I vacuumed my hair trying to get rid of lice

[Zooeyzo]

Fedup with scratching and the treatments haven't worked so while I was hoovering the house I got so annoyed I held it to my head it felt really good 😂
Everyone else thinks it's very weird.

When I last had lice, none of the treatments worked.

In the end, I straightened by hair repeatedly for a fortnight and that finally did the trick.

Try the Skin so soft oil spray - it washes out really well.

Takes the stick off the eggs.

Wouldn’t use anything else

I use the nit not oil on DS's thick, curly, long hair. The pesticide ones stung, and were hard to comb through, I prefer the oil because whilst it's hard to wash out of his hair so he looks greasy for a few days, his scalp is lovely after, and it's nicer to spend the hour or two combing oil through his hair than mucking about with hedrin.

Reading all of these is making my scalp itchy. Thank god my son never got nits in school in primary or secondary. As I said before my mum always put a drop of vinegar in our hair when we were kids and must have kept the nits off.
I got them once as an adult when living abroad from a friend who was friends with a family whose kids had severe nits that you could actually see crawling in their head as so bad and not treated. So spent a romantic weekend getting rid of nits and in the heat was severely itchy, was horrific.

Dd has never had nits. I was all prepared with special comb as well.

I use vosene shampoo and i spray her hair with vosene spray every morning before school.

Shes year 5 now so hoping it stays that way.

I feel your pain!

We kept getting them when the DCs were small but with eczema and asthma we weren't allowed to use any treatments, just combing.

My hair is curly but fine so pretty easy to comb but the DCs are half Indian and inherited DH's hair. It's lovely but not great for nits!

DD has medium thick, very curly hair and DS's is wavy but VERY thick. Nightmare.

Dye your hair. Seriously. Nit stuff didn't do anything for me or my kids, but hair dye kills anything alive up there.

I used lots and lots of conditioner (cheapest you can find). Wet hair, soak hair in conditioner, leave for a minute or two to penetrate, and then use a nit comb, I had a big swab of kitchen roll to collect the conditioner and clean the comb in between strokes. Wash hair with shampoo after. Do that every day for 2 weeks.

OolongTeaDrinker
yup diluted, and only a dab and still made him break out in a rash, but he has eczema and horrendously sensitive skin so had only tested it on one side anyway

I have curly hair, I can't believe your hair survived the hoovering! I'm sure mine would have been tangled to literal death had I done that.

Anyway, where households get stuck with chronic nits is when they fail to launder their pillows, bed sheets, clothes and hairbrushes, and anything else where hair comes into contact with. Lice can survive up to 48 hours off the scalp.

I loved that 😂😂

Where do they come from in the first place?

I hate lice.

They only thing that worked for us was full marks. Nitty gritty comb afterwards. Conditioner after that. Takes ages but worth it. My DD has 2 heads of hair according to hairdressers, lol! My DS never caught them and neither did his dad, but I caught them off my DD multiple times :(

You need to treat everyone in the house and yourself to kill the lice. Comb out the eggs daily for a few days. And treat again a week or two later to be sure (google the exact time frame as I am not sure).

oh that's so sweet!

OP we used Hedrin once too on the 3 or 4 occasions my daughter picked them up. Used it overnight and not the 20 minutes recommended.

Can I offer up the 20 year old trick that meant I NEVER got more than a few nits.
A nifty gritty comb. It has spiral teeth.
As soon as your child arrives home, you put out treats, a child friendly tv program and you brush their hair with a normal brush .
Next use the nitty comb.
It removes egg sacks as well...
No hair washing, just brush then comb.
If no nits. Good.
We did it every day after someone was out of the house, we never got caught out by an invasion.
If nits, bath and repeat.
By the way if you look at the roots when hair is wet you can see any big nits....

Just finished combing after the hedrin 8h and didn't find anything in my own hair (dh smug because he'd insisted I was being paranoid).

The nitty gritty comb is agony to pull through my thick Asian hair though, I had to give up and use the cheap white nit comb.

I can't imagine using the nitty gritty comb on dry hair as suggested above, that must only work for fine straight hair (thankfully my dd has that)

We have thick curly Asian hair too. The comb broke in my hair 😂

As an ex teacher with a lot of experience of head lice my suggestion would be vinegar, cheaper the better! Put it on your hair for as long as you can cope with kills the lice and dissolves the eggs.

Hedrin worked well for us

That is why you brush with a normal brush first to get the knots out.

Believe me, it's not about knots.

If you don't have thick hair you don't understand.

Just a word of warning (to all) if kids are regularly re-infected. Obviously it is most likely to be re-caught at school as the chances of every parent being totally on top of every infection all the time are - well nil, I imagine.

However it is possible that kids have also infected an older relative who is then returning the favour -and WHO MAY NOT FEEL ITCHY because of the way the immune system changes as we age, so has an ongoing infection.

So just something to look out for especially if kids see a lot of a dgm or similar.

And yes, we did the conditioner thing every 2-3 days until no more of the buggers were found, no new nits etc. I actually never used the chemicals as I am a bit of an organic hippy type. But we always conquered them in the end.

That said, the two of us with thick hair always wear it short, the one with long hair has the fine version that DH had before he lost it. So no long thick curly hair. That must make the job a lot more onerous.

I read that less than two thirds of people with lice feel itchy! Some people don't react to the saliva.

I'm feeling itchy even without them (just thinking about them)

Ah nits! I feel for you OP. As a teacher for many years I had a lot of unhappy experiences. I have seen it all probably. The thing that used to amaze me were children who were absolutely crawling with nits but never ever scratched their heads! I reckon they had had nits from birth. @MonstrousSnob I have seen boys with their heads virtually shaved still with nits crawling on the tiniest short hairs. A hairdresser friend has seen them survive perm solution. So not sure about the vodka unless it gets them drunk and they fall off 😂.The only solution is constant combing with gallons of conditioner. Unfortunately we fought a losing battle against parents who were just unable or unwilling to try and treat head lice many just didn’t care their children had them. I still have a chronically itchy scalp sensitised from catching head lice years ago.