Head lice treatment should be taken very seriously. It must be approached in the right way. Home remedies for head lice have become a very popular treatment for head lice in recent years, although there are still many prescription and over-the-counter products available to get rid of lice.

But you need to know exactly what you’re putting on your child’s head when you use a chemical-based shampoo.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends Nix for the treatment of head lice; in fact they suggest that it is the most effective treatment. But don’t forget that this product is a pesticide! While many parents think that this is the only treatment to get rid of lice, there are also many who prefer to look for safer alternative treatments for lice.

One of your children may have allergies. In which case, you will most likely avoid using chemicals around the house, as well as using them on your child. One of the easiest alternatives to using chemicals is to remove lice or nits by combing them out with a special lice comb or pulling them out with tweezers.

This should be done regularly over several days to ensure they are all removed and this can be time consuming. You would still have to comb out the nits even if you used a proper lice shampoo first.

The live adult insects are called lice and the actual eggs are known as nits.

There are some home remedies for head lice that are safe and natural. These involve putting things in your children’s hair like Vaseline, olive oil, or mayonnaise. This is used to suffocate lice. It can be worn under a shower cap and left on overnight and then washed off the next day.

This can be quite tricky, but it can work well because the process of removing the product from your child’s hair can kill the nits and lice at the same time. You can also use vinegar to remove any of the greasy remedies you’ve used to kill lice, and this can also make it harder for new nits to attach to the hair.

There is a prescription medicine to treat head lice called Ulesfia that you can ask your child’s doctor about. This is a non-pesticide prescription treatment for head lice. The hair must be completely soaked in the product and then washed after 10 minutes. This treatment suffocates the lice and after 7 days it must be applied again.

There are some slightly less proven treatments for head lice and these are based on herbal home remedies. Various types of essential oils, including tea tree oil, are what they are typically based on. These natural treatments are not actually regulated by the FDA and as such have not been proven to work.

Here are some other things you can do if you want to prevent your child from getting head lice:

Girls can avoid infestation by wearing their hair up and using hair gel. Be sure to tell your children not to share other people’s combs or hairbrushes.

Tell them to avoid things like hats, headbands, or scarves that might come in contact with their scalp or hair.

Lice don’t jump like a flea and they don’t have wings so they don’t fly either. Direct contact is how they move from one host to another.

Unless you’re absolutely sure your child has lice, there’s no need to treat them, so be careful if you’re thinking of using a specific lice shampoo. To correctly identify lice and nits it is extremely important that you investigate properly.