A friend just called and informed me that her daughter had a few nits and eggs on her scalp from lice. My daughter spent the night there the other night and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about a natural shampoo or treatment to use as a preventative measure. We are also leaving for a 5 day mission trip on Sunday, so I am concerned.
D.
Look up older posts here on mamasource. I asked the same question back in October I believe and was given lots of responses and different methods. I used the cetaphil method, covering the entire head w/ cetaphil, wrap it with plastic or shower curtain and leave on for several hours (overnight if possible) and rinse. it smothers eggs and nits. there are proper instructions online if you google it. or find it on older posts...good luck!
There is a salon in Chicago called Hair Faries that specializes in treating head lice.
Cover her head in olive oil, don't rinse it and put a shower cap on her head for several hours. This suffocates the lice and they can't move. Unfortunately the only way to completely remove the nits is w/your fingernails and to strip them off the hair.
Since you are uncertain there is anything there, I'd recommend LiceFree. It's non-toxic, and it comes with the best lice comb I was able to find at a drugstore. It's also billed as being preventive, so it's not a total waste of money if she doesn't have them. When you comb out her hair, have a box of kleenex handy and wipe the comb clean every time on a kleenex and look for anything that looks suspicious. Make sure you do this in the strongest light you can - sunlight is best.
It's the time of year when lice outbreaks are going around again! One of my friends called a couple of weeks ago to say her daughter had them. Luckily, my kids are still OK, but I've been using the Rosemary Repel line of products on them for the past month (www.rosemaryrepel.com) which might have helped keep the bugs away, who knows?
One last thing, which I hate to say - if you just look through her hair now without combing or using some kind of gel, you probably won't see anything. I thought my son was OK last summer when he was exposed and got them, but that was because it took about 3 weeks before anything showed up, and his case wasn't even that bad. If you think about it, it takes a while for one louse that crawls over to generate a lot of activity. (they have about a 10 day cycle, I think.)
Good luck!
