in beards, armpits, eyelashes/eyebrows and general man-hair. Recently there have been instances of pubic lice starting to develop resistance to pesticides.

[DennisP]

Nits remind me of sinky shampoo. YUCK!