Lice are unique arthropod insects whose life is directly related to the human body and blood. They live all over the world. The scientific name for lice is Anoplura. Lifespan is a little over a month. Lice are very difficult to get rid of, they multiply quickly, and their larvae cannot be destroyed with most modern drugs.
In Rus', it was believed that a person with a large number of lice on his head was very lucky and happy. And according to Slavic superstitions, lice dream of money and wealth.
Nowadays, few people would agree that having lice is a great happiness. On the contrary, these parasites are very feared, and the word “lice” does not have the most pleasant connotation. People infected with lice try to hide the symptoms and do not tell anyone about what happened. It is believed that these insects only live in the hair of people without a specific place of residence. But that's not true. In this article we will tell you in detail about the lifestyle of lice, where they come from, what troubles they can bring to a person, who most often gets them, as well as how to properly remove lice and nits at home using chemicals and folk recipes.
Appearance of lice
Lice are very small creatures, ranging in size from 0.4 to 5 mm, with a pronounced abdomen, but a small head and chest. The eyes are very small, vision is poor. Oriented by smell. Males are smaller than females. Surprisingly, lice have wings, but they are so small and atrophied that they are unable to fly.
The oral apparatus of lice is of the piercing-sucking type with a proboscis and two needles. When a louse feeds on blood, its proboscis extends from the head capsule and attaches itself to the puncture site of the skin. There are also hooks on the proboscis to securely fix the parasite on the victim’s body. When bitten, saliva is released, which prevents blood clotting and causes irritation and itching on the victim's skin.
Please note: lice cannot completely penetrate human skin. Only the proboscis penetrates the epidermis and pumps out blood.
Attachment to the hair is provided by tenacious and strong three pairs of legs with claws. Lice move at a speed of about 20 centimeters per minute. Lice attach their offspring in the form of nits (i.e. larvae) to the hair using a strong adhesive substance. The female can lay several hundred eggs, which will hatch in 4-16 days under comfortable conditions.
Insect detection methods
You can detect head lice on your own or with medical help. It is enough to carefully examine the scalp under a bright light. At home, you will need to make the “suspect” sit down and ask him not to move.
Separate small strands of hair and examine them in good lighting. In short hair, you can check this with your hands. Long, thick, curly hair is best treated with a comb.
Adults are inactive, move slowly through the hair with their paws, and prefer to be close to the skin. Despite the erroneous belief of many, parasites are not capable of flying or jumping.
A gray, translucent hungry louse blends into the hair. It is easier to detect a well-fed insect. It has a characteristic brown color (the muted color of coagulated blood).
It is not difficult to recognize nits. Just look closely. Nits are round, light-colored formations attached at an angle to the hair, closer to the base. Upon quick inspection, nits are often mistaken for dandruff. They stick tightly to the hair, cannot be removed with your fingers, and are difficult to comb out with a comb. When a viable nit is crushed with your fingernails, a characteristic click is heard. Thanks to these signs, nits can be easily distinguished from common dandruff.
Features of the life cycle of lice
Lice are extremely tenacious: they can easily withstand the low temperatures that a person finds themselves in, and with him they can stay under water for a long time. Evolutionarily, insect parasites have developed so much that nits, as their eggs are called, are much more resistant even to chemicals than adults, as well as larvae. With a special composition, they are firmly glued to a hair or thread of clothing, from where they are quite difficult to remove.
The lice's diet consists entirely of blood, which they suck, and the person feels itching on the skin from the bites. The insect lives for about 38 days, during which time the female lays about two hundred eggs. After a week, young individuals emerge and continue to develop.
These features of the life cycle of parasites are what we pay attention to when fighting them: lice are removed within a month. The more effective the drug and the more thorough the hair treatment, the faster you can get rid of lice and nits.
Reproduction
A single mating of adults leads to complete insemination of all eggs of the female, who will be able to lay more than hundreds of nits over the rest of her life. Re-pairing is not required.
If just one fertilized female louse lands on a person's hair, after two weeks there may be 10 to 50 lice on the head.
Within a few hours after insemination, the female begins to lay eggs, attaching them to her hair, about 2-5 eggs per day.
Louse lays eggs on hair
After 7–11 days, the upper lid of the egg bursts and the nymph hatches. She begins to suck blood almost immediately after hatching, thanks to which she reaches adulthood in 8 days. If the louse does not find a food source, after about 18 hours it loses its ability to suck blood due to dehydration and dies.
What do they eat?
Lice feed exclusively on blood (mainly human), their oral apparatus is adapted specifically to pierce the skin and pump out blood. Other power sources are not available to them. They cannot feed on hair, skin or dandruff as some people believe.
Lice feed about 5 times a day every 2-3 hours. In one suction, a louse can drink approximately 0.5 mg of human blood. Saturation with blood allows parasites to reproduce and lead an active life.
The concept of “pediculosis”
Those who have encountered this disease know what lice are, but many may not be familiar with this concept. Head lice are a parasitic disease of the skin and hair caused by head lice.
There are three types of lice, depending on which parasite is the causative agent of the disease. Head, pubic and body lice provoke the development of head, pubic and body diseases, respectively.
Pediculosis is transmitted only by parasites, therefore, like scabies, it is not an airborne infection.
How long do lice live and what causes them to die?
As mentioned earlier, the average lifespan of lice is 38 days . At the same time, a louse can go without food for 10 days if the ambient temperature is 10-20 degrees Celsius.
Lice die at elevated temperatures - from 44°C .
These parasites are able to survive in water for about two days , floating on the surface. This is how they are transmitted from person to person in the pool. Cold water is also not scary for them.
Lice cannot survive on a person's head if they are shaved bald. They will have nowhere to hide and secure offspring, and adult individuals will be immediately discovered and destroyed.
Some modern drugs can remove lice in one or two applications. We will talk about the choice of drugs below.
What should house cleaning be like?
Measures to control head lice include cleaning your home. It must be carried out regularly, following some rules:
- for wet cleaning, you can use a weak solution of vinegar or add a few drops of essential oil to the water;
- periodically it is necessary to steam pillows, mattresses, blankets;
- From time to time it is necessary to wash or chemically clean fabrics (curtains, bedspreads).
If there is a person with lice in the house, it is necessary to treat the room with an insecticidal agent.
Where do lice come from in humans?
Lice spread mainly through direct contact with an infected person, mainly in families, in kindergartens and schools, dormitories, and holiday camps; to a slightly lesser extent through various items: combs, brushes, hats, scarves, personal items and bedding. If lice get on the collar of your clothes, they can crawl onto the clothes of other people in shared lockers or changing rooms.
Lice can even be transmitted through pool water if an infected person has swam there. Lice are able to survive on the surface of the water for up to 2 days, waiting for a new victim.
Pubic lice are most often transmitted during sexual intercourse, less often when swimming in a pool, and body lice through clothing or underwear.
Who gets it most often?
Most often, lice appear on the hair of children 2 - 12 years old . The reason for the relatively easy transmission of lice in children in this age group is that children often touch their heads when playing games and do not bother to use personal hygiene products. A child can calmly dry himself with someone else’s towel or comb his hair with a friend’s comb.
Does the appearance of lice depend on the time of year?
As surprising as it may seem, in winter the incidence of head lice is higher than in other seasons. This is probably due to the fact that in winter they wear hats, and children often try on other people's hats. In the summer, haircuts are usually shorter, and there is much less clothing on which lice can spread.
Prevention
The use of special medications does not protect against re-infection with parasites. Therefore, it is important to follow preventive control measures, which include the following recommendations:
- It is necessary to regularly examine the hair and skin of a person who has recently suffered from the disease.
- It is important to observe the rules of personal hygiene, regularly wash clothes and bed linen, and iron them.
- You should wash your hair at least once every seven days.
- You need to use only your own things and not share them with another person. You cannot wear someone else’s headdress or use accessories from people you don’t know well.
- It is necessary to avoid casual sex and close contacts with strangers.
- It is necessary to periodically clean outer clothing and upholstered furniture, and ventilate the rooms.
- It is necessary to limit communication with people who live in unsanitary conditions.
- It is recommended to take a bath with essential oils. Their smells drive away lice.
Schools and kindergartens conduct regular inspections to detect lice in children's hair.
But none of the preventive measures provides one hundred percent protection against the disease, because you can become infected with it at any time and anywhere. Video:
How can you tell if you have lice?
Symptoms indicating the appearance of lice on the head:
- Itching that gets worse at night.
- Pink spots on the scalp with a small red dot in the middle are signs of lice bites.
- Small beige or white “pebbles” on the hair are nits. Fixed very tightly. The presence of nits indicates that the lice infection occurred several days or even a week ago. They cannot be crushed and are quite difficult to tear off from the hair.
Pediculosis disease and its symptoms
Pediculosis is a disease caused by head lice. Its prevalence is quite high. Therefore, every person needs to know what symptoms to pay attention to first and what head lice look like.
The first sign of infection is severe itching. Its appearance is caused by an enzyme secreted by the parasite. Most people are allergic to it. At the initial stage, many people perceive itching as a reaction to shampoo or the development of a skin disease (for example, seborrhea). To determine the source of discomfort, you should pay attention to its location. If your head itches behind your ears, you can safely talk about lice. Head lice are clearly visible upon examination.
Another symptom is the presence of nits. Insect eggs are attached directly to the hair. They are white, which only simplifies the search. Sometimes they are confused with dandruff. However, nits are located on the head in the area closer to the neck. In addition, if you try to crush the parasite egg with your fingernails, a characteristic sound will be heard.
In advanced cases, the hair sticks together and tangles form. Due to constant scratching, the course of the disease may be complicated by furunculosis or other pustular lesions. In the absence of treatment, lymphadenitis develops, the lymph nodes in the neck and ears become enlarged and inflamed.
How to get rid of lice?
Pediculosis will not go away on its own. Over time, the number of insects increases, the number of bites increases, and the itching becomes constant and unbearable. Control methods are divided into two types - mechanical and chemical. Folk recipes can also be classified as chemical methods, but we will consider them separately.
Mechanical methods
Typically, mechanical methods mean hair cutting, shaving and combing out parasites with a comb, but they can also include thermal treatment with a hair straightener or tongs. Hair cutting at the root is the cheapest and most effective treatment method, but it is not suitable for everyone. Women and girls will not want to lose their hair, and not all men are ready to go bald.
Chemical and mechanical methods must be combined. Just treating with a drug from a pharmacy will not be enough; you need to comb out dead lice and their larvae from your hair. The fact is that most drugs are not capable of destroying nits; their shell reliably protects the offspring from chemical exposure.
Don't expect to get by with a regular comb. Nits must be combed out with a special comb with very frequent teeth located almost close to each other.
Chemicals
There are a large number of modern drugs for head lice; they differ in cost, consistency and method of application. The most common types of medicinal formulations can be distinguished:
- Shampoos are the most popular, inexpensive and quite effective products when used correctly and following all the procedures specified in the instructions. Here are some of them: Hygia, Paranit, Lavinal. Shampoos specifically designed for children are sold separately.
- Sprays are more effective than shampoos, but are more difficult to use, are difficult to wash off and can cause unwanted allergic reactions. Usually a comb is included. The most famous: Paranit, Lavinal, Nyuda, Para Plus.
- Aerosols used to treat contaminated clothing. Someone even uses Dichlorvos against lice.
- Creams are less common than shampoos and sprays, but they are not inferior to sprays in effectiveness. Among them: Nix, D-95.
- Combs - designed for combing out bloodsuckers. They differ from ordinary ones in that they have very frequent teeth that detach the nit from the hair using mechanical pressure. But this is an auxiliary product used in combination with chemicals, most often included with the product.
Linen lice are removed by thoroughly washing and ironing bedding or clothing. Temperatures above +60 and below -10 °C are destructive for parasites.
Traditional methods
Although folk remedies can be recommended by most representatives of the older generation, they cannot be called particularly effective. Their main advantage is accessibility, but they can cause harm or, at the very least, be useless. Here are some common folk remedies for lice and nits.
- Kerosene - smear it on your head, wrap it around your hair and leave it for 2 hours. After treatment, the substance must be washed out for a very long time, besides, it damages the hair and can leave a chemical burn on the scalp.
- Cranberry juice has a depressant effect on lice and detaches nits from the hair, as the acid dissolves the adhesive. All that remains is to comb them out with a fine comb.
- Vinegar 6 or 9% acts similar to cranberry juice. Take three tablespoons of vinegar per 300 ml of water and apply the mixture to the scalp. The composition dries out the scalp greatly.
- A mixture of pomegranate juice and mint decoction, in a ratio of 1 glass to 3 tablespoons, is boiled for more than 10 minutes. Moisten the hair with a warm decoction and rub it into the skin.
- Hair coloring will not prevent lice. Only very caustic and harmful paint can kill 40-80% of parasites. This method cannot be considered effective
All folk remedies involve wrapping the head in a towel for up to two hours. But in children it is necessary to check the condition of the skin every 30–40 minutes to avoid burns.
We do not recommend resorting to traditional recipes if it is possible to purchase a safe and effective medicine at the pharmacy.
Stages of lice removal
It is better to first destroy adult insects and nymphs, and then nits. Shampoos and sprays usually contain combs in the package, which should be used to comb out lice and nits after treating the head. If the infection process has just begun, they are combed out within three to five days. Combs with long rather than short teeth give quick results.
If after one wash with an insecticidal agent and combing the insects survive, you should treat your hair again after a week. And comb out again, since initially some nits may not be combed, and larvae will hatch from them.
Carefully study the composition of the drug, pay attention to contraindications, check in advance for an allergic reaction on the skin of the elbow. Follow the rules of use described in the instructions. And best of all, consult a doctor before starting treatment!
Prevention of lice is to follow the rules of hygiene: use only your own things, swim in the pool with a cap and avoid untidy people.
