my hairdresser just found head lice in my hair - mortified

[LeilaAndLeo]

my DD had lice which i treated over the weekend, i also checked my own hair with the nitty gritty but coud not find a thing, however my head has been itching over the last few days but i thought it was dry skin as i have got a dry scalp.

my hairdresser reckons lice prefer people with blonde straight hair over any other hair type/colour why i don't know but that is bad news for me and DD .

My dd gets nits every few weeks this is the first time i have caught them

Leila there IS a team of nit professionals that will visit your home and sort you out (for loadsa cash obviously)

I thought of this years ago and wondered why such a service was not available - and now voila. I reckon there will be more people offering this service as the problem increases

Key things with wet combing

Every 2-3 days for at least a week at which time the dc should be free of lice. If not, you have to carry on!

The lice should get gradually smaller and smaller as the treatment carries on, if you suddenly get much bigger ones your dc has probably been re-infested.

Lots of conditioner, their fave dvd and a bad of buttons, worked a treat for us

two weeks mb!

bloody typo! Yes, thanks for that 2 weeks

Franny - when you say sort me out I am asuming you mean to get rid of DD's nits/lice and then she goes back to school and get them again. yeah sounds really good [hmmm].

I only wash dd's hair once a week in the vague hope that lice prefer clean hair rather than her dirty hair.

and the last combing should be totaly clear of hatched lice (not empty egg sacs) before you stop

lilliput, the lice just want warmth and blood, they don't give a toss about the state of the hair.

If you check once a week by wet combing they shouldn't have them too badly by the time you notice they are there

it is hard to remember to do this

No worries MB we are the pincer movement of wet combing nit eradication

yeah it's an old wives tale about lice prefering clean or unclean hair - they go for anything i reckon.

thanks anyway for your advice everyone i seriously need to get my arse in gear and check on a daily basis not a fortnightly one

so tell me - is it true - or a myth - that black/mixed race hair is less likely to get the little cr*tters or not??

I know that the DS's have never had them (yet) and DH hasn't had them either...

My nephews are half Chinese, and their mother assures me it is easy to get rid of nits. They have straight shiny hair. Like Leila, my dd has straight blonde hair, which they love. It makes me wonder...

I think I have seen this, something to do with the texture of the hair, and the little bastards not liking african/ mixed race hair.

But I didn't see a study or statistics on it

American websites say that african hair needs loads of conditioner before you even think about combing it through! [ouch]

hedrin is good as it suffocates the little buggers and has no organo phosphates, if that is any help

My mate is african from zimbabwe and she reckons her kids will NEVER get nits because of the afro type hair.

Message withdrawn

ahhh - just been a googling as one does on these things. Apparently there are 2 different types of lice.....European (which are found in the US too) and African - African lice have (apparently) developed to cling to oval hair shafts (African hair), while European to round (don't know how true any of this is).

The pages I've found say this is why it's common for Africans to have headlice in Africa, but whites tend not to, and vice versa.....

I had a nightmare I had headlice last night thanks to this thread. I was combing for about 4 hours while everyone I ever met in my entire life trooped through the bathroom

sorry for all of those of you who have the reality at the moment, it is so unpleasant

Tea tree is great (can get shampoos etc). Lice hate the smell, and it works really well!

Apparently hair straighteners can kill nits on the hair shaft, but you still need to nit comb to get the ones on the roots.

I haven't had occasion to try it (yet), but it would be a good excuse to buy some lovely new GHDs and use my cheap straighteners for nit frying.

I had nits a couple of months ago. No idea where they came from as DS and Dp didn't seem to have. We treated us all with the hedrin stuff which is just basically silicone, which as lou says suffocates them. Followed that up with a couple of days of combing and retreated the whole family again a week later. SO far so good. Although of course now I have said that I'm sat here itching - but I had my hair done last week and am guessing I'd have been told about it if they were still gatecrashing...

seem to be different lice types.
there are african and south american lice- their wee legs are adapted to cling onto curly afro hair. They do exist here although less common.
Also have seen lice in afro hair types that are corn rowed as europen lice then can hold onto hair near the scalp where its nice and warm.

Ekk (sratches head). DD seems to have them constantly. I found some great stuff in france, which is along the same lines a Hedrin but IMO better. It seemed to bring all the eggs out too, whereas when I comb with hedrin alot of the eggs/cases stay put. My 2 DSs NEVER get them - even when DD seems to have loads. Wish I could say the same. I REALLY need a hair cut, but am too scared to go