Top 5 Head Lice Prevention Tips

Theoretically, anybody can get head lice. It has nothing to do with personal hygiene other than the fact that people with bad personal hygiene are less likely to pay attention the problem. There are basically two ways you can prevent getting head lice. The first way is to avoid contact with anybody who might have head lice.

Lice comb (Bug Buster) wet combing with condit...
Lice comb (Bug Buster) wet combing with conditioner for diagnosis and treatment. Head lice can be seen in foam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Because head lice are very small and most people who have them only have perhaps around 20 or so, unless and until their infestation is far progressed, it takes a while before their number really start to show.

It’s possible someone could have hair lice for a month before they even notice.

By that time it’s entirely possible they might have transferred their head lice problem to somebody else. Here are some tips from a leading head lice removal clinic, Nitwits in Toronto:

Lice can’t fly or jump and they can barely crawl so the primary way they spread is by head-to-head contact. That’s why kids tend to get them more frequently than adults i.e. kids put their heads together more often than adults. The one situation when adults perhaps do put their heads together would be in necking (AKA: smooching).

1- One thing you can do to prevent getting head lice is to never use somebody else’s comb(s). Little kids and teenagers especially have a habit of sharing their combs and hair brushes but they shouldn’t. Hair lice are so small that it’s very easy to not see them especially if you don’t even know anything about them like most kids don’t.

2- Another thing you can do to prevent getting head lice is to always wear a hat or some kind of hair covering at least as much as possible. This includes indoors. Head lice can only get from one person to another by crawling or being rubbed off from one persons head to another. They actually crawl very slowly too so it really takes direct hair-to-hair contact to transfer head lice from one person to another.

3- Another thing you can do to prevent head lice is use a nit comb. A nit comb is very similar to a pets flea comb in that the tines of the comb are much closer together than those of a regular comb. The idea of the comb is that it is capable of catching the tiny little lice as well as many of the nits (head lice eggs).

4- Nit combs will definitely strain out most, if not all, of the active or dead lice. The idea is that even if you don’t get them all, you’ll at least know you’ve got a problem.

5- Last but not least, in order to prevent getting head lice, you can occasionally wash your hair with a natural shampoo which contains one of the ingredients which are known fatal, or at least repugnant, to head lice. One such ingredient is tea tree oil but there’s also Neem oil and several others.

If you do get a case of head lice, you won’t die. They are not fatal but just a big hassle. With any of the standard medications on the market today, you’ll usually be able to get rid of them within two or three weeks.