Coming up With a Pediculosis Treatment You Can Live With

When seeking professional medical advice for head lice infestations (or pediculosis), treatment options vary just as much as they might when you simply ask around or consult the Internet. This is partly due to the assumptions that your doctor makes about your willingness to do the work necessary to get to the bottom of a lice problem. Physicians are not entomologists and may simply be taking the advice of companies that make pesticide-based shampoos, conditioners and gels. Just because a doctor says it's so, doesn't actually make it that way when dealing with a problem that can sometimes be outside their area of expertise.

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The diagnosis

Lice are parasites of the order Phthiraptera that crawl around, exclusively, on human beings and suck blood as their sole source of nourishment. This causes the itching that is associated with a lice infestation. While the diagnosis of “pediculosis” can mean any type of lice taking up residence anywhere on the body, head lice are the most common in children. Technically, a head-louse infestation is called pediculosus humanus capitis.

Using prescription-strength anti-lice treatments

Most people assume that anything that can be prescribed for them to pick up special at the local pharmacy is going to be better – the state of the art in treatment for pediculosis. This is not always the case. What is more useful in the case of over-the-counter (OTC) lice-killing shampoos is the use of a product that employs a different active ingredient, especially when dealing with pesticide resistant lice. For this approach to be effective, it must be in an entirely different class of pesticides, with most OTC shampoos using pyrethroids.

On the other hand, when you're using a prescription-strength shampoo, you'll also be paying for the chance to discuss your eradication methods with your doctor or pharmacist. They may be able to recommend a high-quality lice comb that will actually be helping you with the most important part of the process – removing the eggs or “nits” that are the most troublesome aspect of the problem. Visiting the doctor is also a good idea if your child has developed infected sores on her or his head as a result of itching with dirty fingernails.

Why shampoos are one possible and partial solution

If your doctor really knows what he or she is talking about, they'll stress what a shampoo can and can't do for you. It can't, for instance, kill the nits or hatched lice that are less than four days old. The only way to get rid of these is to comb them out. Such a pediculosis treatment also doesn't do anything about all the lice that may be crawling around your house and in your child's personal effects. And, no matter how many times you treat with a powerful pesticide, if you don't address all these other sources of re-infestation, they'll just keep coming back.

In fact, if you're committed to taking care of this problem the first time, there's really no use for these dangerous chemicals in the first place. You can comb out adults just as well as the eggs. Lice don't hop like fleas and are easy to catch and dispose of. This is especially true with very young children and pregnant mothers. Tedious as it may be, the safest pediculosis treatment out there is careful de-lousing of the environment and several very careful combings.

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