Know How to Prevent Lice Before You Go to All Your Holiday Parties!
Winter break is a peak time for head lice, according to Jen Mortensen, owner of Lice Clinics of America - Pearland. Data reported by Lice Clinics of America shows that lice activity is 20 percent higher in January vs. December. It is likely that the late December holiday festivities are the reason. Families gather, kids are home from school having sleepovers, parties with lots of selfies with friends, holiday hugs and holiday cuddles. All of which are opportunities to spread head lice.
“Every year, we see people getting head lice during the holidays. It creates chaos in the home and disrupts peace of mind as well as holiday cheer,” Mortensen said. “The best way to keep head lice out of your home for the holidays is to know how to identify them in the first place. It’s not as easy as you might think.”
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the National Institutes for Health, one of the challenges of dealing with head lice is correctly identifying the problem. “Because head lice move quickly, detection requires expertise and experience,” the NCBI said. “Expertise is key to diagnosis.” Even health care providers frequently misdiagnose head lice infestations.
“The only way to accurately diagnose a case of head lice is to find a live louse or clusters of the nits (nits),” Mortensen said. “That’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says, and it’s been our experience, too. We offer professional screenings at our clinic and highly recommend them before and after school breaks. It’s the best way to have peace of mind that your household is lice free.”
“Whether you’re the visitor or the visited, there are some steps you can take to ensure that you don’t send your child back to school with head lice,” says Mortensen. “We put together this checklist for preventing head lice infestations during the holidays.”
1. Go to a clinic for a professional lice screening. If there is a chance you or your children are exposed to head lice over the holidays, the best thing you can do for yourself and your peace of mind is getting a professional head lice screening. We offer them for just $15, and if you do have head lice and choose to be treated at our clinic, the fee is waived. Head lice can be very difficult to diagnose, and false positives are very common. You do not want to spend money to treat head lice if you don’t have the bugs or their eggs!
2. Use head lice prevention products. People tend to deal with head lice reactively – meaning we freak out when we find head lice in our children and try to get rid of lice as fast as we can. That’s perfectly normal, but we now have products that can help to prevent head lice in the first place. Lice shampoos, conditioners, and sprays for hair, are all available at our clinic. Unlike most over-the-counter lice products, all Lice Clinics of America products are pesticide-free.
3. Keep long hair pulled back, braided and in a bun. Lice spreads through hair-to-hair contact, keeping long hair pulled back in a braid can prevent exposure.
4. Talk to your children about how head lice spread and help them understand behavior that can prevent them from getting head lice such as taking group photos with heads pressed together to fit in the picture or sharing combs and brushes. It’s rare, but head lice can be spread when a strand of hair with a louse on it falls onto a hoodie, scarf, or hat, so sharing clothing with anyone that you know has head lice isn’t a good idea. The louse will crawl on to the first human head it can find because it cannot live anywhere but a human scalp.
5. Don’t panic! If you do find head lice or suspect that your child has head lice, do not panic! Neither you, nor your child did anything wrong. Lice can happen to anyone, and we have the technology to get rid of head lice quickly and safely. Lice Clinics of America – Pearland is the exclusive provider of lice treatment using the FDA-cleared AirAllé medical device, which is clinically shown to kill live lice and eggs (nits) in a single treatment that takes about an hour. It’s easy and it has successfully treated more than 600,000 cases of head lice worldwide!
Lice Clinics of America has over 300 clinics in 35 countries, making it the world’s largest network of professional lice treatment centers. Lice Clinics of America - Pearland is located at 4420 Broadway Street, Pearland, TX 77581 and is open Monday-Sunday by appointment. Call 281-375-3179 or visit www.theliceremovalclinic.com for more information or to schedule an appointment.
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