Natural Lice Treatments?

[jenna_brownson]

My 7 y.o. son has a case of lice. It is a mild case, as -- so far as I can tell -- he has only nymph lice, no nits, no adults. He was looking forward to cutting his fairly long hair for the summer and got his 1st mohawk tonight.

Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for how to rid him of the buggers without dumping insecticide on him, i.e., Rid and the like.

Thanks a lot,
Jenna

[simonee]

Buy a Niskar lice comb (the finest, and made of metal) at a good drug store or pharmacy, cover the hair in any conditioner, and comb comb comb.

Next day: repeat.
Every day the next two weeks: repeat. After a week, you can go every other day.

Put any objects that may have touched his hair and can't be washed hot in a closed plastic container for two weeks (any nits and resulting lice will die), and vacuum bed/couch etc. very well every day during that same period.

My entire household got over a pretty bad case that way. But if you're too crunchy for conditioner or plastic, I wouldn't know what to do

[Jennifer Z]

Well, this is isn't totally "natural", but less chemically than the regular treatments. A friend of mine put globs and globs of Petroleum Jelly on her girls hair/heads and then a shower cap, let it soak in overnight. In the morning she had to use Dawn Dishwashing detergent to get the junk out of the hair, but it killed all of the lice.

[Ruthla]

We used coconut oil or mayonaise in place of the petroleum jelly. Mayo was effective but smellls nasty after a few hours- CO is a lot more pleasant to use. I added some tea tree oil to the CO to make it more effective.

To help get the nits out, spray hair with vinegar before shampooing (but not when you have oil in the hair- either another day or shampoo out the oil then spray with vinegar and shampoo again). It dissolves the glue that holds the nits to the hair and makes combing out a lot easier and more effective.

[intorainbowz]

A foster mother I worked with used Mayonaise on the girl's hair and wrapped their hair in plastic bags over night. She did this every other night. It worked to kill pesticide resistant lice. It is very important that you do the hot water washings of pillows, linens, etc. Stuffed animals need to go in plastic bags.

[Tangled Hill]

Another vote for mayo here. That stuff is simple, cheap, nontoxic and amazing. We only left it on for about an hour or so every other day, and after about a week, it did the trick (and never smelled funky).