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Columbus, Ohio mother checking child's head for lice with a comb

Is Head Lice Getting Worse In Central Ohio?

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As parents, school administrators and teachers know, head lice is one of the health troubles that seems to come with elementary school age children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there are between 6 and 12 million cases of head lice in school children under age 12 each year. For a while, we had a handle on it — or so we thought. But the big story these days is that head lice is getting worse in central Ohio. Here’s why & how to stop it. Read on for some different ways to accomplish that goal.

Resistant Lice 

Yes, you read that right. Super-lice. Unfortunately, resistant lice has been happening since the 1990s in the US, Australia, and Europe. If you haven’t experienced an increase in treatment resistant lice infestations in your school, you’re lucky. In 2015, the following states confirmed they had treatment resistant lice:

  • Alabama   Arizona   Arkansas
  • California  Connecticut   Florida     
  • Georgia   Illinois   Indiana
  • Kansas   Kentucky   Maine
  • Maryland   Massachusetts   Minnesota
  • Missouri   North Carolina   Ohio
  • Rhode Island   South Carolina   Tennessee
  • Texas   Virginia   Washington   Wisconsin

If you’re counting, that’s half of the states in the Union! And it gets worse. A study in 48 states by the Journal of Medical Entomology released in the second half of 2016 found that 98% of the head lice studied in 42 states were 100% treatment resistant. The treatment resistant lice had gene mutations that made them resistant to three types of insecticides: pyrethrins, pyrethroids, permathrins.

History of Insecticides for Lice

The first natural insecticide to kill lice in the US debuted in 1945. It was pyrethrin. By 1980, Nix was the most common over-the-counter insecticide to kill lice and it was almost 100% effective. By 2000, however, Massachusetts and Florida noticed a genetic mutation in lice that resisted treatment with pyrethrin. By 2009, pyrethrin was only 25% effective and by 2015 98% of the lice in 42 states were nearly 100% treatment resistant. That’s a complete turn-about within 15 years.

Parapro.com says that consumers contributed to the rise in treatment resistant lice because 69% admitted they over-used the insecticides and used more than recommended doses to try to increase the effectiveness of the treatments.

Reasons for Spread of Head Lice Generally

Just acting like kids makes children particularly prone to conditions that help spread lice. They not only hug each other more than adults, they also share brushes, combs, hats, and hair accessories. In today’s digital world, kids put their heads together when they share selfie photos and headphones, making it easy for lice to jump from one head to another.

Home Remedies Don’t Work

Google the phrase “head lice solutions” and you’ll find home remedies galore (and probably us, too). The idea is that the substances should suffocate the lice. And they do but live lice are not the only problem. Their eggs are. And the home remedies do not suffocate eggs because the eggs do not breathe. They will just hatch and infest your child’s head. Home remedies include mayonnaise, olive oil (for the natural products), petroleum jelly (a derivative of oil refining), and — if you’re into hazardous materials — even kerosene.

Lice Treatments Other Than Insecticides

There are new chemicals that appear effective against lice infestations but they are more expensive than the over-the-counter shampoos that no longer work. Your child’s pediatrician can give you a prescription if the shampoos do not end the infestation.

Nitpickers Rise Again

If you’ve ever wondered about the origin of the word “nitpicking”, you may find it interesting to learn that some people today prefer to have the nits picked out by hand rather than resorting to more chemicals. It’s a laborious and time-consuming process in which the nitpickers use special combs (or their fingers) to pry the lice from the hair.

To talk more about this topic, or anything else, please contact us. Our professionals are specialists in our exclusive, new medical device which they use to apply just the right of heated air to just the right spots on the head to dehydrate and kill both live lice and their eggs. The FDA approved treatment kills live lice and about 99.2% of the eggs in one 60-90 minute treatment. Best of all, there are no harsh chemicals in the treatment  — and no nitpicking.

Group of teens taking a selfie

Even The Cutest Selfies Are Spreading Lice Among Columbus, OH. Teens

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Selfies have been around ever since we first invented the camera, and their tradition goes all the way back to the Victorian era. This is particularly true of the mirror selfie, which has been with us for centuries at this point. Of course, thanks to the fact that every phone has a camera in it these days, selfies are no longer restricted to those with money. In fact, taking selfies is pretty common for the younger generation, who grew up with the technology to do it.

Take a moment to think about what happens when a group of teens take a selfie together, though. They cram together, whether it’s in the back row of study hall or in front of the McKinley Memorial on a school trip, hold up their phones, and snap three or four shots so they’ve got options to choose from when it comes time to post and share the details of their day with their social media circle. The photo might not be the only thing that’s getting instantly transmitted, though. Because getting close to each other to all squeeze into the frame means Columbus teens are sharing more than screen time… a lot of the time, they’re sharing head lice, too.

Unintended Consequences

Head lice are one of those things we try not to think about, but they’re more common than most of us realize. It’s just that with modern medicine and hygiene products, we have been able to control them with a fair amount of success. Especially since head lice can’t jump or fly, which means that if someone has them the only way they can spread is by literally pressing their head against someone else long enough for the lice to crawl across the gap.

Which is, of course, why friends getting intimate for a selfie can be a problem if one of them has head lice looking to spread to a new host.

Teens, in particular, are experiencing this problem in a way that hasn’t been true in the past. Because most of the normal risk factors for the spread of head lice, like sharing hats or other headgear, haven’t put that particular age group at risk. However, thanks to the spread of technology, we’re now spreading something else, too.

What Do We Do About It?

The obvious suggestion is to stop taking group selfies together, but you try telling Ohio teens that. Chances are they’d start taking even more selfies with their friends just to be contradictory.

Also, it wouldn’t solve the problem, which is that there is head lice to spread in the first place.

So, instead of chastising teens for expressing themselves by making memories with their friends, what we need to do is attack the root issue. That means we need to make sure young people of all ages are regularly checked for head lice, and that they know what the symptoms are they should be looking for. Additionally, we need to make treatments available so that anyone who finds they have head lice can take care of the issue quickly, before they spread it to friends, family, or anyone else.

We’re getting there… slowly. The key is to make sure everyone knows about the issue, what signs to look for, and when it’s best to wait to take a selfie. You should share most things with your friends, but this is one of those rare times when it really is best to abstain.

For more information on the spread of head lice among teens, and what you can do to make sure it’s prevented, simply contact us today!

Cartoon image of child with head lice being shown under magnifying glass by Lice Clinics of America - Columbus OH

5 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Head Lice

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We do not like to talk about head lice, just hearing the words can cause any parent to have nightmares and phantom itching for a week. No one wants to hear that their child has them. Other than that they make you itch, how much do you really know about these little bugs?

1. They only live on humans.

They have an extremely narrow environment, only human hosts can support head lice. They can not live on your cat, dog, or any other species of animal. They can only go for about one day without a person. They live on human blood, as it is their only food. Not only that but they need the body heat of a human host.

2. Lice do not get around on their own.

Lice do not fly or even jump. This is good news, as it limits their movement from host-to-host. Lice spread mostly through head-to-head contact, which is why head lice are more commonly spread through children. This is because they have more contact with one another than adults do. Children often get close to one another, huddling up, telling secrets, just being kids. Often times in the course of their closeness, they are even touching their heads together. As parents, when we get the head lice it is usually from our children.

3. Lice are extremely adaptable.

Not only have head lice adapted to live on humans and nothing else, most of the lice in the United State have also developed a resistance to the popular insecticide remedies that are available over-the-counter. A study in 2016 took lice samples in 42 states, and found that 98 percent of them had a genetic mutation that made them resistant to pyrethroids, the insecticide used in most of the lice treatment products.  

4. Lice do not hurt you.

Other than the itchiness commonly associated with head lice, they really do not hurt you. They do not spread diseases, cause illnesses, or cause any other health problems. They are really just annoying, but they are really good at annoying us.

5. The eggs are the hardest part of lice removal.

The adult lice are easy to remove, because they are larger and get caught by a fine-toothed comb. The eggs, or nits, are very small, and they blend in with light-colored hair. A louse lays her eggs one at a time on individual hairs, attaching each nit to a hair with a glue-like substance. It is hard to get them lose from the hair, and that is after you find them. Miss just one or two nits and you will have more lice in a week to ten days. This is how long they take to hatch.

This combination of pesticide resistant lice and hard to see and remove nits makes head lice an even bigger challenge than ever. Fortunately, the medical community has been working hard to find new and better ways to deal with the problem.

Among the most promising of the ways they have come up to deal with head lice is the AirAllé medical device, which we use at Lice Clinics of America lice treatment centers.  Researchers at the University of Utah developed the AirAllé, which is an FDA-cleared medical device. The device uses carefully controlled warm air to dehydrate both the lice and the nits in a single treatment. Clinical trials found that it kills all the adult lice and 99.2 percent of nits.

At Lice Clinics of America – Columbus, OH, we know you do not want to deal with this problem any longer than necessary. This is why we will, in the unlikely event of a treatment failure, re-treat you again for free. We invite you to contact us for more information on how we can assist you in being rid of these pests.

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