LiceDoctors Offers Boston Families 10 Tips to Eliminate Head Lice

Boston, MA, December 20, 2020 --(PR.com)-- Yes, Children in the Boston area are still getting head lice despite less interaction with other children during the era of COVID-19. Each year thousands of school aged children in the Boston area are diagnosed with head lice. This is likely a conservative estimate as many cases go unreported. Parents live in fear that their children will be among those diagnosed this year.

Factors Contributing to the High Incidence
Despite growing awareness of the problem, the incidence remains stubbornly high. Lice are primarily spread through head-to-head contact. While it is possible to contract head lice from a vector such as clothing or a piece of furniture, this is rare.

A major factor in the persistence of lice cases is the failure of chemical treatments to eradicate active cases. Several studies, including a major one conducted by Dr. Yoon at Southern Illinois University show that head lice have developed a resistance to chemical treatments. These bugs have mutated as a survival mechanism rendering the treatments ineffective.

What Parents Can Do
Faced with a head lice diagnosis, parents are often overwhelmed. They know from word of mouth that drug store chemical treatments often don't work. Prescription treatments are expensive, often are chemically-based which is a concern to many parents, and are also not fully effective. Do it yourself treatments may seem to work for awhile but then a couple of weeks later signs of lice return.

LiceDoctors, the largest at-home professional lice treatment service in the U.S., says that parents must have a disciplined and comprehensive approach to lice eradication. Wendy Beck, owner of LiceDoctors says that, "Lice treatment requires a multi-step approach. It is painstaking and there are no short cuts. Often parents find that professional lice treatment is their best option."

Best Lice Treatment Protocol
For parents interested in trying to treat their children on their own, LiceDoctors recommends that they take the following steps:
1. Bring a child into the best light available. Outdoor lighting is ideal but a bright lamp is effective as well.
2. Have on hand a high-quality metal lice comb, oil, a regular comb, and paper towels.
3. Saturate the hair with oil.
4. Comb with the metal lice comb, wiping comb on paper towel.
5. Keep in mind that nits will be brown against the paper towel and are round on one side, pointy on the other.
6. If what you pull out is white, it will not be visible against the paper towel. Those are not nits; they are either dandruff or DEC plugs which are secretions from oil glands.
7. Next wash and dry the hair.
8. Taking the regular comb, divide the hair into two inch sections.
9. Grab a section of hair and fan it in so that you can see each strand.
10. Nits will be glued to the hair close to the scalp. Grab each nit with your fingers and slide down the strand until all signs of nits are gone.

LiceDoctors has used their expertise in successfully treating more than 500,000 clients. They stress that the key to lice treatment is the removal of all nits. According to Beck, "If you leave nits behind, they will hatch and the case will persist. This is where families run into trouble. They must extract all nits for successful lice treatment."

For further information or to make an appointment for a lice professional to make a house call to your home in the Boston area including all suburbs, call LiceDoctors at 617-517-4197. Treatment is available day or night, every day of the year.