Overexposure to insecticides has bred resistance in lice | Hacker News Reader

Overexposure to insecticides has bred resistance in lice

scientificamerican.com

68 pointsartsandsci45 comments

"Overexposure to insecticides has bred resistance in the parasites" is the title, but the article only speaks about "exposure", not "overexposure".

That said, as a parent in the Netherlands, we nowadays use the simplest and most effective method: fine-combing the hair every morning and night for two weeks. Use hair conditioner before combing to make the beasts sticky for easier combing. Guaranteed success.

Just went through this for the first time with my youngest. I used the top rated comb on Amazon. Took all the stress away. Absolutely worked: no fuss, no insecticides.

Theoretically this would also cause resistance as surviving lice multiply in extremely rare cases.

That would be resistance against a physical device, the comb. The only chance for lice-survival is to be full grown and still be smaller than a hair.

Yes, I agree with your first point, but there are plenty of other ways they could survive 2 weeks worth of combing. Like the eggs could be smaller than the average hair and could last longer. Or, they could go into the scalp for extended periods of time. There are ways it could happen.

The eggs (nits) are to small to comb out, that's already the case. That's why you need to repeat this for two weeks, to comb out the new lice before they start breeding.

Not a parent, as the following suggestion will probably make obvious, but why don't people just shave their kids' head when it happens? It's what I would do if it happened to me rather than do that nonsense every morning for weeks on end.

Imagine two girls with long, beautiful blond hair which has never in their life been cut...

When my kids have lice I shave my own head, but I haven't been able to convince my daughter to do the same.

She's got pretty long and thick hair so washing and combing it is a b#tch!

Alright, I can see how it would be unacceptably cruel to ask a girl to do it. I still think I'd make a boy do it though...

Right, because boys never get mocked at school...

It's a tossup. If you can't get rid of your son's lice in a timely fashion without shaving your son's head, he's probably going to give the lice to his peers... and the mocking will be even worse.

I think for a lot of boys it wouldn't be much of a problem, although I know that if my head were shaved as a child I would have found it difficult.

As someone with curly hair, married to someone with slightly curly hair, I weep for any of my future children that end up exposed to lice.

as a person with alopecia universalis... aaahhhhHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

sorry, I don't get to do that very often :P

There are not too many jokes that are still funny enough to make you laugh out loud after you have taken the time to go look up "alopecia universalis" on wikipedia

every once in a while i think that i might like to have my hair back... but then i remember how nice it is to rarely shower, never shave, and the reduced risk of Gattaca-style discovery when i finally decide to leave for space ;)

I'd guess you probably have a surprised look on your face :-)

As the parent of a five year old, this isn't news to me! From all I read when she was dealing with lice, the over the counter pesticide shampoos in the US hardly work for anyone anymore (we tried anyway, at the firm insistence of our daycare), and the prescription options aren't that much better (we didn't bother, despite the insistence of our daycare).

The good news is that only adult lice actually spread between heads (the eggs won't even hatch away from body temperature: that's why they're attached right next to the scalp). And if you comb carefully for a day or two you'll get rid of essentially all of them. It may take longer to catch all of the immature ones (especially since they'll keep on hatching for a while), so you've got to be vigilant. But a good comb and some effective distraction for the kid while you use it will do the job, and there's no reason to isolate them after those first couple of days. (Sadly, daycare didn't agree.)

There was a scientific study done in 2004 that showed coating the hair with Cetaphil cleanser and blow drying it was very effective in getting rid of lice. It's called the "Nuvo" method. No insecticide necessary and probably more pleasant than mayonnaise. We've used this treatment successfully.

More info: http://nuvoforheadlice.com/test/

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/the-alternative-me...

The original study: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/e275.ful...

We had the best luck with an electric comb -- that is, a comb designed so that the louse completes a circuit and receives a small (but lethal) dose of current. It is difficult to build up a resistance to that.

I take my daughter to a lice removal specialist. She does a thorough combing to remove the lice. 2 weeks later you return for a follow up to check for any lice that might have hatched from missed nits. If there are any lice they are removed for no additional cost and another follow up scheduled. I have had to use the service twice over the years and neither time were there an lice at the follow up. For me well worth the $100 fee. I don't have the patience to perform the type of thorough combing required and certainly would not get them all in one combing.

We did this ourselves and it worked well. I think this is the best approach. I guess you can try combining with some other natural approaches suggested in the comments.

You pay someone $100 to comb your child's hair?

Another advantage of these services is that the daycares trust them, so it limits the time you have to keep your kid out of daycare. This can save way more than $100 (depending on what your childcare backup solution is)

Sorry, I'm completely lost. Daycares? i.e. schools do you mean? And what do you mean that they trust these services? I must be getting this completely wrong, but surely you're not saying there are schools which exclude children who've had nits unless they've got a receipt from a $100 hair comber?

The commenter's child is under 5 years old, so they attend day care.

Day care facilities (private businesses) rightly don't permit sick children to attend until they are not infectious.

Paying $100 to avoid the loss of work (more than $100) is rational.

There is a heat-treatment device that is successful in killing lice, but it's patented (earliest patent I could find expires 2029) and only provided to clinics that sign up with the owner (Larada), and they charge ~200 per person.

We did that treatment with our daughter after not doing the Nuvo treatment quite right the first time (didn't get the Cetaphil down to the roots.)

I would do it again.

I do wonder if Nuvo partly works by the heat method as well since you have to blow dry the Cetaphil.

My wife's research revealed an important fact, lice cannot survive for more than 48 hours without a human host. So we let DD sleep on a cot in a different room for two days to clear her bed.

As for DD (and DW, I get a free pass thanks to baldness) she makes some kind of solution with tea tree oil and uses a comb. The lice can't stand tea tree oil and abandon ship.

My wife says mayonnaise didn't work, but I've heard testimonial from other parents this is very effective. Mayo plus a shower cap plus keep it in overnight suffocates the little varmints to death.

And I would like to add, though my grandfather's effective choice in treatment killed the lice instantly, getting one's hair washed with kerosene is extremely painful and I'm pretty sure it killed the top layer of skin in my scalp as I was shedding dead skin for about two weeks.

So don't do that.

And also, don't let your kid do a stage performance of "Hats for Sale", where they mix all their hats together in a box and wear them. Not sure what the drama coach was thinking, but the entire 2nd grade had a lice outbreak after that. True story.

> And I would like to add, though my grandfather's effective choice in treatment killed the lice instantly, getting one's hair washed with kerosene is extremely painful and I'm pretty sure it killed the top layer of skin in my scalp as I was shedding dead skin for about two weeks.

The anti-lice treatments like Goldgeist are equally bad.

What I found out that works well without massively hurting your skin is hair dye. No lice survives H2O2, and it’s actually far less painful and destructive than Goldgeist etc. But obviously, you can’t bleach your 2yos hair, this is just something I found out worked for me (after my little sister brought lice home once)

Funny enough, mayo worked for me when it seemed nothing else did. Not tea tree oil or the over the counter shampoos you can buy. I guess just keep trying everything until you find what works in your situation.

You're absolutely correct, iterate until you find the solution that works. My DW made her own tea tree oil concoction from full strength tea tree oil plus coconut oil as a carrier oil. Pure TT oil will burn your skin, so yeah get informed and be careful.

This is sort of an aside, but when I first became a parent 6 years ago and I started reading "DD," "DS," "LO" etc all over the internet in parenting forums, it was my first indication that all parents (myself included) have lost their minds.

What an odd shorthand convention.

I don't think geeks get to throw stones on shorthand.

For Mb vs MB vs MiB alone we've lost any and all credibility.

Do you have a better proposal?

Dear Daughter, Dear Son, Dear Wife? I don't know what LO might be.

Yes, yes, yes, me neither

Little One.

As a parent of elementary schoolers, I am painfully familiar with this. But after having no success with the insecticides, I found a product called licefree (NFI) that is basically saltwater. It works great and has none of the potential health risks of insecticides so you can apply it liberally (to the whole family!) anytime there is the slightest hint that a kid might have lice. I can't recommend it enough.

Does this kill them with one application? How can it possibly work, dry them out or something?

Look for products that work with "super lice", the Vamousse brand for example.

Shocker, eh?

too bad that it would take humans several generations before they'd stop developing allergic reactions and cancer from insecticide.

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